****Mastering Challenge Vote Thread****

[Compyfox]

There's still time to participate? Like mix and send in? I'm out of town till Sunday, but chances are that I'll join the fun.

Any prices in there, or is it just for the fame?

[eduardo_b]

There's still time to participate? Like mix and send in? I'm out of town till Sunday, but chances are that I'll join the fun.

Any prices in there, or is it just for the fame?

Fame? You mean here, on the planet KVR?

[Geoff242]

There's still time to participate? Like mix and send in? I'm out of town till Sunday, but chances are that I'll join the fun.

Any prices in there, or is it just for the fame?

Please read the first post in this thread carefully. The intention of this thread is solely to vote on the submitted versions, NOT to submit more versions. Submitting another version may help you cast light on the a point you might try to make regarding of some of the entries, but it serves no other purpose. I have committed to the original 11 participants that they would be the ones the winner would be chosen from, and I don't intend on changing this. There aren't any prizes or fame involved.

The ship has sailed, so to speak, to have an entry officially considered. If there is interest in doing another round of mastering competition in the near future, I have some other old tunes that I could dust off, but that can be discussed later.

I appreciate everyone's interest in this thread so far. But please show consideration and respect to the entrants and the rules in the first post. Regardless of how bad of a job you think they did.

[eduardo_b]

I have committed to the original 11 participants that they would be the ones the winner would be chosen from, and I don't intend on changing this. There aren't any prizes or fame involved.

I don't think any of us (speaking for myself but also probably Kim and bduffy) had any intention of being considered for this and would fully expect you to award the...the...what! no prizes or fame? to whomever you want.

[mauseoleum]

Hi girls!

http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/3/25/ ... e_mstr.mp3

a quickie strictly 4-FUN

list:
-duffy
-kim
-aeneu
-nacarat
-ultramarin
-indigo
-parse
-russet
-vermillon
-mazarine
-morel
-zinober
-nigine


TBH I didn't listen through all of them from start to finish..
(did actually anybody do that?)

[bduffy]

Yeah, sorry Geoff242: we're kind of messing up your thing here. I'll do my bit and vote proper and stop mucking about.

eduardo: boy, that's one tasteful, subtle master!

[eduardo_b]

Yeah, sorry Geoff242: we're kind of messing up your thing here. I'll do my bit and vote proper and stop mucking about.

eduardo: boy, that's one tasteful, subtle master!

Thanks. I'm just so damn old school. Call me vintage with a capital V.

[Geoff242]

...fully expect you to award he...the...what! no prizes or fame? to whomever you want.

If I had prizes to give, I would be happy to do it. The best I can do is to post the winner to my personal website (www.entiumweb.com) and to last.fm, and give credit to the winner wherever I can.

Since there are no tangible prizes, I have to do my best to protect what they do win IMO, and that is experience. So, I want to keep this thread on-topic and organized as possible in order to give these 11 guys the best experience and most valuable feedback as possible. I just ask that everyone respect that.

@eduardo_b - In response to the post below this one.... You can't get me to break my own rules and go off topic, but nice try. There is a thread in the computer setup forum on this topic that I would be happy to reply to if you post there.

[eduardo_b]

to post the winner to my personal website (www.entiumweb.com)

Completely off topic, but tell us about using three video monitors, and what card do you use?

[Kim Lajoie]

I have to do my best to protect what they do win IMO, and that is experience. So, I want to keep this thread on-topic and organized as possible in order to give these 11 guys the best experience and most valuable feedback as possible. I just ask that everyone respect that.

Have you thought about running a workshop, similar to the mix workshop I'm running? I find that people get a lot of value from being able to submit a version, receive detailed feedback, and then have an opportunity to resubmit. Of course, it would be more difficult than a mix workshop, because mastering is a much more subtle craft.

Actually, come to think of it, my mix workshop will be addressing mastering in a few weeks anyway. I've kept the workshop closed for the last couple of months because each week builds on the previous week's work. However, it might be reasonable to bring new people on board for the final week (mastering). It's a pretty quick turnaround time though - I usually publish about a week after I provide my initial notes, so to get timely feedback (and an opportunity to resubmit) people generally need to get their work to me within a few days. Maybe I could extend it to two weeks? A lot of people would probably get to it at the last minute anyway, but it'd give more time for those who are serious and want to do more revisions. Would any of the participants in Geoff challenge (or anyone else in this thread) be interested in such a thing?

-Kim.

[Dean Aka Nekro]

I have to do my best to protect what they do win IMO, and that is experience. So, I want to keep this thread on-topic and organized as possible in order to give these 11 guys the best experience and most valuable feedback as possible. I just ask that everyone respect that.

Have you thought about running a workshop, similar to the mix workshop I'm running? I find that people get a lot of value from being able to submit a version, receive detailed feedback, and then have an opportunity to resubmit. Of course, it would be more difficult than a mix workshop, because mastering is a much more subtle craft.

Actually, come to think of it, my mix workshop will be addressing mastering in a few weeks anyway. I've kept the workshop closed for the last couple of months because each week builds on the previous week's work. However, it might be reasonable to bring new people on board for the final week (mastering). It's a pretty quick turnaround time though - I usually publish about a week after I provide my initial notes, so to get timely feedback (and an opportunity to resubmit) people generally need to get their work to me within a few days. Maybe I could extend it to two weeks? A lot of people would probably get to it at the last minute anyway, but it'd give more time for those who are serious and want to do more revisions. Would any of the participants in Geoff challenge (or anyone else in this thread) be interested in such a thing?

-Kim.

Yes i would be up for participating if time permits: always something new to learn and thank you for the offer kim

I enjoyed all the non-voting entries but still can not decide which one i prefer and same goes for the 11 voting ones:

foobar and eyes closed with shuffle/random play order i think i will try tomorrow and then another listen through with good old pen and paper to tick and cross all of them should do the trick

Some thoughts and a couple of questions:

*The area for me that was the biggest challenge was to tame the bass guitar level, it is very well played and the tone of the bass is nice so trying to retain that whilst taming the low mid-range without 'scooping' out too much was my main focus and secondly to add a little level or 'crack' to the snare drum without taking away from the vocal and also bringing out some more of the acoustic guitar jangle again without adding any boosting any area that may have added raspy or harsh frequencies to the rather charming vocal recording so cuts were made and i did all the track in one hour (broke into 2 half-hour sessions) to go purely on instinct*

Just Out of interest what did you folk whom had a crack at the track find the most challenging part of the mix whether you are in the vote or not?

Best regards all

Nekro

[bmanic]

EDIT: File should work now!

Hi again, it's Simon.. well not really, but the bad guy who speaketh the truth, well, not really that either.

Anyhow, I'm glad this has brought up some more conversations around the different mastering approaches here. I've now done a master of my own in the studio (I couldn't get anything decent with headphones at home, it's a tough track to master) so let me go through the process and my philosophy of mastering a track like "Captivate Me".

Disclaimer: These are MY opinions and should be taken as such. No personal offense is meant to the creator of the song, the musicians, the producer, the mixing engineer nor the people in this thread. However, I am Finnish and that means that I speak my mind by default. I will try to be as "nice" as possible but as a person who doesn't like reading British music magazines for the very reason of them being too politically correct all the time, I cannot guarantee that egos aren't hurt. So, with that out of the way, lets begin:

The Track, "Captivate Me", is what I would call a fairly typical "salvage job" kind of session. You do whatever it takes to get it to sound decent. It'll never sound perfect, perhaps not even good but you have an obligation, as a mastering engineer, to make it sound as good as you can.
In an ideal world I would simply call the producer/mixing engineer and say that it needs to be re-recorded and remixed. The playing is, quite frankly, rather poor. The quality of the instruments themselves or the recording chain is also rather poor which has made it pretty difficult for the mixing engineer to get any real "warmth" into the mix. This might be partly the reason for the amount of bass and energy in the 80 to 300hz range. Perhaps an effort to warm up the track?

Probably the biggest problem in the track overall is the lack of proper compression (or playing) of the bass guitar. It is very uneven with the dynamics all over the place. Unfortunately there is not really any cure for this, it needs to be fixed in the mix. This is what I feel, most of you in this thread, "screwed up". There is this feeling of "I must control that bass guitar no matter what!!!", this is not good for the overall picture. Even if you successfully use a multiband compressor or some other aggressive means to tame the bass you will have pretty much destroyed what little there is left of the life in the complete recording. Leave that bass alone. Let it be wild.. there must be a reason why the mix engineer left it as it is (perhaps he didn't own a compressor?).

There are some obvious resonances in bass throughout the track which are either room resonances, crappy microphone resonances (from the body or casing of the microphone) or resonances from the instrument/cabinet itself. By simply turning down the worst offenders (the fundamental + harmonics!) with a sharp EQ cut that you automate to tackle the worst parts, you will have half a victory already! Don't be afraid of using ridiculous amounts of EQ on a "salvage job" like this mix. I used -9dB EQ in certain places!!

Once you have the bass under control, you will notice some other problems. The most prominent, at least to my ears, was the crappy reverb/room sound that had an especially nasty sound at around 1.5 to 3kHz. What to do? Well, this is what we have Mid/Side EQs for! Simply load up a mid/side eq and cut with the side section around 1 to 3 kHz and you'll immediately notice some ringy harsh crappiness disappearing. However, there is a trade-off (in mastering, everything is always a trade-off), you'll lose some precious stereo width and the track will sound a bit more "mono". This is not at all a bad thing in a sparse arrangement like this song, at least not in my opinion. This is what I call a song to make you sing, not to admire the production so screw stereo width. Who needs that!?

Finally, after doing some basic fine tuning of the general frequency spectrum (there was too much energy around 5-6kHz, some nasty stuff in the low-mids, around 500Hz and a slight nasality/metallic removal at around 1.2kHz or so) you can slap on that wonderful thing called Spitfish (a de-esser, go get it! It's FREE and used by big name mastering engineers all over the world, for a good reason). With spitfish, after carefully tuning it to around 11kHz (hard to say for sure because of the lacking metering) you can make it nicely and easily take away some of those harsh hihats and rides and of course, the esses.

After this, add some custom "mojo" plugins/hardware to get a little fairy dust. In my case it was Nebula, running some soon to be released custom programs. I also had my trusty mastering compressor which is a dual-mono Volcano 2 plugin with the preset "Subtle mastering 1" (which will be included in the forthcoming update to the plugin). I also had another compressor, a Millennia TCL-2 tube compressor program, sampled with the Sintefex FX8000, with a slow attack (around 80ms) and fast release (around 2ms), this is the "punch" that you hear in my version. You can easily do the same with plugins like MjCompressor (free), Pro-C (not free but awesome!), Volcano 2 (costs $$ and is tricky to use as compressor), Roughrider, oh wait, you can't.. it's got that pesky lowpass.

Anyhow, it's not the tools that do the job. Actually, that is not completely true. You do need a good monitoring environment and monitoring equipment! There really is no shortcut to this and the reason is simple: You cannot fix what you cannot hear.

So, after all this monologue let me post the master I did so that you can all tell me how shitty it sounds!


"Captivate Me", mastered by yours truly.

-------------
Selfcritique:

( This is an important part for me and I always do this, in written form, after I've finished a project and I have a listen at the results the next day. I'll write this critique to myself here for you all to read so you get an idea of what I do after every project. )

- Bass: Huuuge need to control it but I must resist! Urgh, there is still too much bass in the track but removing it would make the already rather harsh highs sound even worse. Flattening it is not an option either.

- Mids: Ok I guess. I was a bit lazy in automating the EQ, especially the later part of the song, where that guitar "solo" starts playing, it could have needed a bit more fine tuning to remove those pesky resonances!

- Hihgs: ouch! This is always my weakest link. Are my ears getting old? Was I too fatigued yesterday? Quite possibly. I would like to find that annoying harshness. It's somewhere there.. around 12kHz and some more at 6-8kHz. Actually, it's all over the place! Arrrgh!

- Dynamics: I'm proud of myself that I didn't completely kill that bass. I'm not so proud of myself that I made the whole track so darn loud. Oh damn you Elephant version 3.0. You sound soooo sweet when abused! It's not my fault I tell ya! It's em record producers and.. and..

- Overall: Fairly balanced master. Works on my home system and the kitchen radio. Sounded good in the studio and also when listening outside the studio door. Still perhaps too much bass.. but I like bass! Overall, another satisfying salvage job. I think the band will be happy with the results.

------------------

That's it. Seriously, I write that kind of stuff to myself. Am I insane? Perhaps.

Cheers!
bManic

[eduardo_b]

Would any of the participants in Geoff challenge (or anyone else in this thread) be interested in such a thing?

-Kim.

I'd certainly be interested. How would we know when this was taking place? By signing up for this module?

[eduardo_b]

Anyhow, it's not the tools that do the job. Actually, that is not completely true. You do need a good monitoring environment and monitoring equipment! There really is no shortcut to this and the reason is simple: You cannot fix what you cannot hear.

All true. Given how varied the tools used by mastering engineers is, it's really down to hearing and knowing how to use what you have to work with. Your attention to detail is good, but it can result in a lot of time trying to correct mix issues. How much time do you think you put into this?

[hackenslash]

Just Out of interest what did you folk whom had a crack at the track find the most challenging part of the mix whether you are in the vote or not?

The biggest thing for me was the BVs. They are a bit cluttered and overly loud, for me. They were fighting for the same space as the lead vocal, and it was pretty much impossible to do anything about it. The other thing was the bass. It was very chunky, and based on some of the comments I've read concerning my version, it seems I may have overcompensated a smidge.

I'd love to have had a go at mixing this, as that's certainly more my bag than mastering. [/list][/code]