cheap home mastering

[nbutter]

posted about this in "so much gear..." to no avail...maybe better luck here?

looking for folks' comments on cheap (eg $500 or so) solutions for doing my own mastering.

i make dance tracks and need to print mixes often to play out and test in front of a crowd.

thinking about waves L2 (software), UAD-1, t-racks, and tc finalizer (hardware)

mostly wanna get levels up, not really looking for mastering eq

any comments? or other suggestions?

i run logic 6.3 and PT 5.1 under OSX 10.2 on HD3 hardware.

thanx!!!

[Jay Kahrs]

Doing your own mastering is kinda like doing your own dental work. You could, but it ain't right and it isn't gonna be pretty. If this is only for one project then $500 is enough to get a bottom feeder ME to do the work.

If all you want to do is get the level up from a software environment then the L2 plug-in with some knowing how to twist the knobs voodoo is probably fine. There are probably a bunch of plug-ins that can do a decent job of limiting. For direct X I like the Sonic Timeworks stuff a lot.

Keep in mind that you don't need to get it super loud and crushed to be competitive.

[nbutter]

thanks, jay

this is just to test rough mixes with a live crowd - part of the mixing process for dance stuff (is the breakdown working? more synths? etc.). i like to do this a few times with a track to make sure it's working with a crowd.

getting a hotter level helps me or another dj mix it in without distorting the mixer, etc...bringing in my rough mixes and having to crank everything up to 11 to keep the dancefloor moving doesn't help my tracks too much

once i'm happy, though, i'm definitely turning the tracks over to the pros...i agree that only a fool is his own mastering engineer.

L2 does seem to be one of the most-used limiter plugs...unfortunately waves doesn't sell it as a standalone plug...L1 is $600 for a TDM version (!)... wondering whether there's an equivalent or better solution for less $$$. a TC finalizer is about $700 used, seems like if it's good that might offer a little more than an L1, for instance...

[six_wax]

greets.

I make dance music as well, and like to test run my tracks when I spin. I am finding that focusing on compressing subgroups in the mixing stage goes further towards getting that volume and pump than mangling stuff with L2 or Ozone. Incidentally, I've read lots of references from big guns about using the same approach... so called "stem compression". (I have been using the UAD comps for this with great success...)

I've had the pleasue of working with some producers lately whose stuff sounds "like mastered" right at mixdown. It's very possible. More often than not, if I need to MB or L2 the mix, I'm trying to doctor some area of mixing that I've slacked on. This usually ends up showing in the final result. ymmv.

Maybe you're playing beter clubs than I am, but I also suspect that if your mix is already balanced & appropriately loud, most of that fabled mastering luster wouldn't come through the sound system and club acoustics anyway...

[six_wax]

and I'm compelled to note that the L1 & L2 both scare the bejeezus out of me. best used on individual troublesome tracks rather than a whole mix, imho.

ditto on the STW CompX brickwall limiting recommendation, tho.

[nbutter]

very interesting...i'll try it!

what do you put in the stems?

off the top of my head, i guess i'd probably try

kick
bass
vox
main synths
percussion
percussive synths & other instrumentation

something like that?

depending on the track of course...

[six_wax]

yeah, the idea is to group down to a number of related 'layers'. (incidentally, when you get your head around it for a given track, it can make mixing exponentially faster. in the production phase, my track counts get pretty obscene...)

e.g:
kick & hats - compressed to fatten and pump a bit
bass or basses - sometimes in with the kick, depending
perc1
perc2
leads
pads
accents (crashes, swells --limit the fork out of these)

obviously, yes, it all depends on the track & how you're comfortable building your mix.

if you've heard all this before, forgive me, but if it's a dance track, most of your foundation dynamics processing will be in the groove (kick, bass, percussion). If that works, and is fat and loud, everything else is gravy, and it just becomes a game of finding nice spots for things. Hence the limiting of accents and compression of pads and leads. Since the music tends to be repetitive, dynamics is just another axis in your mix-space. Or something like that.

another mixing trick that helps me is to throw a Multiband compressor on the mix just as a way of tessting my mix. Whatever makes it clamp down, I'll go back and retweak --after turning *off* the MB. Couple iterations, and I'm always suprised at what I've learned and how much better the track sounds by itself.

good luck!

[CV7]

We need a Mastering 101 here! With everybody that does it chiming in with all their bag o tricks.

[ttauri]

I've lately been doing a lot of active A/Bing during mixdown by sending a track out to my turntable mixer and blending back and forth with stuff from my crates. I'm finding it's helped me to get the overall levels much closer to the target while sculpting the mix, and the post-mixdown work doesn't have to be too drastic.

S'been helpful for remixes, particularly, which don't really pay enough to go even to a bottom feeding ME on my end; and on the label's end, my experience has been that their mastering process consists of just cutting the wax with exactly what I give them (at least the typical indie label situation).

Peece,
T. Tauri

[nbutter]

all very useful stuff, thanks all.

[atticus]

The combination of the Multipressor and AD Limiter in Logic 6 can really generate some hot levels if that's what you're going for. I don't know if you can use the included plugins on TDM hardware though.

[nbutter]

thanks, dave, i was just about to gripe that despite all the helpful hints about "how not to have to use the L2," no one had yet suggested a directly comparable alternative for the mac!

i THINK i'm running my logic plugs on my TDM hardware ; ) if not, i can run 'em native, i have a dual g4 with lotsa RAM.

thanks for the tip -- maybe i won't need to spend over a thousand bucks for Waves Mastering after all!

btw on other boards i have seen great things about Ozone...not out for OSX yet... but definitely looks like _way_ too much functionality to put in the hands of your average non-ME ; )

[atticus]

Those plugins are not a subsitiute for real mastering, but they are capaple of producing ear splitting "demos" Good luck with it!

[Jay Kahrs]

Originally posted by CV7
We need a Mastering 101 here! With everybody that does it chiming in with all their bag o tricks.

Then I suggest heading over to Brad Blackwoods forum on PSW.

Mastering 101 is don't do any harm. Do as little to the music as needed. Don't do it to anything you mixed and if you really have to, give yourself LOTS of time between tracking and mixing and do it on a different set of monitors in a different room. Of course I'm oversimplifying a bit.

OK. A lot.