Mastering Engineers Please Chime in

[Hexfix93]

Ok, now, i cannot afford to buy it all, i don't have a good room to mix or record in, but i mostly do synth based music any how. What will help me in this situation? i wish i had an accousticly tuned room, but its out of my reach... now its a game of burning cds, and lsitening to stuff in cars, on tvs, and boom boxes... i use mackie hr824s now... i a/d and d/a via my ksp8, i had lynxtwo, but felt the ksp8 was as good at 44.1 24 bit..i use the tg2 mic pre on everything, i'm on a limited budget..

now, if i wanted to build a mastering sutdio, what would i need? what gear is the best? a/d d/a? compressors, limiters, eq, monitors. fx.

Should i really hate plug ins like i do? is my hatred of wave's plugs justified? should i really hate what the l2 and l3 does to music as much as i do?

I ask all this, because soon, i am going to get a lot more money, and i could spend some on high end digital and analog stuff. i'm wonder what i should do next? are apogees with the big ben clock that much better than an rme adi8? or lynxtwo?

i'm bowing out of the loudness wars.

[RainbowStorm]

Originally Posted by Hexfix93

Ok, now, i cannot afford to buy it all, i don't have a good room to mix or record in, but i mostly do synth based music any how. What will help me in this situation? i wish i had an accousticly tuned room, but its out of my reach... now its a game of burning cds, and lsitening to stuff in cars, on tvs, and boom boxes... i use mackie hr824s now... i a/d and d/a via my ksp8, i had lynxtwo, but felt the ksp8 was as good at 44.1 24 bit..i use the tg2 mic pre on everything, i'm on a limited budget..

now, if i wanted to build a mastering sutdio, what would i need? what gear is the best? a/d d/a? compressors, limiters, eq, monitors. fx.

Should i really hate plug ins like i do? is my hatred of wave's plugs justified? should i really hate what the l2 and l3 does to music as much as i do?

I ask all this, because soon, i am going to get a lot more money, and i could spend some on high end digital and analog stuff. i'm wonder what i should do next? are apogees with the big ben clock that much better than an rme adi8? or lynxtwo?

i'm bowing out of the loudness wars.

You need a number of good things in a mastering studio. First of all a very good room with ideal acoustics. Secondly the monitors are extremely important, much more important than converters and effects. So spend on them so that you know what you have to work with and know when you have reached your goal. One of the reasons why mixes start sounding very good is because mastering engineers hear stuff the mixers not always hear. Then I would also recommend you to get good noise reduction tools. Many don't realise what a good set of noise reduction tools can do to a mix. A rich sounding mix is a clean sounding one. Clean up whatever you get your hands on. Then comes the limiter, spend in a very transparent and non-cold sounding limiter. It's better that you introduce warmth when limiting than to introduce harshness, just because limiting has a tendency to make things colder because of the noise layer under the hood. Of course you also need good EQ effects, meaning every type of EQ effect is very transparent. The converters are also important, spend in some really transparent converter, like for instance a Rosetta.

To sum it up (ordered in importance):
1. Acoustics + monitors (the highest price)
2. Noise reduction
3. Limiter
4. EQ
5. Converter (the lowest price)

[thethrillfactor]

Above all else your monitoring system comes first.

You have to trust what you are hearing.

This is where most of the money is spent.

A good full range set of mastering speakers,plus the power amp and interconnects can set you back $15-$20K

Everything else you choose is from experience and preference.

[robot gigante]

Originally Posted by Hexfix93

? i wish i had an accousticly tuned room, but its out of my reach...

now, if i wanted to build a mastering sutdio, what would i need?

If that's the case, what you need is out of your reach...

Oh, and what thrill said. If you have enough money, you can get the best people in the biz to master your music however you like. Unless you're thinking of starting your own mastering biz from scratch which would be tough.

[juicemaster1500]

Originally Posted by Hexfix93

what gear is the best?

a brain is always a good piece of kit to have.

[jdg]

http://www.manleylabs.com/Mastering_Newbie.html

[Hexfix93]

What i was really hoping for was a high end gear shoot out... to hear it from the pros, on what they like and why... too bad...

[Darius van H]

As mentioned, in mastering, monitoring is key....

[George Necola]

..and good monitoring is connected with a treated room..

just advice from a nonpro

[not_so_new]

Originally Posted by Hexfix93

What i was really hoping for was a high end gear shoot out... to hear it from the pros, on what they like and why... too bad...

Well.... not to burst your bubble or anything but mastering is the black arts of audio in my eyes. If there is any one place were the difference between calling yourself something and actually being that thing is night and day it is with ME's.

You can fake being a "Producer" or a even a "Recording Engineer" to some degree but an ME is a very specialized task to get into and the learning curve is only matched by the dollar amount.

You want to see a hardware shootout but honestly you are talking about some serious stuff here. Yes there is a huge difference between my AD-16X and my old ADI8 pro, HUGE difference, but a ME would scoff at my Apogee unit. A good set of monitors are going to set you back about 20k, the room and treatment maybe another 30k or so if you are lucky, converters in and out maybe 10 to 15K, compressors another 10 to 20K etc. Most people here don't have that kind of cash and don't have that kind of experience. Even if they do have that kind of cash most guys here seem to be tracking/mix guys not ME's so you are probably barking up the wrong tree.

Anyway you can search around here and find some great tips but to be a ME takes more than the balls to call yourself one and more tools than most can afford. Unless of course you want to do low end mastering (which is all cool) but in that case asking ME's to have a discussion about their gear is going to go over your (and my) head and pocketbook.

Sorry I only speak the truth.

[Bob Olhsson]

Black art? Not exactly. Mastering is having the presentation of your mix fine-tuned by somebody experienced as part of a final check prior to release and replication.

The goal is to make the best possible impression on radio, salespeople and the press by correcting any unintended sonic aberrations. These can be caused by being too close to a project, by monitoring or other issues such as where the mix needs to sit within the context of the producer's sixth "final" album sequence.

While mastering often involves signal processing, as others have said it's really all about listening with full range, high resolution monitors that are of higher quality than any decision-maker is likely to be using.

[not_so_new]

Originally Posted by Bob Olhsson

Black art? Not exactly. Mastering is having the presentation of your mix fine-tuned by somebody experienced as part of a final check prior to release and replication.

The goal is to make the best possible impression on radio, salespeople and the press by correcting any unintended sonic aberrations. These can be caused by being too close to a project, by monitoring or other issues such as where the mix needs to sit within the context of the producer's sixth "final" album sequence.

While mastering often involves signal processing, as others have said it's really all about listening with full range, high resolution monitors that are of higher quality than any decision-maker is likely to be using.

I agree, I say black art because even sitting in on many a mastering session I am still not 100% sure of all the tricks and techniques that have been used on my mixes. In the end it is all about listening in a good or great room with great playback hardware but the subtle tricks to get things that sound out of place to sound better, that is the art and honestly it is more than a little mysterious to me.

I think many inexperienced types think that slapping a limiter on the mix and EQ'ing to make up for the tilt is called mastering but I don't have to tell Bob Olson that this is not the case at all, there is MUCH more to it than that. If you know mix tricks and tracking tricks that is great but these tricks do not necessarily translate to the mastering process.

To put it another way, I am a tracking / mix guy, I don't pretend to be a mastering guy I pay someone else for that. I know mastering guys who would be lost in a tracking or mix session, that is not their bag so they leave that up to me. Some people may be very good at both but in my expereince these types are not the norm.

From the sounds of it the original poster is a tracking mix guy as well, just wanted to warn him there is more to it than he might think there is if he did notknow already.....

[lucey]

If you have money coming invest it in stock or vintage guitars or whatnots.

Monitoring is key, yet even very good monitoring is not perfect .... there is no perfect environment, really. The key to monitoring is sufficient reveal from the bottom to the top resulting in a sound that resonates with the MEs head. If it sounds in your head like it sounds in the room, and the room/speakers expose everything that needs to be heard in a fairly even way, you're close to being able to master in that room.

For processing, converters are huge in an analog chain, eq, compression ... all important. Cabling even. It's a shorter chain with a more subtle and refined standard.

And yet the most important things needed for mastering are human. The communication, expectations and respect between the client and ME come to mind. Subtleties are huge in mastering, yet there are no subtleties until the big picture things are established; levels, basic tone. A pure match between tastes would be great yet this is rare, so communication is key in most situations. If the client wants a sound and you're known for that sound ... bingo, a winner. If OTOH a client asks for dynamics and is upset it's not loud enough, or wants it "hot" but it comes back too hot for them, no one is happy. If a client is fine with clipping and you clip, it's a match. If a client looks at waveform and sees clipping as a defect and you clip for levels, no match. If you say to the ME "cut the low end" and really mean cut the low mids/meat, this needs to be interpreted asap or you'd think the ME an idiot. If the client is insecure about the mixes in general or has an expectation for them that is beyond possible based on comparisons with better tracking and/or mixing, it's likely that no ME will satisfy.

If a client is communicative and prepared and the ME is responsive and capable, then everyone is happy.



And honestly, if you need to ask for a gear list, you' re not ready to do mastering.

[pete]

there are two mastering engineers I was going to the last few years

1) one with a "million dollar" setup with all kind of stuff you always wished to have in a great studio with neve room, digital ssl room and huge mastering suite... he does most of the masterings around here for the past 25 years...

2) the other one with mbox and PT LE on PC (he only does digital mastering from audio files like wav or aiff or DAT no 1/2 inch and stuff like that)

I was always going to 1) until I realized that good gear is not always better sounding - now most of the people and myself as well all go to 2) - he has the best ears around here and his stuff sounds better on the radio - a lot of people go to 1) and to 2) and then take the better (as far as I know in 80% of the cases 2) is the better one)

this is not a joke - dont believe in gear!

cheers

[Hexfix93]

today sucked, i did some lame mastering to see what my mixes would sound like with only a little l3, and some eq and warming plugs.

welp, it got a little louder, but then after hrs of listening, i think i am abusing digital eqs on my tracks, and they are making everything really harsh, i did some tests, and now i have some hearing loss in my left ear, ringing.. i've never had this happen before.. i'm kinda scared now..

i know that i need to do massive re working with eqs now, this could set my cd and the tour back... i'm kind of pissed off that i cannot afford kick ass analog. i hate this, plugs ruin my music, make it damaging to the ears... grr. man am i loosing faith in cubase and vsts again...

i think it may be my lack of skills and lack of knowing how to eq things. but then again, my room sucks, and my monitors suck, so i am not hearing things correctly any how..

what signals can damage ears the most? whats a good book on understanding eq better?

[not_so_new]

i think it may be my lack of skills and lack of knowing how to eq things. but then again, my room sucks, and my monitors suck, so i am not hearing things correctly any how..

And there my friend is exactly what I was saying above. Your room, ears and gear may be fine for tracking and mixing but mastering is a different game. Also I really like the idea of having someone else outside of the project that can have subjective ears take a listen to the mixes, I would recommend that for almost everyone tracking and mixing, very few can master their own stuff.

i know that i need to do massive re working with eqs now, this could set my cd and the tour back...

hummmmm..... right...... (moving on)

i'm kind of pissed off that i cannot afford kick ass analog. i hate this, plugs ruin my music, make it damaging to the ears... grr. man am i loosing faith in cubase and vsts again...

As with everything else they are just tools. In the proper hands a hammer is a very effective tool but in the wrong hands a simple hammer can damage property, cause serious injury and can even kill people. Learn the tool and it's limitations.

this is not a joke - dont believe in gear!

This is not true... or only partly true anyway. Don't believe in gear in the wrong hands (see my point above about the hammer). The guy with the big bucks studio does not know how to use it or does not care enough to use it correctly. The guy with the MBox does know how to use the gear and does care but does that mean the guy with the MBox would sound worse on the Million $ rig?

Hardly.

If the MBox guy had the million $ setup, had good ears and cared to do a good job there is no way in hell his MBox mastering could match his high end gear mastering.

The person behind the gear matters a great deal but put that person on better gear and they will sound better, sorry there is no doubt about it the gear matters.

[RainbowStorm]

Originally Posted by Hexfix93

today sucked, i did some lame mastering to see what my mixes would sound like with only a little l3, and some eq and warming plugs.

welp, it got a little louder, but then after hrs of listening, i think i am abusing digital eqs on my tracks, and they are making everything really harsh, i did some tests, and now i have some hearing loss in my left ear, ringing.. i've never had this happen before.. i'm kinda scared now..

i know that i need to do massive re working with eqs now, this could set my cd and the tour back... i'm kind of pissed off that i cannot afford kick ass analog. i hate this, plugs ruin my music, make it damaging to the ears... grr. man am i loosing faith in cubase and vsts again...

i think it may be my lack of skills and lack of knowing how to eq things. but then again, my room sucks, and my monitors suck, so i am not hearing things correctly any how..

what signals can damage ears the most? whats a good book on understanding eq better?

I bet you try to master a mix that includes guitars set up the wrong way, that can cause much tinnitus! (never,never,never have the treble knob set above 6 on a guitar!) There are many other elements that might be setup wrongly in the mix too, so you might experience a sum of it now that you are limiting too hard or setting up the EQ wrong or both.

First of all a low pass filter would do good, apply it around 15700Hz +- a few 100 Hz depending on how much you limit. Secondly I think you are applying the effects in the wrong order. If the EQ is set before the limiter and the EQ is setup wrongly it will of course be a disaster. Then be careful to not limit too much. How much you should be limiting depends on the amount of noise in the mix most of all since it tells you the max limiting ratio, else you will get harshness and obviously you have got harshness due to your tinnitus. This is a common mistake. You have also failed with the noise reduction process of your mastering session, so you might want to get some more information about what mastering engineers do to clean up a noisy mix. I would recommend you to start using a spectrum analyzer too, because you seem to have some difficulties in using the EQ effect (one of the best noise reduction tools available).

So don't worry, only some basic issues, nothing else.

[robot gigante]

If the MBox guy is getting that much more work, chances are he won't be the 'MBox guy' for long anyway. He'll probably be getting better equipment.

I think mastering your own mixes is counterproductive. Fix the mixes! Or get someone to mix for you that knows how. Then find a good mastering engineer and you're set. No sense in trying to wear too many hats.

[Hexfix93]

if the mbox guy isn't hearing the mix right because he doesn't have the room, or the monitors and dacs to listen correctly, there is no way in hell he could be better....

maybe with luck. but not skills. that is the problem. you have to be able to hear it all correctly to shape it correctly.. that is where the big bucks really play the pivotal role..

And yeah, i think i am using more than 6 db on treb on my guitars... its layered in with a lot of synths that are poudning hard, and there inst a lot of space.. so i had to make it cut, sounds ok pre master, after the limiter hits it, OUCH! yeah... thanks for the tip, i'll experiment and try to make more room for the guitar by eqing out some ofthe synth stuff... i think that is my better bet at this point...

[Hexfix93]

so yeah i fixed my mixing problem, i a/b'd my allen and heath channel strip eq on my mix wizard to the best urs plugs i have. what a joke, even the urs plugs sounded like crap compared to the allen and heath eq..

what gives.. why do vste plugs blow at eq so hard, i mean its almost un-usable....

[Jay Kahrs]

Originally Posted by Hexfix93

Ok, now, i cannot afford to buy it all, i don't have a good room to mix or record in, but i mostly do synth based music any how. What will help me in this situation? i wish i had an accousticly tuned room, but its out of my reach... now its a game of burning cds, and lsitening to stuff in cars, on tvs, and boom boxes... i use mackie hr824s now...

It doesn't take a few thousand dollars to have an acoustically treated room. In most cases you can treat a room for a couple hundered bucks, but knowing what to do with the treatment and knowing exactly how to do it is a whole other thing. The room and the monitors work together as a pair, doesn't matter if your mixing, tracking, mastering, editing...it's a system. IMO the 824's are the biggest slurry sounding pieces of poo I've ever worked on, but a lot of people of like 'em so whudda I know?

Are you mixing a record or mastering a record? It's a whole different process and mindset, let alone the gear. Even on the most basic level they're two steps of record making. It's technically & physcially impossible to combine them into one process.

Mixing is a creative stage.

Mastering is the last step of creative and the first step of manufacturing.

The boundries between them can run over to a degree but either one takes years to get good at, and it really is a whole different mindset and skill set. I'm much better at mixing records then I am at mastering them and the best mastering engineers I've worked with are better at mastering then they are at mixing.

[lucey]

Originally Posted by Jay Kahrs

I'm much better at mixing records then I am at mastering them and the best mastering engineers I've worked with are better at mastering then they are at mixing.

thumbsup

[Gomez]

Originally Posted by jdg

http://www.manleylabs.com/Mastering_Newbie.html

I have read trhough this and it is indeed interesting. Although one of the coments by Hutch (I think it was) says that one should forget about self powered speakers...

I always thought that active speakers would be a good buy as the amp is built and designed for the speakers need. Can anyone add to my hipothesis?

also, what about some monitors like the Adam S3A for mastering? would that be good enough? I have not tried them but they are full range (they go down to around 30Hz I think) and their accuracy has been praised on many posts found on this forum.

I need a new pair of monitors, but I haven't got £10000 to spend.

Ta!

Gomez

[lucey]

Originally Posted by Gomez

also, what about some monitors like the Adam S3A for mastering? would that be good enough? I have not tried them but they are full range (they go down to around 30Hz I think) and their accuracy has been praised on many posts found on this forum.

I need a new pair of monitors, but I haven't got £10000 to spend.

If you want to master competitively and confidently you'll need serious monitoring and converters... spare no expense to get to a level that really tells you what's what for everyone. Reveal and resonance with how you hear are key.

I had the 3As a few years ago and they're great for mixing yet insufficient for mastering. A ported low end is no good in mastering as the low end mix issues that every record has you'll need to hear cleanly to adjust, and a port blurrs them. The ribbon is too unique both in it's narrow dispersion and other qualities for translation in mastering as it eliminates the room to a large degree and simply put, it's not paper whereas most playback is. Searching for an upgrade online I met Thomas Barefoot and his new company Barefoot Sound, with a 12" woofer 3-way called the Mini Main 12 that includes a hand-tuned amp-to-speaker set up in a small footprint and a damped paper midrange. They sound a little like a less clinical but similarly detailed PMC. This is perfect for my ear as a PMC for this level of monitor would be twice the money and the PMCs are a bit too dry for me at this time and in this room. Ordering from him takes months as he's still a start up, but the guy is a speaker master already IMO.

Barefoot has a Micro Main 27 in design with the same 2xmids/tweeter/3 way idea using a new woofer in a smaller box ... those MAY work and are to be around $5000, but I still think you'll need a bigger woofer for competitive mastering.

[Gomez]

Thanks a lot for your reply Lucey.

Dear me... I'm going to have to save up for years before I can get some decent monitoring.

I have done quite a few mastering jobs recently. I'm only just starting and for the same reason I charge very little. So far my clients have been really happy. there has been one case where the band listened to the master and ask me to do some little twaeks on the high freqs.

I guess I'm really lucky. My set up is still very basic Protools and Peak, Manley MP, and waves masters bundle. My monitors, I don;t want to mention because I find it embarrasing. I think that they pretty good for mixing, but not very good for mastering. This is proven by how long takes me to master an album, sometimes it has taken about 3 days because I'm unsure about the accuracy of my monitors. Then again. I work at a fixed rate, so the band doesn't get charged for extra time and I make sure I listen to what I have done in various systems.

I'm buying the lottery.

Thanks a lot!

Gomez

[Jay Kahrs]

Originally Posted by Gomez

I guess I'm really lucky. My set up is still very basic Protools and Peak, Manley MP, and waves masters bundle. My monitors, I don;t want to mention because I find it embarrasing. I think that they pretty good for mixing, but not very good for mastering. This is proven by how long takes me to master an album, sometimes it has taken about 3 days because I'm unsure about the accuracy of my monitors. Then again. I work at a fixed rate, so the band doesn't get charged for extra time and I make sure I listen to what I have done in various systems.

Then you aren't really mastering in the truest sense of the word. Most of the great mastering engineers I've worked with work super fast and they know exactly what's coming into and leaving the room. A solid ME can turn a record around in a day or so, at a pace of a half-hour to an hour a song and they also use the one set of really killer speakers about 98% of the time. It's kind of amazing to watch them work and chisel away at a mix in a half dozen 1 or 2dB steps, working on just the sides and the middle and then putting it all back together. I love getting stuff back from mastering because it always sounds like a coheasive record rather then a collection of similar mixes.

Of course, the 90% of the world that isn't made of audio engineers won't notice the difference, but I can hear it, my clients can hear it and the people who really care...the radio program directors, managers, lawyers and other people who actually matter and can help a bands carrear...

They notice.

And they all know the difference between good & bad too.