Track Prep. for mastering

LuKo · Post by **LuKo** » Wed Oct 11, 2006 3:44 pm

Ok so you wanna send your track off to be mastered...

what exactly are the do's and dont's??

example: (and these are just guestimates so please correct me if i am wrong)

Dont - have a limiter on the master buss

DO - Leave 3 - 4dbs of headroom on the master fader

Don't - Have any compression on teh master buss?

What else is there ? Running your tracks thru a Freq. Analyser, how do they look before you send them off...are they perfectly spread across all frequencies....

or like mine and really bottom heavy

any tips appreciated...not really ready to send anything off just yet... but these are questions i wonder about alot..

cheers!

FoundationStepper · Post by **FoundationStepper** » Wed Oct 11, 2006 3:49 pm

check for mono mixdown and related phase issues

flippo · Post by **flippo** » Wed Oct 11, 2006 5:10 pm

LuKo wrote:
What else is there ? Running your tracks thru a Freq. Analyser, how do they look before you send them off...are they perfectly spread across all frequencies....
or like mine and really bottom heavy

I don't know if you should always stick to that rule though yeh?. Look at alot of profesional dubstep and Dnb, it's bottom heavy. I think even most pro pop genre type stuff isnt flat, rolls down after 1.5 kHz or so.

I was bored and I made a template in excel for this kinda stuff. I'm a geek

Handy because I don't have anything pro to monitor on.

After directly comparing spectrum profiles of a bunch of similar dubstep tunes, I wasn't that far off the mark. I tend to roll off my high freqs too early though. My individual elements need a bit more cleaning up though, although this graph dosent show time and stereo image, so my mixing isn't as cloudy as it looks here. Pretty colours though hey

dopamine · Post by **dopamine** » Wed Oct 11, 2006 8:49 pm

I wouldn't rely on spectrum analysers. They will distract you from what's important - trusting your ears.

Just make sure there's no compression on the master buss, it's not clipping and it works in mono.

Good mastering engineers will be running out through outboard so leaving headroom is unecessary, in fact if you work at 16 bit leaving headroom is a bad idea as your dynamic resolution is lower.

flippo · Post by **flippo** » Wed Oct 11, 2006 10:53 pm

far from relying on them bro. Goes without saying really.

flippo · Post by **flippo** » Wed Oct 11, 2006 10:54 pm

i just like graphs

dopamine · Post by **dopamine** » Thu Oct 12, 2006 10:23 am

Sorry, I didn't mean you relied on them it's just that a lot of people do.

Ever seen the Dave Gorman show?

unsoundbwoy · Post by **unsoundbwoy** » Thu Oct 12, 2006 6:44 pm

i've posted this before
but ...

http://www.foon.be/better%20vinyl.html

and yeh ...
this isn't meant to be definitive and its not suggesting we ditch mastering engineers

flippo · Post by **flippo** » Thu Oct 12, 2006 10:31 pm

dopamine wrote:Sorry, I didn't mean you relied on them it's just that a lot of people do.

Ever seen the Dave Gorman show?

no I haven't?

what is it? a Mastering show? heh?

dopamine · Post by **dopamine** » Thu Oct 12, 2006 10:40 pm

Nope. It's a comedy show about a guy looking for other people named Dave Gorman. He has a fetish for charts....

Grey Son · Post by **Grey Son** » Thu Oct 12, 2006 11:03 pm

dopamine wrote:Nope. It's a comedy show about a guy looking for other people named Dave Gorman. He has a fetish for charts....

ha ha ive seen that show on foxtel..
Didnt he find a chick as well called dave???

flippo · Post by **flippo** » Thu Oct 12, 2006 11:08 pm

Grey Son wrote:
dopamine wrote:Nope. It's a comedy show about a guy looking for other people named Dave Gorman. He has a fetish for charts....
ha ha ive seen that show on foxtel..
Didnt he find a chick as well called dave???

haha I came home pissed fromt he pub one night and started messaging every cunt on myspace named "David Phillips". There are shitloads of us. I even started a group called "David Phillips?".

Spherix · Post by **Spherix** » Sun Oct 15, 2006 8:44 pm

just make it as loud and good osunding as you can to your ears before you send it off

theyre only really working on the finishe dthing and you cant polish a turd as the saying goes
unless youresending a whole project file thats a bit diff i guess, but u may as well put the engineers name on the tune if youre doing that

LuKo · Post by **LuKo** » Tue Oct 17, 2006 1:00 pm

^^ so when you say as loud and as good sounding as you can get it??

thats without compression, limiting or eq on the masterbuss?

flippo · Post by **flippo** » Tue Oct 17, 2006 1:13 pm

most of the literature on mastering websites tells you that they don't want any dynamics processing done to the final product before they get their hands on it. Jack the Bear certainly makes that pretty clear, as well as a few others. Might be some groups that are different though.

dopamine · Post by **dopamine** » Tue Oct 17, 2006 1:54 pm

LuKo wrote:^^ so when you say as loud and as good sounding as you can get it??

thats without compression, limiting or eq on the masterbuss?

yes

Spherix · Post by **Spherix** » Tue Oct 17, 2006 3:35 pm

dopamine wrote:
LuKo wrote:^^ so when you say as loud and as good sounding as you can get it??

thats without compression, limiting or eq on the masterbuss?
yes

you can have EQ on it
remember they are only working with one file unless you take the whole track in seperate channels

a1studmuffin · Post by **a1studmuffin** » Tue Oct 17, 2006 11:05 pm

Surely the best non-technical advice for mastering would be: Do not rely on the mastering process to make your song sound better. If the mastering job is having to fix problems with your mix, then you should really just go back and fix it in the mix.

As an example, I've been mastering my own downtempo stuff recently (I know, a lot of people suggest *not* doing this as you're too close to the music, but sometimes I like to scoff in the face of reason) after doing a hell of a lot of reading up on the subject of mixing and mastering over the last year.

I went from this:

http://michael.4bitterguys.com/Music/Re ... e%20v2.mp3
http://michael.4bitterguys.com/Music/Re ... afrost.mp3

To this:

http://michael.4bitterguys.com/Music/Re ... Mojave.mp3
http://michael.4bitterguys.com/Music/Re ... afrost.mp3

The difference between them?

In the original ones, I didn't get the mixdown right. I barely spent any time cleaning up the individual elements of the track (removing unwanted noise with EQ), and didn't spend much time EQing the tracks so they left space for each other in the mix. At the final mixdown stage, I could see that the mix was wack, and tried to get things back into line with some EQ + multiband compressor on the master bus. As you can hear, it's pretty nasty.

For the new ones, I took off all mastering processing (bar a limiter, but even that is only there as a safety net to prevent clipping, and is only occasionally triggered by the kick drum in Through Mojave, and only by about 1-2dB. In Permafrost it's not triggered at all, as I've already pulled the peaks down on the kick). I spent a hell of a lot of time EQing the individual tracks correctly and getting them to sit in the mix properly. I pulled apart the drum loops and resequenced them in Battery, paying more attention to timing. I only used a small amount of compression on the kick + snares, nothing else. The end result? I've got two tracks closer than ever before to a "clean mastered" sound without any actual mastering taking place. Of course I'm not saying my tracks are perfect, but they're a hell of a lot closer than they were before.

FYI I left 6dB of headroom for both tracks (so the limiter is boosting 6dB).

a1studmuffin · Post by **a1studmuffin** » Fri Oct 20, 2006 8:21 am

... what, is there a booger in my nose or something?

factory worker · Post by **factory worker** » Fri Oct 20, 2006 9:14 am

I can't check out tunes from work.

a1studmuffin · Post by **a1studmuffin** » Fri Oct 20, 2006 10:33 am

Ahh its all good I just wondered why everyone stopped posting after I replied

flippo · Post by **flippo** » Fri Oct 20, 2006 11:48 am

:paranoid:

I think your tracks are sweet.

dopamine · Post by **dopamine** » Fri Oct 20, 2006 1:04 pm

Spherix wrote:
dopamine wrote:
LuKo wrote:^^ so when you say as loud and as good sounding as you can get it??

thats without compression, limiting or eq on the masterbuss?
yes
you can have EQ on it
remember they are only working with one file unless you take the whole track in seperate channels

So what would be the point of adding EQ to your master before sending it to a mastering engineer? It's completely illogical.

If you send an enginner seperate tracks then they are mixing it, it's a different thing.

Your stereo output file should be completely dry, just the way you mixed it. If you feel you need to add anything it should always be done at the mixing stage. Unless you think you have better ears and equipment than the engineer?

LuKo · Post by **LuKo** » Fri Oct 20, 2006 1:33 pm

ok see the reason i originally asked the question was because i read alot of people, mixing into a compressor on the master, or eq, whatever they have on their master buss... and alot of teh time i have a compressor of ssome sort on the master,

so when you write a tune do you do the same? and then remove it right at the end and say to yourself ok "its not as loud as it was, or maybe doesnt gell quite teh same, but the engineer's compressors etc.. will bring that back, but probably alot better

or do you just get used to nothing on your master buss and get it as good as you can that way

or work with a compressor on the master take it off at the end and make further adjustments (altho working this way makes no sense..)

sorry for all the stupid questions, am wanting to get my sh*t straight before jumping into anything

so dopamine when wa sthe first tiem you sent a track off for mastering? was it after your first tune was picked up? so it got mastered? or did you get some done yourself before anything was signed to A) send out hi quality examples of your work?

or b) just for your own purposes, ie; to play the tracks out in a club environment etc..

cheers

dopamine · Post by **dopamine** » Fri Oct 20, 2006 2:57 pm

I dont write with anything on my master buss. I use a lot of group busses though so i'll have compression on some of those but not on others. I used to write into a compressor but since I stopped I get far superior mixdowns and my final masters sound much better.

I never had anything professionally mastered before I signed anything. Since then I have had about 13 tracks mastered and I have learnt a lot by speaking to the mastering engineer and label guys about how they like things.

dopamine · Post by **dopamine** » Fri Oct 20, 2006 3:10 pm

This is a clip of track i'm working on, it's gone thru a limiter but I haven't added any EQ.

http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?a ... A871FEC99C

I never master my tracks to play out, I just run them thru a limiter to get the level nice and hot. If I think it needs more bottom end or EQ after playing it out a few times i'll fix the mix. If it seems fine then i'll send it to the mastering engineer.

If you want me to post a clip pre-limiter let me know but apart from being a bit quiter it's essentially the same.

LuKo · Post by **LuKo** » Fri Oct 20, 2006 5:44 pm

Legend mate

both those posts have some nuggets of gold

will start mixing without master buss anything!

cheerz

p.s - clip sounding phat man

a1studmuffin · Post by **a1studmuffin** » Sat Oct 21, 2006 2:03 am

Yeah, I did the same thing as you Luko originally. The question you have to ask yourself is why do you have a compressor on the master bus... what's it's purpose? My honest answer in the end was because I was hoping the compressor would magically make the song sound better and more tight. The best place to fix that is in the individual tracks, that way changing one thing isn't going to suddenly affect everything else 'cause of the compression. For me getting better at music production was all about learning how to be in control of every aspect of the sound, and ditching things on the master bus was a big help as it's such a sledgehammer approach to mixing that you'll never get good results from it, since if you try to fix one thing with a master EQ it affects everything else, same goes for compression.

Pay more attention to what Dopamine says though, the proof is in the pudding.

factory worker · Post by **factory worker** » Mon Oct 23, 2006 6:02 pm

a1studmuffin wrote:Yeah, I did the same thing as you Luko originally. The question you have to ask yourself is why do you have a compressor on the master bus... what's it's purpose? My honest answer in the end was because I was hoping the compressor would magically make the song sound better and more tight. The best place to fix that is in the individual tracks, that way changing one thing isn't going to suddenly affect everything else 'cause of the compression. For me getting better at music production was all about learning how to be in control of every aspect of the sound, and ditching things on the master bus was a big help as it's such a sledgehammer approach to mixing that you'll never get good results from it, since if you try to fix one thing with a master EQ it affects everything else, same goes for compression.

Pay more attention to what Dopamine says though, the proof is in the pudding.

But if you dopn't eat your peas............... how can you have any pudding?

LuKo · Post by **LuKo** » Mon Oct 23, 2006 8:10 pm

a1studmuffin wrote:Yeah, I did the same thing as you Luko originally. The question you have to ask yourself is why do you have a compressor on the master bus... what's it's purpose? My honest answer in the end was because I was hoping the compressor would magically make the song sound better and more tight. The best place to fix that is in the individual tracks, that way changing one thing isn't going to suddenly affect everything else 'cause of the compression. For me getting better at music production was all about learning how to be in control of every aspect of the sound, and ditching things on the master bus was a big help as it's such a sledgehammer approach to mixing that you'll never get good results from it, since if you try to fix one thing with a master EQ it affects everything else, same goes for compression.

Pay more attention to what Dopamine says though, the proof is in the pudding.

yeah man glad i am not the only one, have made a couple of new tracks since without it, its made an improvement/... altho i am still guilty of running them thru an ultrmaximiser after the final bounce, it just makes everything more in your face which is what my ears tell me they wanna hear, the tracks sounds much teh same without it , just a little less loud

if i ws to send one to be mastered I would take that off

but for nowam i figure this is ok /

a1studmuffin · Post by **a1studmuffin** » Mon Oct 23, 2006 11:59 pm

Yeah I mean if you're only crunching off an extra 2-3db on the ultramaximizer it's not a huge deal...

Melbourne Beats

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