i hate mastering

user_305 · Post by **user_305** » Mon Mar 14, 2005 11:26 am

what do the people here who do cdr/cassette/small run releases use to master their albums? i'm assuming you folks do it yourselves like i do. i've tried mastering programs (t-racks most recently), but have found just running my final mixes through a tube eq vst and a tube limiter vst gives me the loudest, brightest sound and makes it really easy to even out all of the tracks' eq/volume. i just find it useless to spend a couple of hundred bucks to master an album that i recorded at home and will only run about 100 copies.

i've read all the articles, etc. any little tips or pointers from folks on the board?

user_265 · Post by **user_265** » Mon Mar 14, 2005 4:15 pm

that's electronic music, right? i find it much easier to master electronic stuff than accoustic music. i've been mastering my band's (mersault) cd over the last couple of days (elec + contrabass + drums) and found it difficult as shit. generally i find you can push electro-stuff more than accoustic music. it depends whether you want to have it optimized for max. loudness or good dynamics (i prefer the latter). anyway, i usually run an EQ (lowcut at around 30Hz and hights depending on what the musc needs. you can analyze the freq.spectr. with wave PAZ or another tool), a (very soft) multiband compressor, a classic compressor (at 2:1, the threshhold at a level to compress about 2-3 dB) and a soft limiter. i also use to spend a few hours removing the worst peaks manually (in wavelab) before running through the limiter. but as said, it totally depends on the music and how much you want to manipulate it, for example the mastering i did for my duo with warburton is MUCH louder than the mastering for mersault etc. etc. mastering is pretty interesting once you get into it - it's just extremely time consuming to do it right.

p_ano · Post by **p_ano** » Mon Mar 14, 2005 8:51 pm

tomas wrote: loudness or good dynamics (i prefer the latter).

i prefer good dynamics also. these days that seems like a lost art.

tomas wrote:anyway, i usually run an EQ (lowcut at around 30Hz and hights depending on what the musc needs. you can analyze the freq.spectr. with wave PAZ or another tool), a (very soft) multiband compressor, a classic compressor (at 2:1, the threshhold at a level to compress about 2-3 dB) and a soft limiter

a 30hz lowcut frees up a lot of room, and is essential for a final mix. for that and other final tweaks, i really like Voxengo CurveEQ (http://www.voxengo.com/curveeq/). it has a built in spectrum analyzer which is really handy.

i like the Waves Linear Phase Multiband Compressor (http://www.waves.com/content.asp?id=138) for handling what's left of the low end. it's a little processor intensive, but since you're only using it for mastering, it doesn't matter.

i usually skip the classic compressor and go straight to a limiter, but that's just my preference. i like the Waves L2 Ultramaximizer (http://www.waves.com/content.asp?id=139). go easy on this step. you can really suck the life out of your sound with the L2. like tomas said, soft limiting!

tomas wrote:i also use to spend a few hours removing the worst peaks manually (in wavelab) before running through the limiter.

wow. i never thought to do that before.

good idea.

also, having good references are important. get a handful of records that you know sound good in lots of different environments. comparing can really help you a lot. sometimes a miniscule amount of reverb can also give life to a mix. stay away from sonic maximizers (like BBE Sonic Maximizer).

listen.

user_305 · Post by **user_305** » Mon Mar 14, 2005 9:06 pm

p_ano wrote:i usually skip the classic compressor and go straight to a limiter, but that's just my preference. i like the Waves L2 Ultramaximizer (http://www.waves.com/content.asp?id=139). go easy on this step. you can really suck the life out of your sound with the L2. like tomas said, soft limiting!

this is mostly what i've been using. the music i'm mastering right now is always-in-the-red hard electronic stuff... i use a lot of limiters in mixing to get things really 'hot' sounding, so i've found it pretty easy to 'master' this disc. i've just had to make sure that each track is a similar volume/gain 'feel' as the next... if that makes sense. i'll be mastering by band's stuff later this spring and it seems like it'll be much more of a challenge because there is almost no distortion anywhere in the songs, so any extra gain put on by mastering will stick out like a sore thumb. i always try to go for the loudest volume possible, but if i'm not mastering 'loud' music, it usually gets me in trouble.

user_265 · Post by **user_265** » Tue Mar 15, 2005 4:41 am

i second p_ano's plugin choices, especially the waves multiband comp and L2.

p_ano wrote:
tomas wrote:i also use to spend a few hours removing the worst peaks manually (in wavelab) before running through the limiter.
wow. i never thought to do that before. good idea.

yeah, you get to really hate your own music after a couple of hours, but it's useful. i do it with the wavelab-montage function, where you can adjust the volume shapes of both channels individually.

user_305 · Post by **user_305** » Tue Mar 15, 2005 10:30 am

if i spend too much time on any one song, i usually just end up making it sound like mush. it's like repeating a word over and over again until it loses its meaning.

user_572 · Post by **user_572** » Thu Mar 17, 2005 11:24 pm

i just went through a good learning process. over a period of a month i made over 20 copies of the same mix with different settings in ozone and listened to them in the car, at home and work. i titled the result master disaster when i finally got it right, imo

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