powercore virus?

[Tarekith]

Originally Posted by aisling

how does that compare to the master x 5? (or really the other way around)........

What is your opinion of the "assimilator" powercore plug in inorder to "study" other artists "final mix".........right, it does something like that, by scanning eq from a track and applying that to your own mix.

Mastering is something that I am still in elementary stages of. I undestand it in "theory", but my objective musician ears can never get passed certain frequency hang ups.......

I don't remember the x5, sorry. My buddy has a Powercore, I use UAD, and he let me use the M3D a few weeks back.

I think the assimilator and all it's ilk are a waste of time. Steinberg had this same functionality in their Freefilter plug in way back in the day, and I still don't get why people think this will help them. Yes you can apply another songs EQ curve to one of yours, but I've yet to hear it actually make an IMPROVEMENT in the song. So many little things affect it too, I think it's pretty lame to be honest. It might be an ok EQ unit, but just ignore that function is my advice.

You can still learn what the rough curve of a song will be from any spectrum analyser, the freebie Inpspector is a good one for this. Just keep in mind that's only a very braod generalization of what the frequency curve will look like. I have songs that look totally different and sound fantastic. In general, most dance music has that sloping curve down from left to right, low to high in the frecuency range.

[The girl next door]

Originally Posted by aisling

how does that compare to the master x 5? (or really the other way around)........

What is your opinion of the "assimilator" powercore plug in inorder to "study" other artists "final mix".........right, it does something like that, by scanning eq from a track and applying that to your own mix.

I know this quite "preset" in application, but how else can I learn how to master, if not by seeing how other tracks are mastered?

Mastering is something that I am still in elementary stages of. I undestand it in "theory", but my objective musician ears can never get passed certain frequency hang ups.......

Don't know anything about that Assimilator,just read up on it on the TC site ...
The main thing before you master is making sure the Mix is good..In other words start at the source..
Frequency hang ups you say...Part of the Mix is to make sure that parts in your Sequencer don't Clash,try to separate there Frequencies .If you have 3 Bass sounds running all on the same Frequency it will sound all jumbled up and CRAP.Try to separate the Frequencies without changing the sound of the part,this is not easy...!! But you can shut down alot of unused frequencies on a sound by using EQ...You can see which Frequencies are being used on a part with Tools like "Voxengo-GlissEQ" or "Elemental audio systems-Firium"
This is how we work with Clashing Frequencies..

Originally Posted by aisling

Mastering is something that I am still in elementary stages of.

It would be nice if someone in the know actually sits down with you and explains how to use a compressor

[The girl next door]

Originally Posted by Tarekith

You can still learn what the rough curve of a song will be from any spectrum analyser, the freebie Inpspector is a good one for this. Just keep in mind that's only a very braod generalization of what the frequency curve will look like. I have songs that look totally different and sound fantastic. In general, most dance music has that sloping curve down from left to right, low to high in the frecuency range.

Yes these are the tools i mentioned above..

[aisling]

it's been a great day for schoolin, thank everybody for sharring all the wisdom.....

[Tarekith]

Just to reiterate what GND said, if you're talking about mastering your own tunes, you're FAR, FAR better off just worrying about get the right mixdown. If you have a really nice mixdown, the mastering stage is cake, just a bit of limiting to get the volume up some. Seriously, in a well mixed tune, that's all you'll need to do.

Many times you hear about mastering engineers using all these tools (multiband comp, linear EQ, etc), but that's because they can't go back and address any issues with the mixdown most of the time. If you're doing ALL the production, then spend the effort getting the mix to be the best it can be, that will pay offf FAR more than trying to learn about mastering at this stage.

Having someone sit down with you and show you compression is a great idea if possible. It's one of those things you really need to hear done correctly to understand the reasons why to use it (or abuse it).

[The girl next door]

Here are 2 Useful Books you might want to spend your hard earned cash on...

Creative Recording by Paul White ISBN-1-86074-456-7

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/186...Fencoding=UTF8
................................................................................ .........
The Dance music Manual by Rick Snoman ISBN: 0-240-51915-9

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/024...lance&n=283155

................................................................................ ......
Worth the money (I've got um),And better reading on the Bogg than "the Sun" or "the mirror" newspapers

Also
Recording and Production Techniques by Paul White ISBN: 1-86074-443-5

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/186...lance&n=283155

[Tarekith]

And of course "Mastering Audio" by Bob Katz. Even if you're not into the mastering side of things, this book tells you all there is to know about digital audio. What is dBFS, what is dither, when to use it, why 24 bits is better than 16, etc.

[aisling]

The Dance music Manual by Rick Snoman ISBN: 0-240-51915-9 ........

I'm all over this, just ordered one, thanks! and thanks for sugesting all the othe reading pleasurables as well.....