Anyone here experienced with mastering?

[Barnelby]

Ok.

I'm at this point where I feel like my skills have kinda plateaued when it comes to closing the margin between my sound and the "pro" sound. I'd say I'm about 60-75% where I want to be... problem is, I don't know enough about mastering to know how much of a difference it is going to make... is it going to be the final 40 or so percent of the sound? I have no idea because I've never heard a side-by-side of something that is mastered and unmastered.

So I'm wondering if anyone out there would be willing to take say a 15 second clip of one of my songs and do some black magic on it and give me an idea of what kind of effect mastering has.

I know it takes time, so I am willing to throw in a few bucks if necessary...

Any takers?

Thanks!

[grs]

Offer aside, I'd recommend to keep improving your mixing and do less mastering.
I'm at a stage now where I mix everything through one eq and one limiter.
Using the eq and limiter to keep the mix as loud and roughly eq'ed as target.
Then if the main bus eq has a huge boost in the 500hz range then in my mix I need to target instruments that would benefit with a boost in 500hz and give it to them and then take it out of the main bus.

[feedingear]

reference reference reference. a good master cannot save a bad mix. mastering is kind of like adding icing on the cake. you can use it to clear up some weaker elements of a mix, and to enhance the good stuff, as well as to give the track a coherent colour (across an entire record).

To give you a VERY brief and simple rundown, most track masters will include EQ (very gentle enhancements or shaping), eq to look for any resonant freqs missed or disguised by the mixing environment, possibly mid side processing depending on the track type and requirements with their own compression and eq settings and comparative level balance. Returning from MS you may then apply more compression - simple, multiband, as well as parallel compression can all be set up at once. again, its usually very gentle and minimal processing done at every point in the chain. Then you might do a bit of outboard processing through analog gear to try and colour the sound by introducing 2nd and 3rd harmonics, and then finish off with a limiter/dither if 16bits required.

Thats a bastardised version of what happens, but if you follow that chain on a finished wave of your own tracks you might start to see how you can enhance/correct a mix with mastering.

[Barnelby]

Yeah, I've always understood that mastering was more of a subtle aftertouch.


grs I'm not sure what you meant when you said this:

Using the eq and limiter to keep the mix as loud and roughly eq'ed as target.
Then if the main bus eq has a huge boost in the 500hz range then in my mix I need to target instruments that would benefit with a boost in 500hz and give it to them and then take it out of the main bus.

K hang on....are you saying that once I put an EQ on the main bus and discover that it sounds good with a 500hz boost, that I then need to go back and make the boost happen within the actual instruments' EQ? I think that is right.

Speaking of which.

When I am EQing and compressing multiple tracks....is there ever a time when I should group together several tracks that might have the same sonic qualities...say some high hat sounds and a really high lead or pad....and bus them to a single channel and apply compression/EQ on that channel...or should EVERY channel have its own individual EQ and compression?

thanks!

[grs]

Yes, Barnelby. I always found that when mastering I'd kick up some frequencies that helped the track but smeared the vocal or made it wooly. Other examples are you make the master wider and pads and guitars sound better but drums are less etc.

[grs]

and yes, groups help for associated benefits and cpu saving..

[batman]

I'll help you figuring out if it is a mixing issue or mastering one.
Please send:
- the track @ -6dB without any treatment on the master.
- the track with a premaster
- a commercial track as a reference.

Use dropbox or what is convenient for you.

[Barnelby]

Tell you what, batman... I'm going to take some 20 second clips from a few of my songs, string them together, and send you that. I'll get it to you tonight.