mastering at home studio

[Darwin James]

Originally Posted by bass man

Bob , its always pleasure to read your posts . The amount of enthusiasm and positive energy in your posts is just incredible .
Respect

You've made a lot of posts in this thread. But haven't helped the OP once. When you are done sucking up to Bob, maybe you can offer some advice to the OP.

[bass man]

Originally Posted by Darwin James

You've made a lot of posts in this thread. But haven't helped the OP once. When you are done sucking up to Bob, maybe you can offer some advice to the OP.

Man ,you need professional help ,that's for sure .

Cheers

[Table Of Tone]

If you do mastering at home, you need the right signal path and you also need to know your monitoring and how it translates to the rest of the world, really well!

Attended sessions can also be an extreme pain in the ass, because the client definitely does not know your monitoring, but they may think they do so you need to be firm with em.

It's definitely not something you can pick up overnight.

Certain people may think that's the the case but it's not!

[miro]

is the room good? no i meant GREAT? monitors?

sorry, but for the lines i read in the first post, i personally don't know
if you should actually even think about getting expensive hardware.
if you ask if the mac has a soundcard that could be enough for mastering
than i'm really wondering about your intensions in first place.

the bricasti is surely nice, but not a thing you should worry about when interested in starting to "master" yourself.

get a good soundcard (duet), some decent (mastering?)plugins, and some great speakers. wouldnt that be a grown-up decision to begin?

[joshuag]

that book is required reading for anyone who wants to learn about mastering.

[donkey]

Originally Posted by Tarekith

My thoughts on how to master your own work:

..:: Mastering ::..

Sending it to a pro is best of course, but not everyone can or will, so hopefully this helps some.

Nice read..thumbsup

[Franco]

As someone who mixes/masters for others in their home, with a decent speaker setup, and decent room treatment (definitely not in the same league as dedicated rooms, but I know my speakers and space really well), what I believe to be the most important factor in mastering is:

Another person's perspective, and that other person's experience in dealing with a multitude of "mix situations" and their skill in getting the best out of the material, but this all begins with their "fresh ears" approach to your music.

I don't know what it is called scientifically, but you know how you can almost "hear" your favorite song in your head when things are quiet? This is what artists do subconsciously probably, with their music, and what impedes most from being totally honest when it comes to working with something they're that attached to.

The absolute WORST mixing/mastering job I have ever done was a project that I made the music for, recorded and mixed myself.

[Table Of Tone]

Originally Posted by Franco

As someone who mixes/masters for others in their home, with a decent speaker setup, and decent room treatment (definitely not in the same league as dedicated rooms, but I know my speakers and space really well), what I believe to be the most important factor in mastering is:

Another person's perspective, and that other person's experience in dealing with a multitude of "mix situations" and their skill in getting the best out of the material, but this all begins with their "fresh ears" approach to your music.

I don't know what it is called scientifically, but you know how you can almost "hear" your favorite song in your head when things are quiet? This is what artists do subconsciously probably, with their music, and what impedes most from being totally honest when it comes to working with something they're that attached to.

The absolute WORST mixing/mastering job I have ever done was a project that I made the music for, recorded and mixed myself.

I'll go along with that!

[tribeofenki]

Good Speakers ? yes.

Clean room? yes.

Now the problem is: would you get that typical sound

of an ethereal soundscape for a love-movie scene ??

If you know which gear you need, go for it.

But if you want to get different moods, as salt and pepper

some money for a well mastered song is a fine choice

[hustle]

Originally Posted by fourvector

That's the thing though...A lot of the more affordable monitors may only go down to 50hz or so. If there are any problems at 25hz, you're likely to miss them.

Man below 50 hz is a waste. When you master you master for the consumer not yourself. You think the average listeners is going to have a set up at home to translate anything below 50 hz. What's the percentage of people that own speakers that go that low. Yeah just boost up 40 or 30 hz and hear how crappy that sounds on small boom boxes unless you just want the boom in cars with big old subs.

[Waltz Mastering]

Originally Posted by hustle

You think the average listeners is going to have a set up at home to translate anything below 50 hz.

You might be surprised...

[Infrablu]

Originally Posted by Tarekith

My thoughts on how to master your own work:

..:: Mastering ::..

Sending it to a pro is best of course, but not everyone can or will, so hopefully this helps some.

Agreed, this was a good article. To the OP, start reading here. This is some good information and then at least consider a pro for some audio consultation/mastering your tracks first time around.

[ears2thesky]

Not to "suck up" to Bob, but I think he hit it on the head.

Without the requisite room, gear, and experience doing your own mastering would seem to be a recipe for mediocrity.
Why not do what the person Bob refers to in his post does and mix your tracks to the point where all a qualified mastering engineer has to do is organize and prep for reproduction? I would be extremely proud to be able to say that my mixes don't need any help once I'm done with them. Why not strive for the best mixes you can achieve, and then use the mastering professional as fresh ears?
Mastering is a very specialized function of music making that from my experience takes a pretty full commitment (time and money) to really do justice to as a profession. If you are composing and mixing I would stick with those aspects and build your rig and skills based on the requirements of those tasks.
I have yet to meet a "part-time" mastering engineer that I would pay to do my stuff.

Oh yeah... don't forget to leave some headroom for the mastering guy to work with.