I completely do not understand good mastering

[Andii]

How is it done? I've captured sounds that I'm really satisfied with and have every other aspect of recording going exactly the way I want it.

I really want my recordings to sound like almost exactly like they do now, except they need to be louder to match industry standards.

I've tried to do this over and over and haven't gotten good results.

I've been looking at the waveforms for albums that I like the sound of and the peaks are smashed. Looking at them Adobe Audition and audacity looks like solid bars and it indicates they are clipping. The stats say that they are usually around -10db RMS. How is this done? Is this a combo of limiting and clipping or just limiting?

What I have in mind is the sounds of Beneath the Massacre's Dystopia and After the Burial's Rareform. They're extremely loud, and have no pumping. An example of what I'm trying to avoid would be the mastering in Planetary Duality by The Faceless.

An answer from a very knowledgeable person would help a lot.

 

[Harry]

This is honestly such a vast topic, you could not possibly cover even 1/1000000000th of it in one thread.

I can give you a run down on the basics though.

Getting loudness starts all the way from tracking.
Tight playing/good editing through proper gain staging while tracking is very key to a good master.
If the playing isn't tight/editing isn't good, you're gonna have guitars and bass guitars and drums flying around everywhere, which is going to make getting a balanced mix harder.

Loud mastering is then quite dependent on a well balanced mix.
You can't have too much energy in any frequency regions otherwise a loud master will not be possible, because as the volume is pushed weaknesses in mix balancing become more apparent.

To sum that little bit up, get the tracking and mix right before proceeding, otherwise forget about trying to reach -10dB.

I tend to use clipping on my snare drums all the time, to lower the transients to increase headroom, as well as compression on snares and kicks (as these tend to really be the things that have transients that can kick your ass if you're not careful).
Saturation is also your friend. Good saturation can smooth out transients a little and just due to the frequency content they add give you not only more gain, but also more perceived volume and a greater sense of depth to your mix.
I don't like having to master my own stuff, since it's a massive compromise but once I'm fairly happy with the balance and tracking, I tend to put an instance of a clipper (in my case, I use GClip, which I also use for my snares) on my master bus, as well some saturation, maybe a little master buss EQ if necessary and then a limiter.

Go VERY easy on the limiter. Limiters are a handy tool, but they are very easily abused and can wreck havoc with your mix balance, as well as induce audible, nasty clipping that can sound horrible).
If you try to get all your loudness from the limiter, it simply wont work (well, technically it will, but it will be a smashed, clipping mess)
Loudness has to come from small steps at a time that eventually add up as a whole and give you loudness you desire.

With this all done, my songs are then pretty much on par with commercial releases loudness (good, well mixed stuff, not poor shoddy, excessively loud and smashed stuff like Death Magnetic and Hypocrisy's "Virus" album).

I'm assuming you were talking about just mastering your own stuff for personal pleasure and not making a commercial product.


If you plan on releasing a commercial product, it pays to just take the mix to a proper mastering engineer, because that level of mastering quality is simply not achievable in the bedroom studio environment

Hope this helps

 

[Stealthdjentstic]

^ Great post

rep'd

 

[keshav]

Fantastic post Harry!

As I posted in the other thread, I'd recommend that you mix with mastering plugins active on your master bus. It's not at all the conventional way of doing things, but it helps put the mix in perspective, and can save a lot of back tracking if you're relatively inexperienced. Get a good mix happening at the volume you want it to be. THEN disable everything and check through the mix for inconsistencies.

Also, it's important to understand that good mastering is very dependent on how much space there is in your mix, and how your image is spread out. If there's too much activity happening in one frequency region or in one part of the stereo image, your masters can sound cluttered and messy. Everything should fit and have its own space.

 

[Andii]

I just did it. I made it to 11db RMS with no audible clipping or pumping. I did it by using very little compression and a limiter and some careful clipping, which after analizing a lot of albums in Adobe Audition seems to be the norm. I also used a cut only eq curve to finish up the process.

I no longer feel like this is pulling teeth or chasing a rainbow or some shit like that.

 

[TreWatson]

i could use a "for dummies guide on this, instead of lame shit like windows 95.

 

[Andii]

i could use a "for dummies guide on this, instead of lame shit like windows 95.

Wha... do not understand your post, mostly the Windows 95 part.

I read a book called "Mastering Music At Home" recently and I DO NOT recommend it.

It was just as vague as the stuff on the internet and was a waste of time.

I found out all there is to mastering is:

1. Have a good mix with good sounds/tones
2. Eq everything to work together by subtracting(no boosts only cuts)
3.eq in the master bus by subtracting(no boosts only cuts)
4.use about 2-4 db of compression(use a very good one(s)) to glue the mix together
5.Use a limiter(a very good one) last in the chain
6.carefully clip the master making sure it doesn't audibly clip or make any artifacts.
7. Measure loudness with a program that generates statistics(I use Adobe Audition). The standard for metal is around 10 or 11 db RMS total power.



There that's what I learned after hours and hours of observing and reading all kinds of resources.

 

[tr0n]

I'd recmmond Bram.Smartelectronix.Com to see what your waveform looks like on the fly instead of having to bounce down. Just be careful to not become dependant on visual cues, your ears will always be the best judge. Beware also that lossy formats, especially mp3, can sound louder than the lossless wav files. Also be sure to dither with a good plugin. Never go from 24 to 16 bits without dithering - that's called truncating, and you'll lose masses of detail by doing it.

I can't add much to Harry's post to be honest, all I can recommend is good housekeeping principles.

Not to derail the topic into the loudness wars, but the best way of getting loudness is to turn the volume up on your speakers. I'm personally not one to sacrifice the sonic integrity of my mixes by applying dynamic range compression.

 

[CynicEidolon]

Not to derail the topic into the loudness wars, but the best way of getting loudness is to turn the volume up on your speakers. I'm personally not one to sacrifice the sonic integrity of my mixes by applying dynamic range compression.

This.

 

[Slampop]

Andii- i just mastered one of Trekita's mixes in his last post. if you want, listen to his mix on the first page...
http://www.sevenstring.org/forum/re...familier-buttttttt-ux8-nuendo-mf-etc-etc.html

...and then go to like page 3, well, here...
http://www.sevenstring.org/forum/re...milier-buttttttt-ux8-nuendo-mf-etc-etc-3.html

...and then listen to the mastered version i did for him that i posted. if this is the kind of mastering your talking about, or you just dig what i did to it in general, pm me and i will try and answer some of your questions.
(for the record, i'm still learning more, but for now, my boy Deegan who engineers at Infinite studios here in my town has given me some awesome basics )

hey Cynic...i'm finally coming around to not smashing the "bejeezus" out of my mixes...thought you would like to know! granted, i still like loud mixes, but i'm TRYING to savce some of the dynamics. i didn't go super smashed with my last posted track (cover).

 

[MF_Kitten]

i have to +1 on the loudness thing, but sometimes a compressed mix is what you want for heavy music. i think it should be done more for the sake of getting a specific sound rather than getting it to a volume level.

i'm pretty much decided on my mixes only being as loud as they need to be in order to sound the way i want them to. i generally prefer the in-betweens between raw and compressed. although totally compressed tracks can sound really badass to, if it specifically fits the music (super-tight tech metal bands for example).

 

[Slampop]

i think it should be done more for the sake of getting a specific sound rather than getting it to a volume level.

i generally prefer the in-betweens between raw and compressed. although totally compressed tracks can sound really badass to, if it specifically fits the music (super-tight tech metal bands for example).

...

 

[keshav]

although totally compressed tracks can sound really badass to, if it specifically fits the music (super-tight tech metal bands for example).

Agreed, but if one overdoes it with master compression it can really sound bad. Especially if there are breakdown-type parts, where the drums (especially overheads) will suddenly leap out when the guitars aren't playing and get buried the minute they come back in.

 

[MF_Kitten]

ugh, yeah. i hate things where the mastering ruins all the moments in a song. or, like when guitars are playing alone for a quick chug or two, and then when everything else kicks in, everything goes down to the same total volume that the guitars just had. i think that if one thing kicks in, it should get LOUDER, and if something cuts out, it should get LOWER.

so yeah. yay for mixing and mastering that fits the music, instead of trying to fit all music into the same can.

 

[Andretti]

As much as I love this band and thier music, the cymbals won the volume wars in this battle lol. I turn it up to hear the guitars and the cymbals are "pssshhhh"-ing my ears to bleed ..listen in 480p

 

[Andii]

Yeah, I have everything going now and I'm getting the results I wanted. The loudness wars are unfortunate, but I don't have a choice. When a band is paying me because they like the sounds I'm getting, they want their levels to be just like the bands they listen to, and of course so does everyone else including listeners and labels.


If you pay attention to most really good recordings they are really really loud, but you don't hear any pumping at all or anything moving levels in and out. I figured out how it's done and posted it in this thread some posts back. That's what I was so stumped about, but now I've got it.

I was scrambling to learn the loudness aspect of mastering because it was the one thing left I didn't understand whatsoever, yet people are already paying me to record them and want their stuff mastered here as well, so I was trying to hurry up and get it before they finish their album and it's on me to deliver ha ha.

In a perfect world it would be about the most pristine sound and not some sort of sick game to see who can be super loud and still sound really good at the same time, which is basically most of what mastering is.

 

[tr0n]

The loudness wars are unfortunate, but I don't have a choice. When a band is paying me because they like the sounds I'm getting, they want their levels to be just like the bands they listen to, and of course so does everyone else including listeners and labels.

You've hit the nail on the head there. That is the dilemma. Most of the time you gotta do what you gotta do, you need to get paid somehow so you can pay bills and feed yourself. It is a shame that many bands are uneducated about loudness, but I think even those who are aware of it will probably go for loudness anyway, because as MF_kitten said, loudness and brickwalling is almost the "sound" of metal today, which is a curious fact.

I'm interested to see how far things can really go, because there has to be a limit, once you start reaching 1 - 0.5dB dynamic range, people are really gonna notice. The only way is back, and I'm hoping Tesseract's album will demonstrate that if they do manage to get TurnMeUp.org's approval. But different loudness societies have different standards, some look for ~10dB, others ~14dB, which is worlds away from 4 or 6dB seen in most releases. ObZen is around 7dB for example.

 

[thadood]

This thread =

I agree with the majority of you. Avoid the loudness war.

When I mix, I mix with peaks hitting anywhere from -6 to -3dB. I get the mix sounding good that way - individual balancing (automation), compression, limiting, etc. In fact, I'm pretty picky about how I have my session setup. Perhaps this is why it's fairly easy for me to get a mix to -10dB RMS without issue and without audible pumping/artifacts:

Drums:
Busses. My lord, lots of them! I send the kick into a kick buss, snares (balanced to taste) into a buss, toms into a stereo buss, OH/HH into a stereo buss. Each of those busses have a parallel buss for NY-style compression. Then, I send all of these, post-fader, into a parallel drum buss for more compression. All of those busses go into a drum master buss that I may do slight EQ and compression.

Guitars:
Left and Right busses that feed into a guitar master buss. I balance multiple mics into the left/right busses, run individual EQ/comp on them, then a master EQ/MBC (smash the high end and mix it in to give huge bite).

Bass:
Same as guitar, but just a single master channel. EQ/MBC

Vox:
Mono busses that feed into a stereo master vox buss. I use a ridiculous amount of compression on vox, typically killing -15dB or so. Or series compression. Depends on the dynamic range and the material.
__________________

So, basically, I smash everything and get it hellishly balanced and then use track automation to control my dynamics.

On the master output, I tend to use a linear phase EQ, a clipper, MBC, and a limiter. At this point, I'm making minute changes - no more than 2dB or so of compression or EQ here and there. Doing this, I can get my mixes to hit -8dB RMS or so without any nasties going on.

Do I do this often? No - I tend to allow breathing room. I like to go at around -12dB RMS or so, sometimes -15dB. Most bands are happy hitting around -10dB, of course.

 

[JEBADIAH]

ok guys I don't post here much but I love the forum and you seem like a friendly bunch.

I've mastered other bands work for the last 8 years all done ITB, I'm gonna give some specifics here so listen up!!!

Download these>>>>

Ferric vst

voxengo span

Gclip

with those 3 plugins you absolutley can get a superb sounding Master, Providingyour mix is up to scratch!!!

Use voxengo span and set it to Slope 4.5db - block = 2048 - 20hz to 20khz
and play in some commercial metal track notice how there's a slight tilt towards the treble end from 2khz and above (this is a general thing depending on the genre)
When your mixing try to use that as a guide for your own mix -

Use ferric vst (or psp vintage warmer can work too) to add some transient smoothing but be careful here you just want some polish.

Then you can use your best vst compressor to take off about 1db ( I use La2a UAD)
again you don't want to "Hear" this - also you may not have to compress as Ferric vst may be enough.
Then use 2 instances of Gclip - oversample ON - softness 5% - gain about 1-2dB
and the next instance Gclip - oversample ON - softness 5% - gain to taste (watch out here though).

The above Always works and if you find it doesn't - or you notice any adverse effects then it really is a case of the mix - make sure you have Gclip on your Drum bus!!! compress to taste but Gclip on the Drum Bus is the key!!

Hope the above helps dudes.

oh and just to add - honestly getting the rms around -12 to -11rms is really enough trust me!!

 

[Radius_Vector]

Andii- i just mastered one of Trekita's mixes in his last post. if you want, listen to his mix on the first page...
http://www.sevenstring.org/forum/re...familier-buttttttt-ux8-nuendo-mf-etc-etc.html

...and then go to like page 3, well, here...
http://www.sevenstring.org/forum/re...milier-buttttttt-ux8-nuendo-mf-etc-etc-3.html

...and then listen to the mastered version i did for him that i posted. if this is the kind of mastering your talking about, or you just dig what i did to it in general, pm me and i will try and answer some of your questions.
(for the record, i'm still learning more, but for now, my boy Deegan who engineers at Infinite studios here in my town has given me some awesome basics )

hey Cynic...i'm finally coming around to not smashing the "bejeezus" out of my mixes...thought you would like to know! granted, i still like loud mixes, but i'm TRYING to savce some of the dynamics. i didn't go super smashed with my last posted track (cover).

Holy crap Slampop,

You've completely killed that mix - great production skills! This is a very nice thread, I like

I must add that most of my mastering now is done with - PSP Vintage warmer, C4, Voxengo Elephant and a Waves REQ. The most crucial elements include the C4 and the REQ - any mistakes there and the whole mix ends up dead.