As a mastering engineer, I would always encourage home recordists to send their music to a professional for mastering. Aside from finely tuned monitoring set ups, ultra-high-end equipment and the benefit of experience, a professional mastering engineer offers a valuable second opinion.
However, if budgets don’t allow or if you’re really set on doing it yourself – here are 5 tips for DIY mastering.
Essential Mastering Tools
Reference exhaustively
One of the most difficult things about mastering (and mixing for that matter) is maintaining objectivity. Your ears will always get used to what they’re hearing and if you’re bogged down in the same track you’ll very quickly find you can’t see the forest for the trees.
The solution? Rack up at least one similar track in your DAW project to constantly refer to and give yourself a reality check. You’ll never match it exactly but it’ll give you a good idea if you’re on the right track.
Check, check and check again
Unless you’ve dropped a cashbomb on your monitors, and crucially, your room acoustics, you’ll need to compensate for a less than perfect monitoring environment.
That means every time you think you’re done, burn it onto a CD, check on your hi-fi, check it in your car, on your iPod, round your mate’s place, anywhere you can think of. If you can’t depend on your studio set-up to reliably translate you need to check the long way in as many real world situations as you can.
If in doubt, take a break
If you’ve been at it for a while, been checking against your reference track(s) and checking on as many playback systems as you can find, but still can’t tell if it’s right – take a break.
It happens to the best of us. Sometimes, listening to it again is not the solution. Leave it for an hour, a day, a week even and then come back to it. You’ll find that things become a lot clearer. And it’s remarkable how much louder things will sound when you haven’t been listening to them for hours on end.
Give the limiter an easy ride
One of the most common mistakes in DIY mastering is relying too much on the limiter. Brickwall limiters and loudness maximisers are not a magic bullet – they will not give you the loudness you’re after by themselves. Or at least, not in a pleasant way.
Achieving commercial loudness is by and large a matter of EQ, gentle compression, possibly some light distortion/harmonic excitement and finally the limiter. A good rule of thumb is to let the limiter impose no more than 3dB of gain reduction. In practice though, many mastering engineers use much less.
Leave the multi-band alone
Another common misconception about modern mastering is that multi-band compressors are essential. In actual fact, unless you have a good reason for doing so, you’re likely to do more harm than good with multi-band processing.
Break out your best broadband bus compressor and leave the multi-band for specific tasks. As long as your mix is good enough, you won’t even need to think about multi-band compression.
Multi-band processors are most commonly used by professional mastering engineers to target specific problems e.g. de-essing or taming the bass. Rarely are all bands used, and even rarer is using them for bus compression.
Mastering is about making a big change through a series of small changes. If you find yourself making radical changes with one processor, chances are you’re doing too much.
I personally master in Wavelab, which is pretty straightforward for Cubase users, as it supports VST plugins. Although, it can be a bit counterintuitive when coming from Cubase if you expect it to work in the same fashion. If anyone is interested I can go into a more in depth tutorial about fade ins/outs on tracks, crossfading, etc, but for this one I’m just going to show how quick and easy it is to create a duplication ready DDP or physical master with ISRC code, EAN/UPC code and CD text embedded and ready to go.
New Audio Montage Step 1 is creating a new Audio Montage, do this from the floating panel by clicking the button as per the image below, after which you want to select Stereo, CD compatible, 44.1khz from the dialogue box which pops up afterward
Introduction
T-RackS 3 is a suite of high-quality digital and analog-modelled VST/AU/RTAS Dynamics and EQ processors, for mixing and mastering. T-RackS can also be used outside of your DAW as a standalone mastering application. Version 3.5.1 is the latest at the time of this review.
T-RackS Standard comes with the 4 ‘classic’ processors and metering suite as individual plugins also available within the T-Racks Shell or standalone.
T-Racks Deluxe has all the same functionality but adds a few more processors for a total of 9 including two analog modelled devices, the Fairchild Limiter and Pultec Tube Equalizer.
Each of the processors are also available for $99 each. The two newest additions to the T-RackS family – Black 76 Limiting Amplifier (modelled after Urei 1176), and White 2A Leveling Amplifier (Modelled after Urei LA2A Tube compressor/limiter), are only available as add-on purchases.
The decision to offer the individual processors was based on user feedback and common use. When T-RackS 3 was first released it was considered a mastering plugin, but users started liking the effects for mixing as well. Splitting up the system outside of the T-RackS Shell has made things much more convenient. (more…)
I found it really interesting, Ian often approaches things differently than I would, which leads me to new techniques. From this video in particular, I noticed he adds gain at the start of the fx-chain, and I would normally last. I asked him about it on Twitter.
ianshepherd: To avoid any confusion, the “How to make a song loud post” is new – and includes a video… http://t.co/288kGbqP theaudiogeek: great video. Do you normally keep the limiter threshold at 0? ianshepherd: Actually it’s usually at -0.3dB, but I sometimes reduce it to -1 if I’m pushing things really hard ianshepherd: It works both ways – I just prefer to push the level into the multiband – it means I rarely need to tweak the threshold theaudiogeek: interesting. I usually start at -6 for threshold. I do the loudening very last in the chain, and you use the gain plug first. ianshepherd: And, reduces level-changes when I bypass. More info: http://t.co/V6EbhlPn and http://t.co/90FskFkS ianshepherd: If you exceed -6 dB input with a threshold of -6, is it still clean ? Or does it clip ? Or does it depend on the DAW’s float? theaudiogeek: here’s my general strategy for using Ozone 4. http://t.co/nqNwoFUX Lots of different ways to kill dynamics. ianshepherd: Ah, OK. So setting Ozone’s threshold to -6 dB effectively boosts the gain, so the audible effect will be similar.
We both have our reasons, neither is wrong. I get better at mastering every time I talk to Ian.
This guest post comes from Barry Gardner, mastering engineer at Safe And Sound online mastering.
You may also like his previous contribution to AGZ, The 24 Bit Advantage.
Analogue warmth, what it is, and how to inject it into your recordings and mixes.
Warmth in the context of audio production, is a hot topic. With the popularity of almost all digital signal paths, it has become much cheaper to record, mix and master your music. However many musicians, producers and engineers feel that there is sometimes an elusive sound quality missing from modern digital production methods. In modern times, three common techniques in music recording and production have changed since domestic and DIY audio production has proliferated. These are namely, the use of multi-track tape machines, large format analogue consoles and large recording studio spaces. These changes are the more obvious ones and have definitely changed the quality of audio.
Defining warmth in recordings and mixes.
Analogue warmth is subjective and difficult to describe in words and everyone’s interpretation is slightly different. However there are a few statements which appear to be commonly accepted as characterizing warmth within a mix or recording.
A gelling of instruments, yet without compromising their own defined space in both tone and stereo image.
A lack of harshness and rounded quality.
A punchy and smooth sounding lower mid range.
Not excessively bright and the brightness that is present is smooth.
A punchy low frequency range.
To me personally, warmth can be a number of things. I can recall analogue tape recordings from the 1970′s which I would define as being warm. I can also produce something I define as warm with simple attenuation of high frequencies. In some instances a very rounded sound with a strong lower mid presence can sound warm to the ear. With this in mind I would like to suggest some pointers on how to create warmer sounding mixes and recordings.
What equipment and techniques can we use to enhance warmth?
All music recording starts with setting up microphones, experiment with different mic positioning or mic choices in order to get less bright recordings, although take care not to box yourself into a corner, double mic instruments with secondary ribbon or dynamic mics in addition to your usual choices.
A common source of warmth can be certain audio transformers which can reduce harshness in the upper registers and provide additional body in the lower mid range. There is a wide selection of vintage and retro styled mic preamps that utilize audio transformers at the input stage. Audio transformers are usually used at the inputs and outputs of equipment and can be found in many outboard equipment types such as equalizers and compressors as well as microphones. They are often overlooked in the quest for warmth.
One of the most powerful tools which is overlooked for generation of warmth is equalization, you have the power to sculpt and adjust sounds as is required. Do not be afraid to experiment with rolling off high frequencies to reduce harshness, presence and brittleness in a mix. You can also employ EQ on effects returns to soften them and make them gel better with the source.
Compression has the ability to smooth transients in recordings and fast attack times with 1dB or so of gain reduction can work wonders in smoothing out abrasive, harsh and aggressive transients in a mix. Analogue tape applied a natural form of compression when overloaded gently. It is a technique that can be used to good effect. Very gentle group or master bus compression can also provide a sense of “wholeness”.
In addition to these essential tools, in software form there is an emulation of virtually every piece of classic analogue studio equipment ever built. Often these software emulations rely on some kind of valve/tube saturation. In my experience valves do not add warmth as such but they can give a perception of thickening a sound as harmonics are added. Some emulations are better than others and I suggest keeping an open mind and downloading some demo’s and spending some quality listening time with them. Try and discern which ones seem to add that special something in terms of tone.
By experimenting with these techniques and equipment choices you should be able to start adding some warmth to your mixes. As always when experimenting in audio production take some time to rest your ears over night and double check that you have not laid the processing on too thick.
This guest post comes from Barry Gardner, mastering engineer at Safe And Sound online mastering.
You may also like his previous contribution to AGZ, The 24 Bit Advantage.
In early June TC Electronic hosted the ‘Rome Calling’ pro-audio seminar and documented it in video. The first video is Florian Camerer talking about a new standard of measuring loudness. I found it pretty interesting, I think you will too.
