Apologies if there is already a thread on this subject somewhere. I didn't find it.
I've been doing bits of home recording for about 6 years now. I don't have fabulous gear or treated rooms or whatever, but I've picked up and developed new skills and most importantly, I've enjoyed it.
However, 'mastering' remains a bit of a mystery to me. I get the impression that it is mainly concerned with achieving a tonal balance (with EQ) and adjusting the dynamic range (with compression and limiting) - this can be for a single track, or across several tracks of an album.
But that's really as far as my knowledge goes, so can anyone enlighten me? I guess I'm looking for clarification of the basic point of mastering, but also in what techniques, tools and strategies folks use to acheive it.
......and my interest is really from the point of learning, so "send it to a mastering engineer" is not a good answer.
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I haven't really got my head around mastering either. I'm a bit of a philistine and mastering to me mainly consists of putting Voxengo Elephant on the master track to make it louder, plus maybe some EQing with IK Tracks CS Prog EQ 1A which gives some tracks an extra something.
I make decisions about about the mix as I go along and try to be selective about the frequency space and time space occupied by the instruments/parts so it doesn't all mush together, but I feel I need to learn more about mastering, so I'm interested in this thread as well.
In essence the idea is simple - Make a track sound the same regardless of how or where it is played. So making sure it sounds roughly the same on a laptop, a hi-fi, in the car, on an ipod etc.
Modern mastering is also about imparting a certain flavor or tonality / balance to the overall mix, gelling it altogether and, of course (sadly) loudness.
I recommend checking out Ian Shepherd on YouTube.
BTW, take what I say with a pinch of salt, I am FAR from a mastering engineer but recently had a few people approach asking if I would master their projects. You can do it at home to a reasonable standard and, just like mixing, it is mainly about technique and skill / art as opposed to gear.
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The main reason for mastering is a different set of ears in a different room.
If you stay in the same room with the same sets of ears then what is the point?
I've mixed a few albums now- I always get a mastering engineer involved if the budget allows it.
If it doesn't then I have a couple of engineer friends who have their own studios who help out and I've done the same for them.
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Spotify, Apple et al
Nowadays with Mp3 etc - objective professional set of ears to fix issues, deliver consistent volume over the sequencing and fix eq issues caused in the mixing process.
Professional mixes have very little alteration generally.
If you mix your own music you are effectively doing some "mastering" by applying limiting & eq on the stereo bus and may not need a mastering engineer. (I didnt use one on our EP for budget reasons, examples here
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Its flying a bit blind however as there are many issues that may be impossible to recognise in a normal home studio monitoring situation.
“Theory is something that is written down after the music has been made so we can explain it to others”– Levi Clay
Well an audio clip is worth a thousand words. Loved the clips you posted. The music and sound is great on my system.
The last pro album mixed and mastered at my studio was also mastered at Abbey road. The Abbey road master is slightly brighter and a whisker louder, that's about it
My old speakers didn't reveal harsh upper mid/treble frequency resonances, so I used to turn over mixes to get mastered where the engineer had to put some narrow notches between say 2.5 and 4k to stop it sounding harsh on some systems.
They also didn't reveal subtle stuff like trying out different tape formulations on Waves' J37, and setting attack/release times was a bit of a struggle.
Upgraded my speakers, and now I can hear and react to those things. It's just about the mix being more robust out there in the world where you have no control over what it'll be played through. I find it so much easier to mix when I only have to worry about making the mix sound good to me, rather than "good to me with the proviso that I'm making allowances for the speakers".
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Anyway, as @Danny1969 says, for me as a home recordist without the budget (or commercial justification) to use a professional mastering person, it sounds like there is not much else I need to worry about beyond mixing my tracks (and checking them on as many different playback devices as possible). If I ever get as far as releasing a number of tracks as a collection then there will be the task of making them sound like they live together, but in terms of individual tracks it really seems to be a case of just mixing them.
I just had the moment of realisation that it's been years and I could re-record my whole album and it would sound a lot better (drums, bass, EQ, thump, timing etc) - but that would take even MORE time. Highly depressing!!
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A good way for you to learn would be to pay to have a couple of tracks mastered professionally and then watch/read some tutorials online about doing it yourself and see if you can get yours to sound close to or better than the pro masters.
http://music.tutsplus.com/series/mastering-you-can-do-it-yourself-premium--audio-21699
http://music.tutsplus.com/categories/mixing-mastering
171 articles on various aspects of mixing and mastering, on proprietary software, etc
Sorry @thomasross20 ~ I think they are not for you ~ at over a minute each to read and digest !
(Sometimes it is worth the time, and enjoying the journey, your pleasure in your destination may well be increased too, just sayin')
Really excellent re-post of your Reddit article above @Cirrus
If I've got something I need to do to a higher level I send it to a pro.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mastering-Audio-Science-Bob-Katz/dp/0240808371
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There's multiple layers to that.
First is your monitoring setup. Many people have untreated rooms that are multi function (i.e. not just music rooms) and there are going to be things you don't hear properly in there. If you load up some kind of sine wave plugin and slowly sweep from whatever your monitors start from to 200hz at your listening volume you'll hear some frequencies being louder and some quieter. A pro mastering engineer is going to have a much flatter and more accurate room and that is a big part of the tools of the trade.
The second is just experience. You have to train your ear to hear resonances in things, or when things are clashing. Distorted electric guitars in particular often have resonances in them that impact on the clarity of the whole mix, but a lot of people just can't pick them out until they've trained their ear to do so.