|
New to mastering (pg. 4)
|
View this Thread in Original format
| cristianokeller |
1 - So u are new to master.
Me too, and I think I'll never be an expert of todays called "mastering".
I think mastering was created to be a final touch in music, to correct a little bit more of punch, a little bit more of lows, highs...
I think mastering was created to make a "music" compatible with the full album, to put things in the same frequencies dimension...
But, todays mastering is focused on Volume. Stupid volumes that kills the dynamics, the most important music essense.
Music is becoming noise due to those stupid comercial ones. They music are sounding like bull more and more, they're becoming inaudible for those who like music.
I'm sorry but you're entering in a devasted world dominated by money predators.
Today this is called Volume War, so mastering is used to make war. Music is not for peace and love no more. I'm sorry.
2 - My real answer for your question is to make a perfect mix that sounds perfect for u, download one of those bull (Ozone, T-Racks) with intelligent limiters in audionuzzz (don't waste your money without test it completely) and destroy your music. Now it will be ready the war. If you start making money with your bomb music, buy the war toy. |
|
|
| MrJiveBoJingles |
| quote: | Originally posted by cristianokeller
2 - My real answer for your question is to make a perfect mix that sounds perfect for u, download one of those bull (Ozone, T-Racks) with intelligent limiters in audionuzzz (don't waste your money without test it completely) and destroy your music. Now it will be ready the war. If you start making money with your bomb music, buy the war toy. |
:stongue:
IMO '70s disco tracks sound great pumping on big speakers, and those have real dynamics. Could use some beefier bass, but whatever. It's a completely ridiculous lie that you have to crush music to for it to sound "good in a club," and people are buying into it like a pack of morons. |
|
|
| evo8 |
| quote: | Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles
:stongue:
IMO '70s disco tracks sound great pumping on big speakers, and those have real dynamics. Could use some beefier bass, but whatever. It's a completely ridiculous lie that you have to crush music to for it to sound "good in a club," and people are buying into it like a pack of morons. |
See i do a good bit of clubbing, and when i hear these tracks out i never say to myself "jeez that sounds really overcompressed and crushed"
Now i go and buy some of those tracks when they come out a few weeks/months later and if i look at the RMS, its up around -7 or -6, which is really loud
So what gives, are these the tracks i heard in the club, or am i listening to a "crushed beatport version" ?
Or does it just not matter when the music is mixed right? |
|
|
| mfitterer1 |
LOL @ Crons idea of mastering.
Second, yes, anything you do in mastering can be done in the mix, but that would also attribute to a more difficult mix if you do all of that in the same breath.
Third, we are speaking about edm here. The compositions in 99% of the tracks, even the best, are simple. It's dance music. It's supposed to be simple, not an orchestral piece. There's a reason it's supposed to be simple, and that is so that the listener (supposed to be someone who is dancing) wants to dance to the rhythm, beat, melody, etc.
While there is still a lot of room for creativity in Trance, or any genre, it is all about how things sound. Creativity shouldn't even be brought up. If you're not creative you should never see the mastering process anyways, it's negligible. Yes your elements need to sound good cohesively but they also need to sound good by themselves. I see far too many tracks that waste precious time of a listeners. People think intros are always boring. I mean everything is what you make it. The reason I find mastering to be the most important aspect of the process is entailed in a quote someone posted earlier. It said something about it being 10% of the equation but taking up 90% of the time.
You can get a track to the final stages and then take it several different ways depending on how you want it to be felt.
I'm also not surprised at all people have gone nuts over the statement. But I look at every name of everyone who has and see nobody who has continually impressed me with how their tracks sound.
This is an ultra competitive industry and it's funny that people give mastering so little importance. Any little thing that can improve your finished product should be taken. In the end most people just don't have the patience to see their projects to where they should end up. |
|
|
| vikernes |
Are you people clueless or what? The moment you start putting compressors, limiters, eqs on the master channel you start mastering. What? You thought mastering only becomes "legal" when you have a wav file on your drive?
I don't care what Eric Prydz does. If what he think he's doing (putting mastering fx's on individual channels) is called mastering than someone should tell him he's an idiot.
If any of you would actually bother to click the link I provided or god forbid, even read the book, you'd find this at the very beginning:
"Mastering is the last creative step in the audio production process, the bridge between mixing and replication - your last chance to enhance sound or to repair problems in an acoustically designed room - an audio microscope. Mastering engineers lend an objective, experienced ear to your work; we are familiar with what can go wrong technically and aesthetically."
I.e. the very last step before making a master and starting to print CD's, DVD-A's or vinyl's. And this is from the man himself - Bob Katz. As I'm sure most of you have no clue who he is, just google him.
There are 3 stages in making music: recording, mixing, mastering (and finally replication). Mastering methods (and tools used) depend on the type of medium you'll release your music. That's why you have to specify if you plan on releasing on a CD or on a vinyl when you send out your tracks to a ME.
| quote: | Originally posted by evo8
See i do a good bit of clubbing, and when i hear these tracks out i never say to myself "jeez that sounds really overcompressed and crushed"
Now i go and buy some of those tracks when they come out a few weeks/months later and if i look at the RMS, its up around -7 or -6, which is really loud
So what gives, are these the tracks i heard in the club, or am i listening to a "crushed beatport version" ?
Or does it just not matter when the music is mixed right? |
The same version. You can't hear it because of ty club speakers and just the fact that's it's playing so loud in there. Maybe the DJ has a limiter on top of that - I know Deadmau5 does this.
It doesn't matter that much it in the club, but when you listen it at home on your speakers or headphones that you are familiar with.
While I personally don't have that much of a problem with today's tracks, some of the stuff released it unbelievable.
For a solid master in EDM check Sied van Riel and Geert Huinink - Sunrise. Now that's a solid mix. Still stands out in terms of loudness, but doesn't sound too compressed and when you look at the waveform it's not a big square. |
|
|
| mfitterer1 |
| quote: | Originally posted by evo8
See i do a good bit of clubbing, and when i hear these tracks out i never say to myself "jeez that sounds really overcompressed and crushed"
Now i go and buy some of those tracks when they come out a few weeks/months later and if i look at the RMS, its up around -7 or -6, which is really loud
So what gives, are these the tracks i heard in the club, or am i listening to a "crushed beatport version" ?
Or does it just not matter when the music is mixed right? |
If a dj is good enough there are ways to get around the of overcompressed and limited tracks. This is not a rule but for most cases I find that subtracting some hi and low and adding a little more mid will help the tracks to be playable. I also will play the crap mastered tracks slightly lower so that their perceived loudness is more in par with the rest of the mix.
The thing I hate most is hearing a track that I like on Beatport and then when I download it im utterly disgusted and disappointed. I can't wait until I become "known" so that it won't be as big of an issue getting sources and making edit's/reworks to some of the crap out there. |
|
|
| sixofour.604 |
Mix right and you won't have to master, its as simple as that. Mastering is the process of fixing what was messed up in the mixing. Nothing done in mastering...nothing done in the mastering stage... is something that cannot be done in the mixing stage.
Music is bad today because of people like mfitter1 and vikerness, people who think you can just do what ever and then send it to be mastered and it comes out fine. These mastering engineers are tell you mastering is important because its their ing job. They get paid because they master tracks, so of course they are going to try to sell its importance to you.
You can make awesome music that doesn't need to go into a mastering stage. It takes time, many many years.
But making awesome music, and selling music are two different things. People who sell music generally don't give a about the quality, aslong as it sounds plastic with the loads of arbitrary mastering [anyone from any top 10 trance list ever], then it will sell, and that is why people try to stress its importance.
Most of the music I listen to is udnerground or amature, and most of it is a lot better than comercial stuff, because they concentrait more on making good music than they do trying to make it sound comercial. And this dogma about mastering being so important, comes from this "I want to make money" mentality. The best music in the world is from people who didn't make money off it.
There is nothing wrong with making your track compatiable as one user said, but it can be done [and should be done] in the mixing stage. And compatiability comes secondary to quality. You have to make good music before you try to make it compatiable on all sound systems. As it stands, most comercial and trance in general blows, so it goes that people worry too much about compatiability than the music itself, as evidenced. |
|
|
| derail |
mfitterer1, in regards to these comments:
"We are speaking about edm here. The compositions in 99% of the tracks, even the best, are simple. It's dance music. It's supposed to be simple, not an orchestral piece.
While there is still a lot of room for creativity in Trance, or any genre, it is all about how things sound. Creativity shouldn't even be brought up."
If you're talking about making money by creating music that sounds great but is instantly forgotten and never listened to again, fine - some people see it as a job, something to do to pay the bills. But you're not talking about classic songs with classic hooks here - yes, 9pm (til I come) contains a simple melody, but there's a reason it's so distinctive and memorable where the vast majority of trance songs aren't.
"The reason I find mastering to be the most important aspect of the process is entailed in a quote someone posted earlier. It said something about it being 10% of the equation but taking up 90% of the time."
You're taking this quote out of context, and a bit of thought would alert you to this - even if you get a complete song finished within 2 hours, no mastering engineer is going to spend 18 hours mastering that song. Mastering doesn't take up 90% of the total time. This quote was referring entirely to the processes within mastering, not mixing and mastering.
"You can get a track to the final stages and then take it several different ways depending on how you want it to be felt."
Are you recommending that, after the "final stages", the artist then "chooses which way to take the song"? Can you name some producers who wait until this stage to make decisions of this magnitude?
"I'm also not surprised at all people have gone nuts over the statement. But I look at every name of everyone who has and see nobody who has continually impressed me with how their tracks sound."
Could you please either post before and after clips of your songs, to show that, even with songs which sound amazing before mastering, mastering will still lift them several notches, or, as above, provide the names (and tunes) of engineers who have gone on record to state that they left some big creative decisions to the mastering engineer, and that the mastered version took their song in a different direction?
"This is an ultra competitive industry and it's funny that people give mastering so little importance. Any little thing that can improve your finished product should be taken. In the end most people just don't have the patience to see their projects to where they should end up."
Mastering is important. Most of us don't have acoustically perfect studios or full-range high end loudspeakers. When people are releasing a commercial product, I agree, take it to a mastering engineer and let them know what you want done to the sound, what your vision is (by providing reference songs, for example). Mastering will make mixes sound more "correct", but if they make them sound noticeably different, then make sure the mastering engineer tells you why they felt the need to make those changes, so you can learn and improve your mixing skills in future.
I think we agree overall, regardless of where the percentages of sound design/mixing/mastering end up. As long as producers take full responsibility for their sound, and do everything they can do to achieve it at the sound design/mixing stage, then effectively relay their vision for their sound to the mastering engineer, then the music we listen to should be of great quality. The alternative is that people underestimate the sound design/ mixing stages, thinking "the mastering engineer will fix all the issues". And that's not going to be in the best interests of attaining fantastic sound quality. |
|
|
| mfitterer1 |
| quote: | Originally posted by sixofour.604
Mix right and you won't have to master, its as simple as that. Mastering is the process of fixing what was messed up in the mixing. Nothing done in mastering...nothing done in the mastering stage... is something that cannot be done in the mixing stage.
Music is bad today because of people like mfitter1 and vikerness, people who think you can just do what ever and then send it to be mastered and it comes out fine. These mastering engineers are tell you mastering is important because its their ing job. They get paid because they master tracks, so of course they are going to try to sell its importance to you.
You can make awesome music that doesn't need to go into a mastering stage. It takes time, many many years.
But making awesome music, and selling music are two different things. People who sell music generally don't give a about the quality, aslong as it sounds plastic with the loads of arbitrary mastering [anyone from any top 10 trance list ever], then it will sell, and that is why people try to stress its importance.
Most of the music I listen to is udnerground or amature, and most of it is a lot better than comercial stuff, because they concentrait more on making good music than they do trying to make it sound comercial. And this dogma about mastering being so important, comes from this "I want to make money" mentality. The best music in the world is from people who didn't make money off it.
There is nothing wrong with making your track compatiable as one user said, but it can be done [and should be done] in the mixing stage. And compatiability comes secondary to quality. You have to make good music before you try to make it compatiable on all sound systems. As it stands, most comercial and trance in general blows, so it goes that people worry too much about compatiability than the music itself, as evidenced. |
Dude you are just fricken retarded. I MASTER MY OWN TRACKS IDIOT. And when my album is released you can go and listen to it and see what I'm referring to. You're so ignorant to differing opinions and ways of doing things it's hilarious! The thing is you have this methodology that you supposedly follow and feel so strongly about but I have listened to your tracks. There is a reason mixing and mastering are separate processes.
You're also an idiot for thinking you have to do mastering on an exported wave file. I do everything on my master output. I leave the track at -3 ro -5 and then the mastering comes in. The mixing and mastering stages are done simultaneously, side by side. Mixing into my chain if you will. There are many times where I will turn off the chain and go make minute adjustments in the mix.
Quite frankly the idea you hold that there is only one way to do things and only one type of quality and achieving it is hilarious and sickening. |
|
|
| sixofour.604 |
| quote: | Originally posted by mfitterer1
You're also an idiot for thinking you have to do mastering on an exported wave file. I do everything on my master output. I leave the track at -3 ro -5 and then the mastering comes in. |
That's mixing. Anything done on the mixer [mix-er] is mixing. Mastering specificly IS taking the exported audio and running it though an audio editor. Putting limiters and stuff on your master channel is part of mixing.
From Wikipedia:
"Mastering, a form of audio post-production, is the process of preparing and transferring recorded audio from a source containing the final mix to a data storage device (the master); the source from which all copies will be produced (via methods such as pressing, duplication or replication). The format of choice these days is digital masters, although analog masters, such as audio tapes, are still being used by the manufacturing industry and a few engineers who specialize in analog mastering." |
|
|
| Subtle |
| quote: | Originally posted by sixofour.604
That's mixing. Anything done on the mixer [mix-er] is mixing. Mastering specificly IS taking the exported audio and running it though an audio editor. |
I second this, I spend so much time mixing my tracks that the only thing i do once im done is exporting to wav, adding a 3-5 threshold of compression and limiting the thing to a decent volume. |
|
|
|
|
