Mixing & mastering

[fungusyoung]

I've just agreed to try and mix and master our band's debut. Some quick background... it's basically me and a co-writer/creator (he's a much better musician, I've done most of the writing) in the band full time. His thought was to outsource this work. Honestly, I just can't see doing this at our level. This is supposed to be a hobby, and if I'm going to drop more dough into band endeavors it should be for gear!

I'll take any and all tips you have. I'm basically a rookie with some experience mixing, but very little on the mastering side. This may end up not working out in the end, but I'd like to give it a shot. We have and will continue to record everything on either a Tascam 4 track or directly into Cool Edit Pro. All the WAV files will be worked on in Cool Edit Pro. I'll be using Izotope's Ozone for mastering.

I'm mostly interested in lessons learned, common mistakes, any thoughts on what works well, what doesn't, etc... could use more pointers on mastering, but I'll take whatever you've got to offer.

[chickenpicker]

Try googling for answers too - there's loads of good advice freely available.

[cacibi]

This may sound lame but - it's a lot like building a guitar. Small changes and going slow will do more for you than trying to undo a lot of big changes.

Save your mixes often - and as separate files if possible - however your DAW best lets you archive your progress so that you can go back to a previous state in the mix if needed.

Start off with some of the more obvious stuff - drums, bass and vocals tend to have pretty standard positions in the stereo field - for example. So getting a good basic mix started with these elements can build a foundation for the rest of the mix.

Less is more - especially where reverb is concerned. Reverb has the psychoacoustic side-effect of making things sound farther away, so you will have to increase the level to compensate.

You can get pretty close without it, but some mix automation is bound to be needed.

Before you get to far into it - make sure you know all the specs of the final media format that your duplication facility will need.

I'm becoming a big fan of Paul White's books which are available on Amazon, here's some of his online tips:

Paul White Articles

[Tim Armstrong]

Mixing is fascinating and fun. One tip: there's a natural tendency (at least, in my case ) to keep tweaking e.q., add compression, etc. While this can result in better sounds, it can also result in sonic disaster, kinda like adding spice to a sauce and then trying to save the flavor by adding some other ingredient to compensate. I managed to make a drum mix sound really unnatural, and then someone suggested I turn off all the plug-ins and BAM, it sounded great!

As for mastering, I do my damnedest to get my mix sounding as good as it can possibly sound, then, if I have the budget for it, I send it to a pro mastering engineer. I feel that real "mastering" requires a lot more than just a so-called mastering program, it takes a different set of ears along with really superior gear and monitoring equipment. I'm not likely to be able to improve anything with a software program using my same speakers and my own ears...

Cheers, Tim

[StuH]

Here's a neat articles on mastering I've tucked away. It's from O'Reilly but don't get turned off by the title it's pretty informative.

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/orei...udio_1200.html

If it was me I would be doing everthing within Cool Edit Pro and recording at 24 bit 44.1 if you can. I use plugins alot and a habbit I used to have was using a tank to hunt a rabbit. In context placing very complex plugins on single tracks when it was not necessary. Keep it simple.

[Bonneville Bruce]

Great topic.

This is where I'm at right now with two albums at the final mix, ready to master stage of the projects. I have very little experience in mastering and very little equipment with which to do it. I have been reading many resources on the topic for the last three years, and I understand the basics.

These projects are at the point where I'm earning about $0.25/hour, which is to say that I'm doing it for my own edification.

I'm using Mackie Traction 2 with the plug-ins bundled with it. I realize that this is far from adequate, tool-wise, but there are really no other (free) choices.

The original sources were made at 16-bit in Cakewalk Pro 9 on an old Windows bucket. The Mackie Traction is on my year-old dual 2.3 Gig Mac G5, a mix-ready machine if there ever was one.

In adddition, my recording partner does not believe in mastering. He thinks it is a waste of our time and the clients' resources. He is also a control freak, who sees changing his final mix akin to chipping off the nose of Michangelo's Pieta with a hammer. He also doesn't see the need for accurate mixing monitors, because no one will be listening to these productions on those kind of speakers, so why bother.

Given these parameters, what would you do?
1) Try to get the best mastering possible with the equipment at hand.
2) Let it be and go with the final mix, without a mastering step, as my partner wants to do.
or,
3) Tell the clients that they'd be better off saving their money and have the mastering done by someone with the wherewithal and experience.

Thanks for listening.

Bonneville Bruce
Dithering, compressed and side-chained on the Sunnyslope, Idaho.

[Tedecaster]

Originally Posted by Bonneville Bruce

Great topic.

Given these parameters, what would you do?
1) Try to get the best mastering possible with the equipment at hand.
2) Let it be and go with the final mix, without a mastering step, as my partner wants to do.
or,
3) Tell the clients that they'd be better off saving their money and have the mastering done by someone with the wherewithal and experience.

I have NO experience with mastering but I think it makes a huge difference. My thought if you're doing this for hire, would be to have your clients send out for mastering, based on the reasons Tim mentioned.

For your own education you can also master it yourself & see what you get.

And even better yet, get them to send it out & go along with the project to the mastering studio for a real tutorial.

[fungusyoung]

Originally Posted by Tedecaster

I have NO experience with mastering but I think it makes a huge difference. My thought if you're doing this for hire, would be to have your clients send out for mastering, based on the reasons Tim mentioned.

I'd have to agree. I'm thinking about concentrating all of my efforts on mixing and then subbing out the mastering. To Tim's point, another set of ears really makes sense. There's a bunch of guys on the Tape Op board http://messageboard.tapeop.com/ with the right experience, great gear and at least a few are very reasonable.

Thanks to everyone so far for the pointers and links!

[Bigugh]

From experience, my one bit of advice is actually pre-mix: make sure you are happy with your tracks before you mix. If you hear something you don't like, the idea you can 'fix it in the mix' is a trap. On the last album I did, from the very first playback when we started laying rhythm tracks, I didn't like the tone/tuning of the drummer's bass drum. I figured we could fix it later so didn't say anything. When we got to mixing, there was no good tweak for it, and with 16 songs in the can, it was too late.

[woodman]

pro mastering can make the sound so much bigger -- worth it if you've got the dough. but to me, even home software mastering is better than none at all. all listeners won't hear your raw mix as the work of art your partner seems to.

[Larry F]

I'm always suspicious of people like your partner, who claim that a given musical activity is not worth the effort. He doesn't sound very musical to me.

[stratology]

For mixing, try a top-down approach: start with the most important part of the music (e.g. lead vocals), make it sound good, and then build around it.

Decent monitors are important, so you can hear what you are doing...

[eddiewagner]

Originally Posted by woodman

but to me, even home software mastering is better than none at all.

that is right! we had a pretty well-running band in the 80ies and had a pro-mastered, expensive record on the market. if i compare the sound of that record to the stuff i do at home now with my basic garageband-program, i am more and more impressed by what is possible today.
i would say, that a good recording and mastering program today, can get really good results for demos and a local market. and you learn more and more.
eddie

[teledude66]

When ya'll say home mastering, what specific programs are ya'll talking about? Cubase has a "mastering" effects group, but they're the same effects that I use for mixing. Any ideas?

[Bonneville Bruce]

Originally Posted by teledude66

When ya'll say home mastering, what specific programs are ya'll talking about? Cubase has a "mastering" effects group, but they're the same effects that I use for mixing. Any ideas?

There are digital mastering software and plugins like the Mackie Traction 2 recording software that has some "mastering" plug-ins like "Final Mix", which has both compression and EQ capabilities as well level-in/level-out functions, and "Mono six-band EQ" that has the six bands of EQ and other powerful implementing features. There are also frequency analyzers to see where the energy is in the mix.

Mastering is mostly done on stereo wave or .aiff files of the combined original recorded and synthesized tracks that make up the many pieces of a recording. In addition to EQing, panning, level setting and compression, mastering involves clean-up of intros and outros, rounding off spikes/clips, fading, banding, dithering and any other tweeking it takes to get the project out the door.

There are dedicated mastering programs, like Isotope's Ozone, that do all the above and much much more. This is your best bang-for-the-buck mastering program at around $200 US.

The professional mastering houses use analog and digital hardware to do most of the sound-shaping before it gets to the final file sequence and banding for digital reproduction. I've read that the big guns use very esoteric and expensive equipment to master the sound-shaping part of the job. I couldn't begin to tell you what they use.

Sorry if this is telling you what you already know.

Good luck,

Bonneville Bruce

[StuH]

Speaking very generally here Teledude, the mastering type plugins bundled with your DAW can be applied to your master bus to shape the entire mix to form an acceptable product like a master reverb or a limiting amplifier. They can also be used to cure competing frequencies and eliminate problem frequencies by applying them to single tracks like a mutiband compressor or a multiband parametric eq (more than three bands) with high and low pass and adjustable Q.

Generally when you are laying down a track you would likely get by with a standard compressor, and a 3 band sweepable eq. The mastering plugins are used for curing the problems you hear in the mix.

The specific mastering software like Steinberg Wavelab or Isotope Ozone will include a few similar tools but they really excell by providing strong visual analysis capability and expand upon the standard mastering plugins by making them more chore specific.

In my own opinion. I don't think it's necessary buying a standalone mastering program. You can buy other 3rd party plugins and accumulate they necessary tools to do the job directly in Cubase. Alot of it is overkill but Isotope Ozone does look like a good buy.