FinalMix compared to?

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pakana wrote: Some of the presets nearly made me deaf - I'll never browse the presets again.
I find that a handy work-around for this is to TURN THE F***ING VOLUME DOWN :-o :shock:

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LOL

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Just to be pedantic, and not to debate the ACTUAL issue (FM's quality or lack thereof), pointing to subjective interpretation (the sound quality being sacrificed that you claim to hear and claim is obvious) can never be a fact, it can still ONLY be an opinion. ;)

In the sake of fair play, I'll admit: IF I fire up FinalMix and listen extra-carefully and extra-hard and LOOK for phase artifacts and discover that they are screwing up my mix, I'll grant you that although not a "fact", it would be a clear enough opinion that it should be taken as justified common sense. It would be clear common sense and appropriate opinion to say, "Well, the phasing is there, and I think it sounds like shit. If you LIKE the crossover artifacts, you're one in a million."

BUT... it still wouldn't be 'fact'. ;)

And back ON-topic a little bit more, I still maintain that there's a big difference between me, as a hobbyist, getting what I believe are great results from FinalMix (hey, it's not my ONLY tool and I don't worship it... I just use it sometimes and enjoy it. I'm as likely to use W1 Limiter and SpinEQ or Poshifopit), and being a mastering engineer with a budget to buy exactly the best/right industry-standard tools for the job.

People need to know their role and only dedicate resources (whether it be time or money... in FM's case I save time and spend no money) to the areas of their sphere that they have a hope of improving upon. It's a mastering engineer's job to master. There are hobbyists who LOVE learning about mastering, but I'm not one of them. I prefer "final mixing" and then being done with my song. I'd rather spend my TIME writing better songs and practicing guitar, and I'd rather spend my MONEY on a new guitar or other more important gear.

It really IS -ALL- about perspective. If you're basing your arguments around the perspective of a mastering engineer with a proper budget, you may very well be correct. But that's not your target audience. Your target audience are primarily home studio musicians who want to know if FM is doing a good job (which it is, despite your claims or even any facts you could produce, which I'll even grant you that you probably COULD produce if you wanted to sit around with a spectral analyzer and other tools) compared to other similar products like T-Racks. They're not asking for a comparison of FM versus a true mastering studio.

Greg
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That's a great post there Lunch Money.

I'm sure that the difference between folk like us and professional mastering engineers actually has much more to do with the superior quality of their hardware (i.e. their monitors, A/D converters, customised acoustic environment, etc) than their software :roll:

For the rest of us, there is surely a lot that is simply subjective opinion, and I agree that it's rather silly for any of us to present that opinion as if it were empirical fact :wink:

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Indeed. Take a professional mastering engineer and plunk him down in front of a computer with only Final Mix as a "mastering" tool and he might go, "Well, it's not my first choice, but let's see what we can do," and then accomplish a brilliant mix/master.

Greg
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Well, I noticed in the recent Sound on Sound review of the Mackie X200 (cost: £11,000 :shock: ) - which at that price is clearly targetted at professional studios - that Final Mix is included, and shown in the SOS pictures. So obviously there's an assumption that Final Mix really is up to the job so far as professional users are concerned, anyway.

(although it wan't a particularly good review, if truth be told :wink: )

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headquest wrote:
pakana wrote: Some of the presets nearly made me deaf - I'll never browse the presets again.
I find that a handy work-around for this is to TURN THE F***ING VOLUME DOWN :-o :shock:
yep lol

I tend to keep it quite low all the time, I work a lot with the cans. There were some presets that made reach for the volume knob in panic. Dunno, am I the only one with this experience? Pissed me off big time, I only got one set of ears anyway.

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I have this experience when I work with cans. ;) Not just with FM, though, but in general. I have to turn the volume way down when I'm dicking around with things that affect the perceived or actual levels, or it quickly becomes an aural roller-coaster.
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Lunch Money wrote:It really IS -ALL- about perspective. If you're basing your arguments around the perspective of a mastering engineer with a proper budget, you may very well be correct. But that's not your target audience.
sorry you had to post such a long rant just to get me state this clarification here: I was definitely basing all I said around proper budgets and high end. Then again to get it absolutely right and pristine you would be able to do it with several reasonably priced plugins stated previously.

Then again KVR really isn't the place for this kind of conversation though I sometimes try and always have the same disappointing outcome. It'll all fall on deaf ears. (pun intended)

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Thanks LM, but that's not what I mean. So, I tested and it was the Stereo Compressor preset "1,2 gone"... the very f**king first one. Has the Threshold set way too low for any normal material, throwing the level meters far over red and clipping the output. Maybe it has been fixed in later versions, I noticed my general-purpose boot Tracktion is still at v. 2.0.1.13?

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Not necessarily deaf ears in the way you're saying it, though, Kingston. It's not my fault that I don't have the same experiences as you. I've never been in a high-end studio, and I've never had my own work professionally mastered. I've never noticed these crossover artifacts, though I'm willing to concede that if it's common knowledge, you're not just pulling it out of your ass.

You shouldn't be disappointed, you should be AWARE of who your target audience is, and speak to it. If the thread was about "Final Mix vs. Pro Mastering" then all your arguments would be in their place. But it simply wasn't.

Saying that it's a disappointment or that we have "deaf" ears is a qualifying statement that implies some sort of elitist judgement. Fine, but it's not anybody's fault but your own that you were speaking to a bunch of non-mastering-engineers as if they WERE mastering engineers who are simply doing a shitty job of it.

I wouldn't walk into a Tupperware Party and start talking about the benefits of fine china and expect my opinion to matter. They're there to discuss handy plastic storage, not porcelain finery. An easy analogy to mock, I know-- "If you're happy with plastic tupperware mixes, that's sad" but it's just an analogy and if I could be arsed, I could've crafted one less easy to jump on as a red herring.

Greg
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pakana-- Ah, I haven't had that experience yet, but I can see how it would've been a shock and an aggravation. ;)
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pakana,

You're bang on about the "1,2 gone" preset. Definately not appropriate as a default preset. Which is why, I believe, it was replaced/renamed to "one,two gone" in one of the later patches. The default should now be "acuma". I think it's possible, however, to install the patch, and end up with both presets in there. If that's the case, you can just remove the old one.

b

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Lunch,

In fairness, I think I should point out that Kingston did quite clearly mention some other software alternatives which he felt were better options. In fact, his very first post suggested exactly that. And his second post went into more specifics...

;-)
I've joined Lurkers Anonymous.

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...coupled with comparisons to hardware and references to pro mastering studios...

Which are what I was responding to...

No point being selective, now. In the interest of fairness, he DID point out alternatives for certain sub-tasks, though. Can't argue with fairness, now, can we?

;)
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