Mastering ITB, monitoring OTB

[DaydreamInSound]

Hi Slutz, just a bit of your thoughts if you wouldnt mind?
I have been working on a rush mastering job this week, and for speed had to work entirely using waveburner, with it's included plugins.
The audio was been leaving waveburner with Apple Core Audio through a digi 192 interface, through 2 channels of a Neve vr60 (no eq or compression) and out to the Dynaudio M3Ps and Digidesign RM1s.
Upon bouncing the project, I packed up, went home and had a listen on my Adam A7s, to which I found a fairly harsh sound hit me in the face. Puzzled I soon realised that I had been horribly misled, and that I had not been hearing exactly what was going on, as it seems any harshness was subdued by the fact that I was listening post processing through a high quality analogue signal path, which has not been reflected in any way in the bounced master, so the master doesnt have the analogue flavour that I was actually hearing whilst mastering!
My thoughts are that I want to get this back, so could run the single bounced mastered region from Pro tools through the desk in real time and back into pro tools, before re-importing into waveburner and adding the PQ points etc. But Im going through extra AD-DA conversions and all sorts of possible crap.
This seems like a massive pain in the arse to do everytime to match what Im actually hearing, but am I massively over-complicating things??

[bob katz]

Originally Posted by DaydreamInSound

Hi Slutz, just a bit of your thoughts if you wouldnt mind?
I have been working on a rush mastering job this week, and for speed had to work entirely using waveburner, with it's included plugins.
The audio was been leaving waveburner with Apple Core Audio through a digi 192 interface, through 2 channels of a Neve vr60 (no eq or compression) and out to the Dynaudio M3Ps and Digidesign RM1s.
Upon bouncing the project, I packed up, went home and had a listen on my Adam A7s, to which I found a fairly harsh sound hit me in the face. Puzzled I soon realised that I had been horribly misled, and that I had not been hearing exactly what was going on, as it seems any harshness was subdued by the fact that I was listening post processing through a high quality analogue signal path, which has not been reflected in any way in the bounced master, so the master doesnt have the analogue flavour that I was actually hearing whilst mastering!

It's interesting to examine the words "high quality analog path" in this context. In this context it does not mean "neutral", but rather "euphonic". I think I would have picked the words "nice-souning analog path" rather than "high quality" to get the meaning clearer.

Regardless, I think you have to get a real clean, neutral, accurate monitor path including a good D/A converter to sort yourself out of this mess before you leap to conclusions. Your conclusions may be right, but until you have a neutral monitor path you don't know for sure. You need to isolate whether it's the dithering, or having passed your monitoring accidentily through that Neve, etc. that made the difference. The DAC you happened to use to monitor through also may be euphonic, but not necessarily accurate.

This seems like a massive pain in the arse to do everytime to match what Im actually hearing, but am I massively over-complicating things??

Naaahh...
Sorting this all out is probably going to become a complicated process anyway, at least until you refine and standardize your processing and monitoring paths.

[Waltz Mastering]

What Bob said +

Sounds like your mastering in a mixing room, which could be a little hard, specially with those speakers and the their ported design.

I don't know if it was so much the vr that influenced what you thought you were hearing as much as the probable low end bump in the monitors.
If your not very familiar with how those speakers react in that room, I think it could be very hard to hear it accurately. I'm sure the digi 192 DA didn't help much either... Your also hearing it back on ribbon tweeters, which can be "different".

[Matt Syson]

Hi
I normally 'hang out' on the other parts of this site but would like to say that I (of course) fully agree with Bob that the monitoring path should be as uncomplicated and short a route as possible with the proverbial DC to light bandwidth (analogue section) and as many zeros as you can get for distortion. The Neve has an awful lot of 'stuff' in the monitoring (as in most parts of the desk) and so cannot be regarded as 'squeaky clean' and uncoloured.
As a simple workaround you could patch the monitor amps into the last available 'analogue' part before it is finally recorded (master) or using the cleanest D/A that you can muster, or at least one you know the foibles of. The downer of this is the lack of a level control of course but there are passive types around which OUGHT to be good.
Matt S

[It'sJoeAgain]

Originally Posted by DaydreamInSound

Hi Slutz, just a bit of your thoughts if you wouldnt mind?
I have been working on a rush mastering job this week, and for speed had to work entirely using waveburner, with it's included plugins.

Mastering with Waveburner plugins? Am i missing something?

[DaydreamInSound]

Originally Posted by It'sJoeAgain

Mastering with Waveburner plugins? Am i missing something?

Haha no. I wish to god I could have ran it out through the outboard as I believe that scenario itself is a part of the whole. We will say no more about THAT particular subject though!

Cheers for your points though everyone, and a good thought about the high quality/good-sounding issue. Ill have to get my thinking cap on and look at refining the paths I go through, as Waltz pointed out it is defintely a tracking/mixing setup and is perfect for that.

Funnily enough when the time can be taken to track back into the system after OTB mastering the results are pretty good and neutral (Jeff at Abbey Road listened to an album in his room there and agreed so that was a bonus), but when the heat is on and time is of the essence we need some sort of happy medium.

And Matt, your simple workaround could work for now until we standardise the setup. Nice one.

Thanks for your input, good forum think ill chill on here a bit more

[wado1942]

I'd be more apt to believe it was the monitors and or room that decieved you more than anything. That's why I have a spare set of monitors identical to my primary set to take with me to other studios.

[mrlouie]

couldnt you have just come out of the 192 into a 2trk return on the VR then that hits the amp & speakers .... this way you bypass most of the console and only using it as a big monitor pot ...

louie

[lerone]

lets face it...it was everything, the software probably contributed the least to be fair. The room, loudspeakers, amplifiers, conversion, signal path have all stitched you up to some extent, you need a setup you know intimately, and one know you can trust, or the results will repeat themselves again & again unfortunately.

[Bob Olhsson]

Core audio can be doing sample rate conversions and all manner of things behind your back. I personally wouldn't go near it for serious work unless I ran a bit integrety check after every single Apple or Quicktime update.

Waveburner, if I remember right, will do a conversion upon burning if the audio files aren't 44.1. That could be what happened or maybe it simply didn't get dithered.