#220347 by electronic fantasy
Fri Aug 09, 2013 8:13 pm
Fri Aug 09, 2013 8:13 pm
This is a question to mixing and mastering gurus, in hopes someone would set a newbie (like me) on a righteous path to true enlightenment.
Bad mastering can (and often does) ruin a good tune. Too much or too little compression or too much stereo spread effect etc and your composition, however perfect it might have been is now a mush of sounds with one instrument overpowering while others are smeared in to soup. I hear a lot of amateur tracks that sound unprofessional because the mix is done badly and mastering was merely an attempt to make the whole thing to sound loud. In the end it clips, farts, and one instrument is way louder then any other. As if there was a loudness rase and it won the jackpot, but mix sounds like crap. Some guys do the mixing with a pair of headphones or computer speakers. This leads to the final mix sounding ok (perhaps) on their speakers, but will not sound good on other speakers. This is because consumer speakers are not flat. Some of the frequencies they reproduce are louder then the others etc. A pair of half decent studio monitors is a must for mixing and mastering.
So do you do your own mastering and if so care to share some tips?
To break the ice I briefly describe how I do it and the gurus can point out my mistakes.
Once I have the tracks recorded, (MIDI and WAV) they sound OK in the project, but they are not mastered yet. Overall tune sounds flat and mushed. The goal is to get each instrument to shine and sound crispy and distinctly. Thus I bounce all the tracks in to high resolution waves at 96,000kHz 24 bit. It is like inflating a balloon and drawing a picture on it, then when the balloon is deflated to low resolution such as an MP3 (44,100 kHz 16bit) the image is crisp.
The bounced high resolution tracks are imported in to a brand new mastering project. All tracks are the same length, even though an individual track may contain sound only at the end of it or somewhere in the middle. This way I do not have to guess where to anchor the wave in relation to the other tracks. All start from 0 and all end at the end of the tune. The picks of each track must not touch the upper and lower boundaries else it will clip when an effect such as compression or EQ is applied. It is important to have some space to play with.
Now ALL level sliders on the mixer go down to -5db giving me 5 db to play with. At this point the mix still sounds flat and mushed. It also sounds quiet. To master the track three tools are used. Compressor, Limiter and EQ. The compressor is set for each individual track to bring the sound of each individual track to it's most crisp sound so that all the notes played are distinct. The limiter allows to level it back to -5db leaving the 5 db range for the final output track mastering.
At this point the tune still sounds quiet but instrument ring crisp and distinct. The compression on each individual track is different. What works for melody does not work for the drums or bass etc. So compression is not applied indiscriminately, but very slightly and carefully. The compression is there not to make the individual track loud but to make it crisp. I think that is an important point here. It is so easy to over-compress and distort the track, thus ruining everything.
Now EQ is added as a first link in the sound chain to each track before the compressor. (limiters are always added at the end of the chain). The job of the EQ is to separate tracks in to different frequencies so that the speakers are not confused between two instruments that occupy similar frequency range. For example bass guitar and bass drum, if played on the same 150Hz frequency would mash and speaker is confused and unhappy. You would not hear those two instruments as two distinct sources of the sound, instead they will blend and that might not what we want, same goes for leading instruments.
EQ is also used to "position" the instruments on imaginary "stage". Humans hear lower frequencies better then high. For example. If there is a band playing in the park, and you are walking down the street towards this park the first thing you hear are the low frequency of the bass, the rest is unclear or not audible at all. As you approach the band you begin to hear higher frequencies better and better. Thus adding low frequency and lowering high frequency tricks the brain in to thinking that the instrument is further away. Reverse will trick the brain in to thinking it is closer. These adjustments are very small, 1 or 1.5 db within a specific range of frequency.
Last tool that I use sometime on individual tracks is the stereo spreader. This is used on backing instruments and sometime on drums to give it dimensional feel. Make them sound grand or interesting while the part that they play may not be very interesting. This adds a certain feel to the overall ambiance. A small detail, but devil is in details.
At this point all tracks still give me room of 5 db to play with. And the overall mix still sound quiet. The final is the mastering of the overall composition. I use only two tools there. The "multipressor" (multi-band compressor) to enhance the overall track across 4 bands of frequencies. This is where the room of 5 db plays a very important role. The goal here is to tighten up the entire resulting mix by lowering the sound that exceeds certain frequency band and bringing up the sounds that seem inaudible. A delicate balance it is very easy to get overzealous here and end up with one spot on the track that clips and ruins everything. Usually I try to get the final mix-down compressed in such a way that I have 2 db to play with before it hits 0. Anything above 0 will clip and if played on large speaker will fart. When I am satisfied with the tightness of the overall mix the final limiter may be used to bring it from -2db to -0.5db. In some cases the single band low cut EQ is added to the final mix to cut off frequencies lower then 68Hz, because anything lower then 70Hz farting noise.
At this point it is ready to be bounced in to a single mix-down.
Suggestions? Obvious newbie mistakes? Your input is appreciated.
Bad mastering can (and often does) ruin a good tune. Too much or too little compression or too much stereo spread effect etc and your composition, however perfect it might have been is now a mush of sounds with one instrument overpowering while others are smeared in to soup. I hear a lot of amateur tracks that sound unprofessional because the mix is done badly and mastering was merely an attempt to make the whole thing to sound loud. In the end it clips, farts, and one instrument is way louder then any other. As if there was a loudness rase and it won the jackpot, but mix sounds like crap. Some guys do the mixing with a pair of headphones or computer speakers. This leads to the final mix sounding ok (perhaps) on their speakers, but will not sound good on other speakers. This is because consumer speakers are not flat. Some of the frequencies they reproduce are louder then the others etc. A pair of half decent studio monitors is a must for mixing and mastering.
So do you do your own mastering and if so care to share some tips?
To break the ice I briefly describe how I do it and the gurus can point out my mistakes.
Once I have the tracks recorded, (MIDI and WAV) they sound OK in the project, but they are not mastered yet. Overall tune sounds flat and mushed. The goal is to get each instrument to shine and sound crispy and distinctly. Thus I bounce all the tracks in to high resolution waves at 96,000kHz 24 bit. It is like inflating a balloon and drawing a picture on it, then when the balloon is deflated to low resolution such as an MP3 (44,100 kHz 16bit) the image is crisp.
The bounced high resolution tracks are imported in to a brand new mastering project. All tracks are the same length, even though an individual track may contain sound only at the end of it or somewhere in the middle. This way I do not have to guess where to anchor the wave in relation to the other tracks. All start from 0 and all end at the end of the tune. The picks of each track must not touch the upper and lower boundaries else it will clip when an effect such as compression or EQ is applied. It is important to have some space to play with.
Now ALL level sliders on the mixer go down to -5db giving me 5 db to play with. At this point the mix still sounds flat and mushed. It also sounds quiet. To master the track three tools are used. Compressor, Limiter and EQ. The compressor is set for each individual track to bring the sound of each individual track to it's most crisp sound so that all the notes played are distinct. The limiter allows to level it back to -5db leaving the 5 db range for the final output track mastering.
At this point the tune still sounds quiet but instrument ring crisp and distinct. The compression on each individual track is different. What works for melody does not work for the drums or bass etc. So compression is not applied indiscriminately, but very slightly and carefully. The compression is there not to make the individual track loud but to make it crisp. I think that is an important point here. It is so easy to over-compress and distort the track, thus ruining everything.
Now EQ is added as a first link in the sound chain to each track before the compressor. (limiters are always added at the end of the chain). The job of the EQ is to separate tracks in to different frequencies so that the speakers are not confused between two instruments that occupy similar frequency range. For example bass guitar and bass drum, if played on the same 150Hz frequency would mash and speaker is confused and unhappy. You would not hear those two instruments as two distinct sources of the sound, instead they will blend and that might not what we want, same goes for leading instruments.
EQ is also used to "position" the instruments on imaginary "stage". Humans hear lower frequencies better then high. For example. If there is a band playing in the park, and you are walking down the street towards this park the first thing you hear are the low frequency of the bass, the rest is unclear or not audible at all. As you approach the band you begin to hear higher frequencies better and better. Thus adding low frequency and lowering high frequency tricks the brain in to thinking that the instrument is further away. Reverse will trick the brain in to thinking it is closer. These adjustments are very small, 1 or 1.5 db within a specific range of frequency.
Last tool that I use sometime on individual tracks is the stereo spreader. This is used on backing instruments and sometime on drums to give it dimensional feel. Make them sound grand or interesting while the part that they play may not be very interesting. This adds a certain feel to the overall ambiance. A small detail, but devil is in details.
At this point all tracks still give me room of 5 db to play with. And the overall mix still sound quiet. The final is the mastering of the overall composition. I use only two tools there. The "multipressor" (multi-band compressor) to enhance the overall track across 4 bands of frequencies. This is where the room of 5 db plays a very important role. The goal here is to tighten up the entire resulting mix by lowering the sound that exceeds certain frequency band and bringing up the sounds that seem inaudible. A delicate balance it is very easy to get overzealous here and end up with one spot on the track that clips and ruins everything. Usually I try to get the final mix-down compressed in such a way that I have 2 db to play with before it hits 0. Anything above 0 will clip and if played on large speaker will fart. When I am satisfied with the tightness of the overall mix the final limiter may be used to bring it from -2db to -0.5db. In some cases the single band low cut EQ is added to the final mix to cut off frequencies lower then 68Hz, because anything lower then 70Hz farting noise.
At this point it is ready to be bounced in to a single mix-down.
Suggestions? Obvious newbie mistakes? Your input is appreciated.