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OK, I'm having a lot of trouble mastering my tracks. They all end up with a low quality sound. Even after a lot of tweaking they still sound very low tech and basically crap. Can anyone give me some tips on mastering or even point me to a good resource of tutorials or knowledge base type articles that could help me learn the art of mastering? I'm sure with better mastering my tracks would be 100% better. Not masterpieces but still a lot more listenable :) Thanks, giginger |
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What program(s) are you using, Chris? There was some dude who linked to some interesting articles several months back, but since the SEARCH function is still on the blink, then yabadabadon't |
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Stick the bass lines in a pencil sharpener and take away the raspberries |
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Oh my god, it's The Shoe People. I had hoped I would never remember them again! |
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Reason 3.0 at the moment. The new mastering suite has helped a bit but I'm still crap :D I'll have a search for those mastering articles. |
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... reason THREE? What's it like? |
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if I can give you one piece of advice then my advice would be DON'T master your own tracks. mastering isn't something you can learn in 5 minutes. it requires quite some training. allot of people think mastering is some kind of magic thing that can make your tracks sound very good. the thing is. you have to make sure your track sounds good before it's mastered. mastering is just some kind of polish. just to add some details to a track. if your premastered track is poorly mixed, mastering won't do it any good. you will probably ruin it even more with those plugins. so I'd be very carefull with using these master plugins because if you don't know how to use them properly you will make your track sound worse. if I where you I'd learn how to apply proper eq, compression, reverb, etc.. to your tracks. if you can do that properly you track won't need that much mastering. ofcourse, I'm not saying you should try to learn how to master. I'm just saying that don't put all your attention on mastering because the important parts happen before the mastering. am I sounding like an elitist? I don't know anything about mastering. but I do know that when you don't know about mastering you should stay away from it. unless you want to learn to master ofcourse :D |
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Basslines; 1 try inverting the left or right channel and then offsetting the phase slightly. You will find using this technique it seems to amplify the bass channel nearly twice as much, but it takes up less... space... so you can make it quiter, leaving you more room for other audio. Also, 2Low Pass Filter Beats; 3 see tip '1', 4 C-O-M-P-R-E-S-S-I-O-N / G-A-T-I-N-G, 5 don't be afraid to check out the presets on any EQ plugins you have. chances are, no one is going to critisize you for stealing the 'european electro beat' preset on the waves ren 6 band parametric eq or anything like that. Pads; 6 see tip 1 and tip 4 Misc 7 Good mastering tools are the iZotope Ozone and T-Racks (I would suggest T-Racks before ozone, cause its much easier to use, and sounds great). 8Distortion (overdrive, clipping, bitrate reduction) is a quick and easy way to expand the strength of your sounds, and can disquise any mistakes you made when synthesizing or sampling many sounds. Its also helpfull if you are working with various samples with differing bit rates, cause it can camoflage the higher quality samples with the lower ones. 9Don't be afraid to master at quieter levels. You can always normalize everything after. Leave it up to your audience whether or not it should sound loud. 10Sonic Foundry wave hammer is a great tool for making the levels sound just right after everything has been mastered, just before it is put to disc. Well. Thats all I can think of right now. Don't know any good websites to give you for mastering techniqes. Stock up on as many 'waves' plugins as you can, because they are hands down the best mastering tools you can get. |
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I said the word "mastering" allot |
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Ahhh. You are using reason. That is part of the root of the problem. 11 if you are worried about your sounds sounding like crap, run reason through rewire into a program like cubase or VSTrack (a rewire mastering suite without the seqencer or multitracker). Or just stop using reason altogether. The rendering engine of reason sucks. When you run reason through rewire, it uses the engine of the host program. |
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how about waves? i just started this too for making my cd's sound good i guess is knowledgeble mixing is important first, then mastering, but really one goes into the other dont go over 0 db |
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Taxidermist: Thank you very much for that extensive post. All stuff I shall try out. Is there a program you would recommend me exporting wavs into so that I can then use the plugins that you recommended. That's one thing I don't like about Reason. The lack of plugin support... isnieZot: That's the most useful thing I've ever heard from you. I was using the term mastering to describe the mixing of all the tracks including EQing and reverb etc action. That's what I need to learn :) Marlowe: Very nice, more of the same really but with refinements. Refills are easier to search through. There's enw mastering toys which are fun but I haven't got the hang of them yet I'm awaiting my manual from Propellerheads as they sent me the upgrade pack for some reason. |
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You've partially answered my question. I like Reason but I have too agree that the rendering leaves something to be desired. I'm never sure if it's just me or not but the tracks seem to sound different in Reason than when I've rendered them out. |
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Cheers big. I'll give that site a searching in my lunchbreak. I only riskm disciplinary action for xltronic :D |
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someone link the sanguine topic on this, i wanna read it |
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I'm waiting for more of these... |
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i read up on 0db there and limiting -0.2 db is the way to go apparantly |
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You don't really need to export them. Through rewire, you can run reason through programs such as cubase, vstack (the one I would suggest for your purposes), or even fruityloops. It even lets you run each and every synth through its own channels, so you don't need to worry about compressing everything together. If you want to export the wavs of individual channels though, use adobe's 'Audition' (also known as cooledit). Big; waves makes amazing software. You are crazy if you don't use it. :) |
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I never do any mastering. Now what? |
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yea i installed the diamond version: 130 new plugins, yay |
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Although seeing as each of those plugins has a sterio, mono, and mono to sterio version (with a couple having other additional things) then you only really have 40. Although those 40 are going to be the best things that have ever happened to you aside from discovering girls and fruityloops. ;) |
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:) mm, gurls |
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You're too Avant Garde, that's why. You and Qrter. |
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Badass! |
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Some fantastic tips here. Thank you people. I knew you people would come through. Darius: That's because you're a git! |
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To be honest i think that people depend on the mastering too much. If the mixes are good very little will need to be done to them. So i am agreeing on the fact that the mixes need to sound good before you can master them. |
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even better the sounds that make the music |
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Well that goes without saying it you know... |
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ja, but recently i have to apply but little compression, but that's also because of my better soundcard |
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Cool for you then! =) |
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tnx :D |
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I disagree, a bit. I've heard recordings a band had made that were pretty mediocre and then heard the exact same recording when mastered by someone who has an uncanny ear for sound - one of those people that has exact hearing and never makes any music of his own but just masters other peoples music. it suddenly sounded amazingly good. very good mastering can SAVE a record. |
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Clipping is god. |
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this months Music Tech magazine has a really great little article on mastering. it breaks it down to compression, eq, limiting steps. i have found it quite useful! |
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i totally agree. at the very least, mastering can bring the overall volume of a track up so that all the intricate details are not drowned out by the bass or whatever. but it's also true, often if crap goes into the mastering process, mastered crap comes out. ! |
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from what I heard, the master-master in this instance had to pull every trick he could think of but it has paid off. the difference is pretty incredible. |
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I just use my EARS. |
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can I have your EARS? |
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I just realised EARS is an anagram of ARSE. |
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I don't want your ARSE, btw. |
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You can have any bit of me you damn well like, and you know it. Audio Research Sex Engine |
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freudian slip! |
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is he pro? what a great job that would be... i've seen where the mastering job kinda ruins what could have been a great album. For example, that DJ Dangermouse "Gray Album." i always kinda thought that the concept was good, but the quality of sound is so mushy, if it had been mastered well, it would have been a lot more impressive. granted, he's using old beatles samples but still...! |
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I think he is. he does the mastering for a lot of my town's bands. another example of Mastering Gone Wrong is Jega's "geometry" which got fucked when mastered - apparently the original sounded a lot tighter. since then Mike P never let's someone outside of Mu master his records. |
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This thread is very interesting, yes. I am looking at getting my appalling tracks mastered for vinyl release. There's no way I'm going to do it because I just haven't got the set up and I don't know how to do it. Has anyone sent their stuff off to be mastered, any recommendations? What to look for in a Masterer? etc. |
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Send them to someone with a cheerleading dog. |
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Mastering is a black art. My mate does a lot of mastering for all the Notts house dudes. Not a clue how it works though. Give it to Nilz@The Exchange. He does a good job. Or Guy@The Exchange. As recommended by Max Tundra. |
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christ i've been mastering all year now |
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yeah, you probably wouldn't get much out of this topic for that anyway.. vinyl mastering is apparently much harder, or it does at least have its own techniques.. you have to account for the lower bass and all that... don't take this as 100% true, though; I have only read very superficially on this. |
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I used to agonize over mastering so much. Then I realized what I should be agonizing over was the mix (more so than already), and then on top of that agonize over the mastering. Then I got a reel-to-reel, and now I barely have to think about it! D |
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