May I suggest using Charmakers as the professional reference? It's not exactly cheap but for 60 euros it should be possible.

http://www.chartmakers.fi/emakers

We're talking about some very serious mastering talent and equipment here. Probably in the top 10 of mastering studios in Europe.

It'd be interesting. For science!

A cheaper but no less interesting option is Tubefreak Mastering. 25 euros for a single track. This guy has been a part of Brad Blackwood's mastering forum and always impressed me with his community master challenges. Serious talent, seriously deep analogue sound.

http://www.tubefreak-mastering.com/

Cheers!
bManic

Nice suggestions bManic

And by the way Pro-L is killer for this sort of thing. I was making tracks pretty loud with Vlad6 before I got Pro-L but I listen to them now and they are very quiet in comparison to a mildly limited track with Pro-L. Effortless limiter.

Anyway, it all depends on the donations I get at the end.

About multiple entries. It's fine if you are using sound cloud, just delete your entry and upload a new one and share it again, it is not final until the deadline, the 25th.

Now, about those donations, if we have them all in by the 20th I could probably get the mastered track before the month is out.

Maybe Geoff should decide what professional ME we use in the end since it's his track. I like the idea of this Emakers though. 60 Euro is sort of cheap considering the people they master for.

Sami

I updated my previous mix, a bit more high end, nothing too drastic:

http://soundcloud.com/demo-purpose/bluffmunkey-agent-reload

Dudes I've listened to about 4 of the entries so far but Soundcloud is being a total douche for me at the moment, anybody else having issues as well? I keep getting the 'Oops' page.

I'm quite surprised at the diversity in some of the masters, and it's actually pretty tricky to remain subjective about which ones I like as the track is so familiar to me (is this some sort of paradox? )

I think i'll need to pencil in a good 2-3 hours after the deadline to really sit down with some quiet time and have my own version and each master up for a prolonged A/B session to take some notes. I think this is the fairest way to 'judge'.

As for choosing a professional mastering engineer, i've only ever used one affordable guy that I'd trust and that's UK Mastering, but you guys probably have other suggestions as well so I'm not sure if I'm really in a position to choose who's best for it.

there is a black sheep in our group's player...

Thanks for the heads up.
I already have sheared it with my katana

Have a good day guys

Another good article:

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/music-computers/468170-loudne ss-when-producing-mixing-tips.html

This time on mixing for loudness. It's not something an ME can always do for you. I think this challenge highlighted that for me. You are quite limited after the mix has been completed.

guys, i really hope to learn something from participating in this challenge. will there be feedback for everybody who send in a master?

Ok, so I gave it a try.. the cymbals at 2:30 have been destroyed in the source, so that'd be a "fix it in the mix" and I didn't feel like destroying them further.. I'm also probably disqualified from the challenge because all the "EQ" below refers to my in-development EQ plugin [edit: actually I released it], and all the "compression" is with my to-be-released compressor.. but I figured it'd be fun anyway..

The processing chain was:

1. Eq to notch out a bit around 172Hz (boomy snare), and slight high-freq shaping

2. Rs-met Easy-Q for a bit of stereo shaping: high-shelf side-up, mid-down around 6kHz (very wide, around +/- 6dB at 20Khz) and low-shelf side around -15dB from below 100Hz or so..

3. Eq to low-shelf boost below 90Hz, cut a bit around 250Hz, boost above 3.4kHz, cut (wide) around 2Khz

4. TSClip with saturation only.. to warm up the bass a bit (hence the boosts above)

5. low ratio compressor (-20dB threshold, max range 5dB, SLOW) to reduce the general dynamic range (bring intro higher basically)

6. Abstract Chamber for ~1sec reverb, 50ms predelay, -30dB output to give a hint of background depth post the compressor

7. EQ.. low-shelf boost (lots) below 40Hz, high-pass at 40Hz (ie shelf just to shape the high-pass).. cut a bit (wide) around 740Hz

8. medium ration compressor with moderate timings, runs about 2dB max compression.. this is the "squashing part"

9. TSClip (clip mode only) to catch peaks

10. Dither.

Note the absence of limiter.. I almost never use them.

http://soundcloud.com/mystran/agent-reloaded-mystrans-master
Last edited by mystran on Thu Aug 16, 2012 12:30 pm; edited 1 time in total

It's a lot to ask from Geoff to listen to every track.

I'd say I have learned the most by listening to other peoples versions and seeing where I have gone wrong.

I think if we can afford it, sending it off to a big time ME will teach us a lot (hopefully...)

Have submitted an attempt, no real science behind what I was doing but just kept it all fairly simple and tweaked until it sounded good to me

http://soundcloud.com/docjon/bluff-munkey-agent-reloaded

Track processed with:

Steinberg EQ - just a gentle lo-cut shelving below 100Hz
Steinberg GEQ-30 - for shaping the overall tone with small boosts at 2-2.5k and 8-12.5kHz, small cuts at 80Hz-100Hz and 200Hz-500Hz
Steinberg Multiband Compressor - running with 4 bands, most of the action going on between 3-10kHz which seemed to bring out some of the nice detail (for those with this plug-in I started with the 'Ballad 2' preset which immediately created a great sound and just made a few minor changes)
T-RackS3 Brickwall Limiter - Preset '+5dB Extrawarm Sat' with output tweaked down to -0.3dB

Pushed to much louder levels than I would normally use but I guessed that was the aim of the challenge

Killer track btw!

Jon

Great challenge,

here is my try:

http://soundcloud.com/litzblitz/bluff-munkey-agent-reloaded

hope you like it.


Edit:

Final version now. Plugins only.
Last edited by litzblitz on Mon Aug 20, 2012 9:56 am; edited 1 time in total

Update:
http://soundcloud.com/blue-s-man/agent-reloaded-bm2

here is my 1st attempt, but mastered to mp3 at minute for convenience of file size here at soundcloud, used Sonar x1 and voxengo FX for master EQ and compression with saturation. Let me know what you think please.

http://soundcloud.com/trakstar-whentham/agentreloaded-trakst armaster