Sending a mix to master,not even a compressor on the master bus?

[John Eppstein]

Originally Posted by Ciozzi

From an interview with CLA...

Chris Lord-Alge: Mixing on an SSL 4056 E console modified to G+ from a Sony 3348 as our 48 digital medium. Some people might wonder why I’m still using this; the reason is that it still sounds good to me. It’s all edited on Pro Tools HD and transferred mostly flat to the 48 digital medium, and then we mix back to 1/2-inch 96K, 2-bit two-track. Basically that’s what they are going to master from, with an Apogee front end on it. It’s a pretty simple chain if you think about it, but my chain has a pair of Pultecks EQing the whole bus with three compressors

Should I deduce that CLA is not good enough ? He uses three compressors on his master bus (he must be three times bad then...lol) ! Many great mixers use compression on their master bus while others don't, it's a matter of taste, technique, experience and workflow. It's been said a million time here but I'll keep repeting it: there's only one thing that really matters, the final result.

I believe a good mixer should keep a couple of things in mind. Good mixes will need little to no eq/compression during mastering and, most importantly, eq and compression always call for adjustments that can't easly be done without damaging something else...sort of a trade off.

BTW, In this partiular case I'd tell the OP not to do anything, since he's done mixing and from that point on, it's the ME's task the get the job done.

No, but CLA isn't all that great. In fact, I know a lot of people who think that his mixes don't sound good and that he's a jerk. On the other hand, he's a (self promoting) SUPERSTAR, so what do I know? After 35 years in the trenches I obviously don't know shit, or I'd be a self-promoting superstar too, right?

The guy has a WAVES PRESET BUNDLE fer Chrissake! Anybody who says his bundle of commercial presets is relevant to ANYTHING except the particular songs he used those presets for is a liar and not to be trusted.

Of course the hundreds of experienced engineers who work in the accepted way don't know anything compared to a SUPERSTAR, right?

Every top ME in the world says DON'T COMPRESS THE 2 BUSS! You think the just like the sound of their own voices?

Go ahead and follow CLA - that just leaves more room for those of us who do it right.

[Kenny Gioia]

Originally Posted by John Eppstein

Every top ME in the world says DON'T COMPRESS THE 2 BUSS! You think the just like the sound of their own voices?

No. They say that to people like you because they know that you'll listen to them.

People that know how to mix don't listen to mastering engineers. They make great mixes and let the ME figure it out.

BTW - I also use 3 compressors on my 2 buss. I'm not CLA but I do hope John hates me just as much.

The client gets a bit of Massey L007 for their reference but the ME doesn't.

If you're not sure, don't use a compressor. If you are sure, you wouldn't be needing my advice anyway.

[RCM - Ronan]

Originally Posted by John Eppstein

Go ahead and follow CLA - that just leaves more room for those of us who do it right.

Hey John, Could you point us to some of your mixes. If you are better than CLA I would love to hear your stuff.

[Ciozzi]

Originally Posted by John Eppstein

No, but CLA isn't all that great. In fact, I know a lot of people who think that his mixes don't sound good and that he's a jerk. On the other hand, he's a (self promoting) SUPERSTAR, so what do I know? After 35 years in the trenches I obviously don't know shit, or I'd be a self-promoting superstar too, right?

The guy has a WAVES PRESET BUNDLE fer Chrissake! Anybody who says his bundle of commercial presets is relevant to ANYTHING except the particular songs he used those presets for is a liar and not to be trusted.

Of course the hundreds of experienced engineers who work in the accepted way don't know anything compared to a SUPERSTAR, right?

Every top ME in the world says DON'T COMPRESS THE 2 BUSS! You think the just like the sound of their own voices?

Go ahead and follow CLA - that just leaves more room for those of us who do it right.

Oh Man, I was about to reply with other examples but reading your post again I think it makes no sense... No offense intended here but don't you realize you're making yourself a bit ridiculous ?

[picksail]

Originally Posted by John Eppstein

Every top ME in the world says DON'T COMPRESS THE 2 BUSS! You think the just like the sound of their own voices?

Not from where I'm standing.

From what I'm hearing (personally) the opposite is true.

It's actually been encouraged.

And yes, this is from possibly some of the same "top MEs" to which you are referring.

Actually sometimes I may have (including an L3) four compressors working on the mix buss.
Sometimes I'm just passing a signal through them.

[jamwerks]

Originally Posted by rcm

Hey John, Could you point us to some of your mixes. If you are better than CLA I would love to hear your stuff.

Our friend John doesn't think much either of Steely Dan's musicality or engineering. Gotta love Gear Sluts!

[mdoelger]

When you read through the website of mastering houses, you ALWAYS read about "leave everything off your 2 buss". So why is that?

The right answer is, that this is generally a good advice for people who feel they NEED TO READ THROUGH THOSE PAGES, before sending there mixes.

The ones who do not need to read it (i.e. "the pros") know what to do anyways.

[Jim Williams]

"Dynamic range? dynamic range? We don't need no stinking dynamic range".

Squash on brother, play on drummer.

Fashion in audio.

Jim Williams
Audio Upgrades

[Mike Brown]

Originally Posted by Jim Williams

Get off my lawn!

Jim Williams
Audio Upgrades

Its the ME job to master the mix you give them. The production team has fought knock down drag out fights about this shit for the last 16 hours. Just MASTER THE ****ING MIX.

Most ME suck (too compressed, too lazy to take the time to compress it right) these days anyway. More and more top end engineers around here are just mastering their own stuff instead of paying a ton of money, going with a big name ME, and getting something back that barely resembles the mix they were sent.

[Kenny Gioia]

Originally Posted by lunale

When you read through the website of mastering houses, you ALWAYS read about "leave everything off your 2 buss". So why is that?

The right answer is, that this is generally a good advice for people who feel they NEED TO READ THROUGH THOSE PAGES, before sending there mixes.

The ones who do not need to read it (i.e. "the pros") know what to do anyways.

[Kenny Gioia]

Originally Posted by Jim Williams

"Dynamic range? dynamic range? We don't need no stinking dynamic range".

Squash on brother, play on drummer.

Fashion in audio.

Jim Williams
Audio Upgrades

I agree.

Wait.

Were you being ironic?

[Jim Williams]

Originally Posted by Mayor999

Its the ME job to master the mix you give them. The production team has fought knock down drag out fights about this shit for the last 16 hours. Just MASTER THE ****ING MIX.

Most ME suck (too compressed, too lazy to take the time to compress it right) these days anyway. More and more top end engineers around here are just mastering their own stuff instead of paying a ton of money, going with a big name ME, and getting something back that barely resembles the mix they were sent.

Anyone that sends out a master without being there to check off any decisions made is asking for disappointments.

Be there or be square. Or, rinse and repeat.

Jim Williams
Audio Upgrades

[Brent Hahn]

Originally Posted by rcm

Hey John, Could you point us to some of your mixes. If you are better than CLA I would love to hear your stuff.

With all the typing he has to do (over 1500 GS posts in the last 2 months), how could he have time to mix?

[FireMoon]

Originally Posted by John Eppstein

In digital, if the music is well mixed the mastering engineer's job consists of:

Sequencing and adding the proper space between tunes

Adjusting the level of the various tunes so the album is consistent and doesn't jump up and down in apparent volume

making minuscule adjustments to EQ and dynamics to make the album hang together, rather than sounding like a bunch of disjointed singles

Inserting the metadata required for commercial release.


All this is also done in vinyl mastering, except that instead of metadata a code is inscribed on the inside of the master disk, and there is the additional process of actually cutting the master.

Notice that at no point did I saqy anything about squashing the crap out of it. A good mastering engineer doesn't do that - unless forced to by some idiot company rep or ignorant "artist".

Yeah most of that must take all of ummm blimey... 10 minutes using Wavelab. I already made the point about getting another set of good ears to take a listen. Truth is, the vast majority of bands send their CDs to be mastered in the hope they can be made as loud as whatever is the new thing on the block.

Look if you send a supposedly finished album to someone and the levels on different songs are so wildly differing, as to need correction, it might raise the point of. What the hell were you doing when you mixed it?


If about 90% of bands actually sat down and and said.."Ok, we are not releasing an albums worth of material till we actually have one"; there would be a lot less waste. The vast majority of albums are a couple of decent songs and 10 filler.

Truth is, in this day and age. if you have half a brain, ME's are, pretty much, redundant if you can produce something you are happy with and works within certain parameters. Like i say, get some experienced ears in to give the once over and you're good to go. These days, that majority of ME's do bugger all but squeeze the bollox out of the tracks till they are as loud as feasibly possible and often when you didn't ask them to.....

[Kenny Gioia]

Originally Posted by Jim Williams

Anyone that sends out a master without being there to check off any decisions made is asking for disappointments.

Be there or be square. Or, rinse and repeat.

Jim Williams
Audio Upgrades

I disagree. I've been to one Mastering session in my life and it was pointless.

I've found the guy who nails it every time and I just let him do his job.

If I have to watch him, then he needs to be cheaper because he's costing me money.

[Kenny Gioia]

Originally Posted by FireMoon

Truth is, in this day and age. if you have half a brain, ME's are, pretty much, redundant if you can produce something you are happy with and works within certain parameters. Like i say, get some experienced ears in to give the once over and you're good to go. These days, that majority of ME's do bugger all but squeeze the bollox out of the tracks till they are as loud as feasibly possible and often when you didn't ask them to.....

I just mixed a record of 12 songs where each song was done at different studios by different engineers.

Although I made each mix sound great in their own right, there were some differences between them that I wasn't going to keep chasing.

The Mastering engineer made it sound much more cohesive. Something that would have been a PITA for me to do in the mixing process.

[Hitzalong Daway]

Originally Posted by meymia

Hi.
some one told me not to put ANY dynamic processors on the master bus...does that in your opinion uncluse asimple sonnox compressor to glue things up a bit?

Didn´t read any further than the two first and this thread is 2 weeks old but here it goes:

Do one with you 2 buss comp (sonnox) and do another one without it and give´em
to your mastering engineer.

Cheers.

Somebody suggested this earlier? Am i right? No?

[DanH]

This thread got pretty emotional! Why don't we just try for ourselves and see what works best? There are great mixes on both sides of the argument.

Do a mix into a 2buss comp, and do one without. Whatever fits best with your ears and workflow for that material is your answer.

[robot gigante]

Well, there's a huge sonic difference between, we'll say, taking .5 to 1 db off tops with a nice hardware comp and taking 4 db or more with a plugin, even when you're mixing into it.

On the first, I say yes! I like mixing into a comp like a Smart C2 where the meters are barely twitching.

With the second I say, hell no! Too much of the sound is lost.

Either way though. I don't think it matters a hell of a lot whether you use a little bus compression or not if your skills are together. What's the big deal? Either way the mix is what you make of it.

[jamwerks]

There was a feature artical in "Sound on Sound" of May '08, dealing with 2 bus compression. If I remember correctly, the ME's interviewed made the analogy of coats of paint on a car, saying that its better to have 3 coats of paint (thinner) than 1 thick coat of paint. Basically saying that a little compression during tracking, a little at mixing, and a little at mastering gives the best results.

[Adam Dempsey]

Originally Posted by Kenny Gioia

People that know how to mix don't listen to mastering engineers. They make great mixes and let the ME figure it out.

The client gets a bit of Massey L007 for their reference but the ME doesn't.

Sounds as if you're listening, then.

If some squeeze is part of the sound – and not done for level – then fine. In the end, communication of any uncertainties is crucial, even to the point of sending the ME a mix ahead of time for some feedback. Nothing wrong with that. Most of my clients come to me explicitly not wanting a crushed result.

Originally Posted by firemoon

Look if you send a supposedly finished album to someone and the levels on different songs are so wildly differing, as to need correction, it might raise the point of. What the hell were you doing when you mixed it?

I'd hazard a guess and say most mix engineers are focussed on the song in its own right. There could be different mix studios or engineers involved, different vocalists/mics/drum set ups/ambience balances, any number of subtle or not-so-subtle things from song to song. On a recent EP two of five tracks didn't need compression. The other three did. Different mix engineers.

Ideally, yes there'd be an amount of consistency, but it's pretty rare for it to all be finessed during the mixing process. If mastering requires little more than an EQ tweak & level matching – great! It still takes an excellent full range monitoring environment and experienced objectivity to make such calls.

Originally Posted by jamwerks

There was a feature artical in "Sound on Sound" of May '08, dealing with 2 bus compression. If I remember correctly, the ME's interviewed made the analogy of coats of paint on a car, saying that its better to have 3 coats of paint (thinner) than 1 thick coat of paint. Basically saying that a little compression during tracking, a little at mixing, and a little at mastering gives the best results.

True. The effective net result of added comps is the product of the ratios, not the sum of. i.e., 4:1 + 3:1 + 2:1 = 24:1 equivalent.
And who's to say the time constants are always set right and within context of the whole release and track sequence, with part of your brain in mix balancing mode?
And every compressor sounds different.
And gain reduction can be occurring before you see it on a meter, etc, etc.

So again: as long as it's for the sound of it, not for level. If unsure, supply both options, and communicate this (and name your digital mix files accordingly!).

[Kenny Gioia]

Originally Posted by Adam Dempsey

So again: as long as it's for the sound of it, not for level. If unsure, supply both options, and communicate this (and name your digital mix files accordingly!).

Yes!!!!!!

[Thescort]

Originally Posted by rcm

My answer to this question is simple and always the same:

If there is any doubt in your mind, do not do anything to the master buss. when you feel 100% confident about your 2buss decisions, go for it.

Genius response from Ronan. I feel very much the same. Anything you do to the 2buss can also be done by the Mastering engineer, so why not leave it to him (unless you really know what you are doing and it is part of your sound as earlier stated).

As a mix engineer, if there is a problem with the mix, it shouldn't be tackled at the mix buss, but at the track level (or group buss level). You shouldn't be dealing with an accumulation of low mids by slapping an eq across the whole mix, when you have access to individual tracks (or stems).

As with anything though, there are exceptions to these statements!

[msm07]

Originally Posted by Jamzone

Depends on if your compressor is part of the your sound. For example mixing with an ssl-buscomp, you would definitly wanna keep it on when sending to mastering. Your mix could fall apart without it...

Agreed! We used the comp on the master bus before sending off for masters recently, very sparingly but it has this "glue" effect (maybe a placebo....who knows) that sounds great.

[Kenny Gioia]

Originally Posted by Thescort

As a mix engineer, if there is a problem with the mix, it shouldn't be tackled at the mix buss, but at the track level (or group buss level). You shouldn't be dealing with an accumulation of low mids by slapping an eq across the whole mix, when you have access to individual tracks (or stems).

Agreed. Although Buss "Compression" is kind of unique.

[Thescort]

Kenny Gioia:
Indeed, I definitely feel buss compression is a different animal and mix-buss compression...

[Andreas G]

Originally Posted by meymia

Hi.
some one told me not to put ANY dynamic processors on the master bus...does that in your opinion uncluse asimple sonnox compressor to glue things up a bit?

I'm not so crazy about the sonnox on the master bus, perhaps you might try the "cytomic glue" if it has to be a plugin on stereo bus.

To me stereo bus compressing belongs to mixing not to mastering, as it will affect the balance of your mix and resulting decisions on individual tracks.

If you are new to stereo compressing I wouldn't mix into the compressor either. It can be very tricky! Everything is affecting everything and too easy you can overdo things. The more instruments you bring into the mix the more of your previous balance might change. And if you start with automation it might change again. So e.g. your punchy drums from the beginning might end up very poor and the mean thing is, since you get used to how the mix build up it, you might not notice occurring problems easily.

So for starters.. if you want just a little glue I would try to get the best balanced mix without stereo bus compressing. Then slap your compressor at the end on the stereo bus, just a few dB of GR for the desired effect. You might readjust some tracks, again a thing a mastering engineer can't do. Always do level matched a/b or do longer listening runs with breaks, to see if you compressor really helps glueing your mix.


Good luck!