Multi-band compressors

[wado1942]

Originally Posted by grandmasters

Why then don't you just mix and master it at the same time?

It's a rather counter-productive way to work, trying to do the mastering and mixing at the same time. It's best to have the whole album mixed first, then send it to a mastering engineer to give it an objective, disinterested listen for final polishing. I occasionally mix for people and master in house for budgetary reasons, but I always give it at least a few days before mastering and always after the whole album has been mixed. That way, I have rested my ears and can hear how all the songs work together in context of an album better. Mastering is 90% about helping songs work together and you can't do that very well from building a mix, slapping some buss processors on it, then moving onto another mix. You lose all context of the album as a whole. You have to go back to the stereo files to do fades/crossfades, set gaps & so forth anyway.

I WILL say that when I'm mixing sound for DVDs, there isn't really an audio mastering stage per say, so all the work is really in the mix.

[huejahfink]

Originally Posted by grandmasters

Reading this thread I'm still surprised so many recording/mix engineers do their own mastering. Why is that? Budget? I just don't understand how you can mix an album and then master it yourself? Why then don't you just mix and master it at the same time?

I've done this on some of my own projects which are unashamedly low budget. It's less about 'trying to improve the mix' and more about just getting several different mixes to sit together a little better for that compilation / release. And that can't really be done the moment that you are finishing the mix. It has to be done in the context of the others.
Don't see any problem with it myself.... my work, my choice!

(PS. I enjoyed your interview on SquareCad by the way Noah. Thanks.)

[Slug1]

Originally Posted by grandmasters

Reading this thread I'm still surprised so many recording/mix engineers do their own mastering. Why is that? Budget? I just don't understand how you can mix an album and then master it yourself? Why then don't you just mix and master it at the same time?

I'm kind of doing this now on a very low level because I love music and audio. I was sent 14 ProTools sessions that had been 'pre-mixed' very well. I had also earlier received MP3s of those mixes to get an idea of what the artist and producer wanted. But because I have a larger breadth of kit, I was able to treat some of the things a little different and enhance the mix a bit. There were issues in the mix that I needed to fix to get a better master. Some editing, adding punch to some drums, doing some parallel processing, etc. Most was left alone, but in some cases I would use a different compressor on a track that they had compressed because the one that I had probably did the job better. I did some bussing as well. Then I bounced those mixes. And I did all 14 before even thinking about mastering. Then those bounced audiofiles were used for 'mastering'. One of the funny things was that they used a lot of L2 and C4 on the master busses and I removed them and treated the two buss differently to give me some room to work with at the mastering stage. If I had just worked with their stereo bounces they would have been smashed up quite a bit by the L2 and C4. They did need compression on the mix buss in many cases, but I used the UAD SSL buss compressor (Waves API 2500 on one track), and the beautifully transparent Massey Limiter instead. I look at all of this as being similar to stem mixing, except I get to generate those stems (through bussing), can blend them better, and have more control over the two buss. In my world, its crazy important. Again I did all of the mixing first and even sent some bounces to them to get feedback. I made a few tweaks based on their input and then left the project alone for a while.

Then I came back to it later more from a mastering standpoint. Ran each track through DA converter to my analog eq for tone and tube then AD conversion to my mixdown deck (laptop with mastering daw) and recorded each track as a two track through a mastering insert chain. Here I deal with sonic balance across all of the tracks, tone shaping, level lifting, level balance, track order, metadata, final limiting etc. I'm not thinking about any of that when I'm doing a mix. Well, I know I'm an idiot for doing it this way, but I love it.

[leaper]

There's a Tubetech multiband in my set up and it's been involved in hundreds of masters. As to how it gets used... well, sometimes as a low threshold general tickle, sometimes as a dynamic EQ, sometimes digging a bit more into a band. It's a great tool to have around.
You have to have a handle on your gain stages though and an understanding of where to place it in your chain for which particular job. All those tubes!