How'd she do that? Pat Sullivan mastering

[audiomichael]

I just got back from mastering with Pat Sullivan @ Bernie Grundman. Needless to say, she totally rock'd it.

I was trying to see if I could match the sound she got. I was looking at the waveform her's vs. mine. I know at some point she had hardware L2 engaged, I had the plugin at the end of my line. Why are my waveforms samurai chopped clean, while Pat's still has some little life left there???

Mine's in blue, her's is in red.

[lowland]

Presumably because much of the required loudness has been generated prior to the L2, so the limiter is not having to work as hard as in your version - I bet the mastered version sounds cleaner too, with less of that distinctive L2 'roar'.

I can't speak for Pat, but in my case the final limiter is often only ticking over to control occasional peaks as transparently as possible, and a combination of other techniques further upstream has got us pretty much there already loudness-wise.

Why don't you ask Pat?

[audiomichael]

Now that's a good idea!

[optik]

yeah, and don't forget to post Pat's reply here!

[aivoryuk]

Any chance of a before and after example, its always nice to hear good work

[Rick Sutton]

In addition to any audible differences it looks like a screenview issue to me. There's gotta be a low level floor on the blue file, it's just lower than the red and not showing on the screenview.

[krid]

Originally Posted by aivoryuk

Any chance of a before and after example, its always nice to hear good work

I would love to hear that.

[Ben F]

It would come down to a touch of decent compression and less limiting. It looks like you have a lot of limiting on your waveform. The L2 should be 1-3dB GR, 3 is even pushing it for most music except perhaps dance or hip-hop.

[audiomichael]

Originally Posted by Rick Sutton

In addition to any audible differences it looks like a screenview issue to me. There's gotta be a low level floor on the blue file, it's just lower than the red and not showing on the screenview.

It's not a screenview. I double checked by throwing it into Peak. Mine is razor sliced.

[audiomichael]

I'm slammed with work, but I'll try and get back in touch with Pat next week. I'm not sure I can post and example, but I'll look into it.

[Bob Yordan]

Hiya audiomichael

What is the average RMS levels for those songs/parts ?

Best wishes

[Switchcraft]

I just started to be able to get those round and tall edges in my masters.
i do it by mastering with a high ratio (approaching limit, but not quite) and long attack, letting peacks through (the ones you see), then following it up with a 2-1 ration to pull those edges that slipped through back down, but keeping them round. Last I use Software limiter to bring up the level approaching 0.0, but I also push the inputs of the converter to get it close to 0.0. I do everything out of the box, except for the last limit.