Mastering, any tutorials?

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Hermetech Mastering wrote:Or you could just avoid 99% of the above for a much cleaner result... :)
Absolutely.

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Mastering is really about doing what the track needs to sound its best in context, and good translation. Knowing what the track needs means lots of experience working on many different genres, with the same room and monitoring setup, over many years, and having very clear communication with clients. It can't really be taught in a tutorial. It's not the answer people want to hear, but it's the truth.

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Aloysius wrote:You need to know something about mastering to mix properly.
You're being ironic right? The only thing you need to know is to leave sufficient headroom and then even now in the digital age, that's becoming less of an issue, although still very good practice.
I wonder what happens if I press this button...

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ramseysounds wrote:
Aloysius wrote:You need to know something about mastering to mix properly.
You're being ironic right? The only thing you need to know is to leave sufficient headroom and then even now in the digital age, that's becoming less of an issue, although still very good practice.
Well, he is right.. somehow.
I know about a ton of artists that always put [Unmastered] tag on their uploaded tracks.
Don't even try to argue with this guys about the mix.
If you tell them about too much bass, they will tell you "I said it is not mastered yet, mastering will fix it" ... or if you complain about the harsh hihats .. "ffs, it is not mastered yet" .. or crashes too loud .. -> "not mastered yet -.-.-.-"
So you need to know something about mastering. ppl that know nothing, tend to look at mastering as some kind of magic will-fix-it-all step that makes a shiny high-polish song from their swamp-soup track.

Do your mix so that you are happy with it. Don't expect the matsering guy to fix your mess.
He is there to pull up the volume and do some little tweaks to make it sound good all kind of system.. but that's it.

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PurpleSunray wrote:
ramseysounds wrote:
Aloysius wrote:You need to know something about mastering to mix properly.
You're being ironic right? The only thing you need to know is to leave sufficient headroom and then even now in the digital age, that's becoming less of an issue, although still very good practice.
Well, he is right.. somehow.
I know about a ton of artists that always put [Unmastered] tag on their uploaded tracks.
Don't even try to argue with this guys about the mix.
If you tell them about too much bass, they will tell you "I said it is not mastered yet, mastering will fix it" ... or if you complain about the harsh hihats .. "ffs, it is not mastered yet" .. or crashes too loud .. -> "not mastered yet -.-.-.-"
So you need to know something about mastering. ppl that know nothing, tend to look at mastering as some kind of magic will-fix-it-all step that makes a shiny high-polish song from their swamp-soup track.

Do your mix so that you are happy with it. Don't expect the matsering guy to fix your mess.
That's only first step (meaning these tracks probably suck completely at this stage).

Learning what makes a good master can help understand what makes a good mix, what can be done to get best results from mastering. Also, it's important to know what can be fixed on mastering stage and what cannot. Dropping poor mix into LANDR is possible, but won't get you far.
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Tricky-Loops wrote: (...)someone like Armin van Buuren who claims to make a track in half an hour and all his songs sound somewhat boring(...)

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DJ Warmonger wrote: Learning what makes a good master can help understand what makes a good mix
I couldn't disagree more.
Just concentrate on getting the best possible mix with sufficient headroom. Then let the mastering engineer do his magic to make your mix compete commercially and with sufficient 'loudness'.
I wonder what happens if I press this button...

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ramseysounds wrote:
DJ Warmonger wrote: Learning what makes a good master can help understand what makes a good mix
I couldn't disagree more.
So you say that it can't help you at all as a mixing engineer, if you understand what the mastering engineer will do after you?
I couldn't disagree more. :D
Being smarter is always better the being dumb - I mean.. I'm vice versa than you.
For me the questions is, why should I NOT want to know what mastering is about?

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PurpleSunray wrote:For me the questions is, why should I NOT want to know what mastering is about?
So you can spend more time getting the mix to sound just right. :D

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PurpleSunray wrote:
ramseysounds wrote:
DJ Warmonger wrote: Learning what makes a good master can help understand what makes a good mix
I couldn't disagree more.
So you say that it can't help you at all as a mixing engineer, if you understand what the mastering engineer will do after you?
I couldn't disagree more. :D
Being smarter is always better the being dumb - I mean.. I'm vice versa than you.
For me the questions is, why should I NOT want to know what mastering is about?
Rubbish. Pretend the mastering engineer doesn't exist. Get your mix sounding the best you possibly can and then get it 'mastered' (if you actually understand what that is?!)
I wonder what happens if I press this button...

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Hermetech Mastering knows his stuff. I have experience with mastering but I will still go to someone like him, once I'm done mixing the album I've been working on for the last 5 years. I will do my very best to get the quality and character of the mix sounding the way I want and he will bring the individual tracks together as a cohesive whole, getting the individual 2-mixes ready for their target medium.

If a mastering engineer is doing something that drastically changes the character or quality of a mix, it's because I didn't do my job well. A good mastering engineer helps bring out the details which were already there. They may need to "fix" something in the context of tonal balance or the specs for a specific release format but that doesn't mean dramatic changes or heavy processing.

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ramseysounds wrote:
PurpleSunray wrote:
ramseysounds wrote:
DJ Warmonger wrote: Learning what makes a good master can help understand what makes a good mix
I couldn't disagree more.
So you say that it can't help you at all as a mixing engineer, if you understand what the mastering engineer will do after you?
I couldn't disagree more. :D
Being smarter is always better the being dumb - I mean.. I'm vice versa than you.
For me the questions is, why should I NOT want to know what mastering is about?
Rubbish. Pretend the mastering engineer doesn't exist. Get your mix sounding the best you possibly can and then get it 'mastered' (if you actually understand what that is?!)
We agree in on the last part.
I do same. I compare my mix against mastered tracks of others. Pretending there is no mastering engineer and I must do it on the mix. But I cannot w/o knowing what to do.
EQ, Saturation and stuff on the master channel is what a good mastering engineer will take care off.
That's the f*cking difference between sending my track to LANDR or to the hottest mastering lab on my genre. The first one is about making your track loud, the second one give it his signature.

What we try to tell you: if you submit to LANDR, having the knowlege of the hottest mastering lab f*cking helps you. You can do stuff on the mix, a good mastering engineer would do on the master. If you don't know what that mastering engineer would do, you cannot.

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@ PurpleSunray - you really need to stop giving bad advice. read justin3am post above. He has it spot on.
I wonder what happens if I press this button...

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@ramseysounds: I havn't given any advice, other then aiming for the best possible mix - you did that too

And justin3am says about 100% then same than I do.
If a mastering engineer is doing something that drastically changes the character or quality of a mix, it's because I didn't do my job well.
He did a bad mix, mastering engineer tried to fix, he learned from it and does it better now (I hope).

@justin3am: was working with Hermetech Mastering benefitial for your mix? I mean, did you learn something from him that helps you when mixing? If you pretend he (including knowlege gained from him over the past 5 years) does not exist, do you think your mixes would be on same level today?

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PurpleSunray wrote:And justin3am says about 100% then same than I do.
That wasn't exactly what I was trying to say and you are making some big assumptions/inferences.

First, Hermetech Mastering offered to process one track for me a few years ago, as a taste of his services. He did his thing and I was happy with the result. I determined that I would probably ask him to master my next album (which I still haven't finished). There was no conversation about my mix and the only thing I did to prepare the 2-mix for him, was to make sure that there was enough headroom, so that he wouldn't need to trim the output before going through his processing chain.

I have my own experience with mastering. I took a few classes in the subject and have mastered albums and other media for quite a few artists. What I know about mastering, has little to do with the way I approach mixing. The track I sent to Hermetech went through what some would call a "mastering chain". I used an API bus compressor, a pair of API EQs and a UBK Fatso (hardware tape emulation) on the output bus. I didn't mix with these signal processors active. Once I finished mixing, I used them to give the overall mix, the character I wanted. That isn't mastering, that's still part of the mixing process.

I have come to the conclusion that many put too much importance on this final stage of the process. It's treated like a magic black box of sweet sound. I don't want to diminish the process as I think mastering is important when it comes to releasing music for a given medium (especially for vinyl) but it's more important, if you have more than one mixing engineer working on a project or if the tracks were recorded at more than one studio. In those cases a mastering engineer can help bring everything together as a cohesive whole. If you are producing all of your music yourself, in one studio and one set of equipment, it's not such a big deal. I release stuff all the time, with no mastering at all.

The message here is, learn to mix as best you can, if you want a really polished sound. It's all work. The more you work at it, the easier it will be to achieve the sound you are looking for, without needing to send your tracks to someone else.
If you want to know what mastering is all about, watch a mastering engineer do their work or at very least, have your work mastered by a professional and then analyze what they did. Just don't expect some miraculous revelation.

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PurpleSunray wrote:He did a bad mix, mastering engineer tried to fix, he learned from it and does it better now (I hope).
Where exactly did I say that? :lol:

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