General Music Chat

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.

Wow sounds like you know what you are doing already and your recording(s) reflect this as well. I liked your first recording the best, very nice, clean work. I'll have to read this a few times to actually digest it, but I'll give it a go.

Wish I had something productive to add but this really is the area of expertise that is weakest for me. I am only the abstract side of the equation and my own recordings reflect my obvious newness at recording.

This is why I seek out people that understand this stuff better than myself (which is everybody). lol

EF I think your fundamental methods are right on. I am a quick and dirty recording artist and don't profess any deep M&M knowledge. I'll add in a few of my own bits:

* Visual cues are good, but ears are better. We have all these cool waveform tools now that allow us to visually interpret changes in dynamics and EQ. Don't allow these tools to determine what the finished music ultimately sounds like. Trust your ears and listen to the music. Listen on big speakers, small speakers, ipod earbuds, and headphones.

* I always have an excellently recorded reference track of similar music on hand for A-B comparisons. Without a good reference, our ears can sometimes become fatigued and the mix drifts into no-mans-land.

* Fresh ears. I prefer to have someone else do the M&M most often rather than me. I tend to become emotionally involved with certain vocal or guitar lines and lose the big picture. A skilled engineer brings no pre-bias to the project. When I find the courage to let go is when the best stuff tends to happen.

You have actually listened to the tracks above and wished you wrote them.

aww sounded cool up until that bit..

Don't you want to work with people who are in to the same thing you are in? I do.

But that is not the point of this post. We are talking about how to mix things not what style to play.

Mixing your song is like painting a picture.

I can look at a barn and paint it several hundred different ways. I will only like about 4 or 5 of the paintings. SO, the question is... what do you like best.

The most important thing is, make sure your tracks are clean and try and make the walls go away on the clean tracks.

Oh...

nice music.

@Thejohnny7band

Trust your ears and listen to the music. Listen on big speakers, small speakers, ipod earbuds, and headphones.

Definitely. Visual cues are nice to have, but I doubt anyone can master a tune without using ears. And I have found on my own experience, that even if it sounds good on studio monitors, it may sound awful in say car stereo.

I wonder what professionals are doing when they are mixing. What techniques they use to make it sound perfect on just about any stereo system.

@Thejohnny7band

Trust your ears and listen to the music. Listen on big speakers, small speakers, ipod earbuds, and headphones.

Definitely. Visual cues are nice to have, but I doubt anyone can master a tune without using ears. And I have found on my own experience, that even if it sounds good on studio monitors, it may sound awful in say car stereo.

I wonder what professionals are doing when they are mixing. What techniques they use to make it sound perfect on just about any stereo system.

All of the above. They listen on the finest tri-amped studio monitors and the dinky 20w Auratones. They listen in their car on the way home. They listen on their ipod at the golf course the next day and make notes. They let their wives listen. Does the music still pop? Does it impact the listener? Is it really ready? Once it is printed and released there are no more takes.

I would agree with RGM on this. Everyone has a different palette and views. One thing I do know. You cannot polish poo. Mastering, mixing is the sum of all of it's parts. It really begins before it begins.
The Digital age will never change one thing. EARS. Well not now anyway.

The point is that if it does not have the highs/lows. (If any) no amount of tweaking at the end will finish off something that wasn't written properly and painfully worked on at the start.
Best wishes
Chippy

I suggest you get on over to the forums at homerecording.com - plenty of great advice there, and some good ears will comment on your mixes - if you are diligent and comment on others'.

You may be recording too hot - first step, digitally, is make sure your peaks stay low, around -18 to -12 dB is good. No need to record hotter and no need to mix to -6dB, either (I didn't quite get the 'setting your faders to -5 part). The more headroom you give for mastering, the better. You should not have to add EQ and compression to every track when mixing - if you record things well, then all you may need to do is tweak each track. What DAW do you use?
There are no set rules for mastering - all depends on the mix itself.
Using someone else to master not only gets another set of (good) ears on the music, but chances are their monitoring is better - better speakers, better listening environment.
The guy who just mastered my new CD (spendourmastering.com) was able to clear up a lot of low bass problems that I couldn't discern in my listening situation.

Oy, all this tech talk makes my eyeballs roll backwards and my head spin like Reagan McNeel (in the exorcist)

I'd just hire someone that professionals use and fuggghettaboutit!!


(not that I think you should stop discussing it, if it blows your dress up)