Too nice to be true.

[Mr.HOLMES]

I found this thorough a typing mistake via google:

I use a slightly different technique that I’ve blind tested at a high-end mastering studio with great results. Mastering engineer John Vestman asked me to separate tracks into subgroups and mix them down ITB. The subgroups were drums (minus cymbals), cymbals, guitars, vocals, bass and keyboards. The subgroups were then imported into a project and mixed down again ITB to a stereo track. This was compared (A/B) to a stereo mixdown of the same song where all the tracks were mixed down at one time ITB.
The difference was very clear. I had much better clarity and separation in the mix that was first subgrouped ITB and then mixed down to a stereo track ITB, than a single ITB mixdown to a stereo track.
For critical projects, since I can’t afford an SSL board and have to mix ITB, this is what I’m now doing, and I’m getting very nice results.
As a bonus, if your mastering engineer can master at the subgroup level, this allow him to make changes to instrument groups that do not effect other instrument groups … i.e. if I want to effect the drums, it doesn’t effect the bass during mastering.

I tried this today and all I can say nothing changes wether I listen back with cans or on my Genelecs. It makes not a single difference to me....

[It'sJoeAgain]

Originally Posted by Mr.HOLMES

I tried this today and all I can say nothing changes wether I listen back with cans or on my Genelecs. It makes not a single difference to me....

if the point of ur thread is to say that mastering w/separations is bogus..... it's not......some ppl need to do this 'cause their montoring system is really bad YO (like pillows over'em).....that said, u wouldnt need to do tha separation thing (masterin w/stems) if u only knew waht u were really puttin into the mix......no??.....

[wado1942]

I think it'd be stupid to mix subgroups yourself. Its just one more lossy processing stage. There may be a psychological aspect to it though, since you'll have one more stage to fix your mixing mistakes.

[It'sJoeAgain]

actually, i think that masterin w separations gives the ME the opportunity to improve upon a turd

[wado1942]

No, mastering from stems is definitely a valid technique. I'm talking about mixing yourself to stems, then mixing those stems to stereo yourself.

[Mr.HOLMES]

Originally Posted by It'sJoeAgain

if the point of ur thread is to say that mastering w/separations is bogus..... it's not......some ppl need to do this 'cause their montoring system is really bad YO (like pillows over'em).....that said, u wouldnt need to do tha separation thing (masterin w/stems) if u only knew waht u were really puttin into the mix......no??.....

No no this guy is saying mixing with stems sounds better!!!
Mastering with stems makes sense to me!!!

[It'sJoeAgain]

Originally Posted by Mr.HOLMES

No no this guy is saying mixing with stems sounds better!!!

oh....oky.......that's and it makes me ......but he must be makin reference to Vestman's process of masterin with separations, no?

[Franco]

I understand this as a two part "thought":

1) Mixing with bussing ITB versus without bussing (e.g., send everything to the master fader, not to separate busses that all route out to the master). The person believes there's more "separation." I won't go into that, but I'll just say that for me personally, mixing with busses at the very least, adds a bit more flexibility (e.g., different bus compressor for the drums than the horns, etc).

2) Mastering with Stems. Like the above, more flexibility. As far as a sonic difference between using stems versus not, I'll leave that can of worms to you all.

[It'sJoeAgain]

Originally Posted by Franco

2) Mastering with Stems. Like the above, more flexibility. As far as a sonic difference between using stems versus not, I'll leave that can of worms to you all.

there is no technical and/or logical reason to why a *master* resulting from mastering with separations or stems,...whateva... should be sonically, dynamically or whateva better than without........

[Hotstuff]

Sorry but mastering with stems is MIXING and unless the mastering engineer is part of the project and is working with the producer this approach does not make sense.

Mixing is a creative stage of a project (so can mastering be) and mastering is a finalizing stage making a mix ready for production.

[It'sJoeAgain]

Originally Posted by Hotstuff

Sorry but mastering with stems is MIXING

clearly is not....does it come to a point where it can be considered mixing??...possibly....sure...especially if u are messing with effects such as delays etc.....that said i don't know of a ME who would be mastering 8 pairs of sub mixes and not call it at least *mixtering*....

and unless the mastering engineer is part of the project and is working with the producer this approach does not make sense.

this statement doesn't make sense either....imo, it has to be someone who is/was NOT involved in the first place but noticed that the turd can be polished a bit better by manipulating some of the stems ....

Mixing is a creative stage of a project (so can mastering be) and mastering is a finalizing stage making a mix ready for production.

you are taking out of context what mastering with stems has to offer....(like polishing turds)

[chironomidae]

Yeah that makes no sense to me. I bet you could take a project, bounce to stems, then bounce to stereo, and then reverse the polarity and bounce the same project straight to stereo, and have the two cancel out when played together. It's just more summing bullshit.

Now, I can imagine mixing a project, bouncing to stems, and then mixing the stems, just as a final balancing step? Still seems pointless to me.

[Mr.HOLMES]

Originally Posted by chironomidae

Yeah that makes no sense to me. I bet you could take a project, bounce to stems, then bounce to stereo, and then reverse the polarity and bounce the same project straight to stereo, and have the two cancel out when played together. It's just more summing bullshit.

Now, I can imagine mixing a project, bouncing to stems, and then mixing the stems, just as a final balancing step? Still seems pointless to me.

It is pointless.
When I read it I thought about it and said to me:

What is the point making stems form something putting it in a new session and bounce it....so same energy etc... same mix bus......

But I thought:
You never know and just checked it and reversd the polarity and scwommm nothing to hear anymore.

Yes antoher summing story .....

[Hotstuff]

My statements stand.

Sorry to differ from your opinion, but, mixing is not putting effects in a song its mixing all the sounds together and if needed or wanted adding effects automation etc...
I can understand that you receive a lot of "turds" to polish from inexperienced mixes and to make the final product better you ask for stems to mix it yourself and then master it, you will still have to do some mixing of the stems before you can master it and if you are not part of the project or not working with the producer the choices you made while mixing the stems together may not be what the artist wants!
Lets say you mix with the drums too loud or the vocals to soft etc, mixing is an art and things that may not seem technically correct to you just might be the magic the song needs to make it special.

We can probably argue for years but mixing tracks or subgroups or stems is MIXING!

[domokunrox]

Mixing down stems for a mastering engineer to put together is asking him to basically mix unless you specifically tell him the ITB fader positions.

[It'sJoeAgain]

Originally Posted by Hotstuff

I can understand that you receive a lot of "turds" to polish from inexperienced mixes and to make the final product better you ask for stems to mix it yourself and then master it, you will still have to do some mixing of the stems before you can master it and if you are not part of the project or not working with the producer the choices you made while mixing the stems together may not be what the artist wants!

If the artist or the producer had good monitoring or knew what the hell they wanted we wouldn't be discussing this *method* of mastering in the first place, now would we??

Lets say you mix with the drums too loud or the vocals to soft etc, mixing is an art and things that may not seem technically correct to you just might be the magic the song needs to make it special

Doesn't work that way...u need to communicate and know waht the artist/producer expects...if a *mastering engineer* is doing that kinda crap then i bet he's also one of those charging regular masterin at $15 per song....

Look man i know where u are comin from....but first let me tell u that i don't recall my ME ever telling me that in his whole life he's ever mastered more than 3 stems (stereo pairs) and the last job that came online and that I even suggested to the client this sh*t was also 3 (one pair music mix, one pair drum mix and one mono lead vocal). Soooo, u wanna call it mixing?? suit urself but because mixing is a respectful skill and a real art, i wouldn't be calling it that. If someone comes with CD player, a Karaoke CD and a mic and asks u to mix them up for live entertainment, u wouldn't go calling urself a live *mixing engineer* right? Neither is mastering 2 or 3 separate pairs, so gimme a break would ya...and if u have to deal with someone who needs mastering with stems, it means that they have a whole bunch of turd sub mixes anyway 'cause if the mix was good in the first place, mastering with stems would be pointless. right?? sure.....my statement stands, mastering with separations is good for polishing turds and pointless if ur mix is good....

[Hypagen]

Originally Posted by Mr.HOLMES

I found this thorough a typing mistake via google:



I tried this today and all I can say nothing changes wether I listen back with cans or on my Genelecs. It makes not a single difference to me....

I watched a video where a (house music) producer, stated that when his CPU was struggling, he seemed to get better sounding results by making stems from the busses (drums, bass, vocals, FX) importing those into a new project and then rendering/summing the project (ITB) with a much lower CPU load.

It was my impression that what he was suggesting was that the lower the CPU load the better the sonic results (or that high CPU loads would produce worse sounding results when rendering/summing ITB).

The producers took the stems to a (I assume attended) mastering session, where they were mixed/mastered, as the producers were struggling (in their studio) with the mix to get all the parts working together. I assume the idea of going to their mastering engineer was to take advantage of his knowledge/room/monitoring.

The single went on to have chart sucess across UK and Europe, so it seems all the effort was worthwhile!

[It'sJoeAgain]

Originally Posted by Hypagen

I watched a video where a (house music) producer, stated that when his CPU was struggling, he seemed to get better sounding results by making stems from the busses (drums, bass, vocals, FX) importing those into a new project and then rendering/summing the project (ITB) with a much lower CPU load.

this used to be an issue in the nineties when cpu power was a commodity....

It was my impression that what he was suggesting was that the lower the CPU load the better the sonic results (or that high CPU loads would produce worse sounding results when rendering/summing ITB).

shouldn't make any difference to sound quality.... if u are recording dog poo with a low capacity cpu, even if it's *crawling* u still get dog poo as a mix at the sampling rate and bit that was recorded...

The producers took the stems to a (I assume attended) mastering session, where they were mixed/mastered, as the producers were struggling (in their studio) with the mix to get all the parts working together.

This I don' understand....are u saying that on one studio there was the ME doing mastering w/stems while on another the *producers* were still mixing?? the same mix?? another mix??

The single went on to have chart sucess across UK and Europe, so it seems all the effort was worthwhile!

so what's the mix called??

[engmix]

not sure about cpu load's really being an issue these days in regards to itb bounces, but i'm certainly going to check it out myself.

mastering from stems is not mixing. mastering engineers have very little control over what i would consider "creative level" adjustments in regard to stems. yes, if you start slinging various outboard and plugin effects on each stem, to some degree that is mixing. i certainly find that mastering today "level war - limiting" sometimes to a large degree, can change the balance of a mix. someone here once said "getting a mastered mix back these days is like having a baby and not knowing what the sex is until it's born." having stems just seems like a logical evolutionary change in the process to adjust to changing methods in mastering.

if i were mastering a record, and the producer said, hey could you throw that api 2500 across the drum stem. as an audio engineer i would be pysched to try it, and 2x so if it made a possitive difference. what's wrong with that if the end result is elevated. who cares if you're "mixing" at mastering. isn't one of the main points of mastering to help bring into focus the best end result.

[bbuyuk]

Mastering with stems always give you more opportunity to correct the problems exist in the mix. But, instead of getting the stems, I prefer to listen the song before it arrives to me for the mastering, and want the "needed" channels separately.

Generally speaking, I want kick + bass + main voc + back vox + the rest. But sometimes, I want bass + vox all + the rest, or only bass separated, etc...

It definitely takes more time while mastering the project, but it worths.

Sometimes even well-known mastering engineers' projects sounds horrible -not because of they could not do their job well, but because of the "mix" they have in their place. I have corrected (actually let's say half-mixed) some projects like that. The customers has called me and I have wanted separated mixes, then did the mastering. The final definitely sounded much more better!

BB

[It'sJoeAgain]

I can only speak from my online experience and that's why i said that mastering with stems is good for polishing turds. howvere, i am sure if you guys r working with ppl who come to u regularly or mayb these are ur old clients who are just tryin with u this way to get to a better soundin master, hey that's great, man!....but again, the subjects who have submitted stuff to do this thing had really bad mixes to begin with, yo feel me?? so if u can get ppl to give u good sub mixes i don't see why it shouldn' come out soundin juist as good...it certainly cant hert.....

[chironomidae]

I think people provide stems for the same reason they provide vocal up and vocal down mixes. sometimes dynamic processing can change the mix in undesirable ways, which can be easier to correct if the ME has access to the stems.

Otherwise I don't think the ME should mess much with stems.

[Hypagen]

Originally Posted by It'sJoeAgain

This I don' understand....are u saying that on one studio there was the ME doing mastering w/stems while on another the *producers* were still mixing?? the same mix?? another mix??

The producers took the stems to the mastering house where the mastering engineer "ended up helping us mix the final stems because we were getting in a bit of a pickle towards the end of it, trying to pull everything together".