Mastering help - URGENT

[bmanic]

Good news, I've spoken to him again and turns out the culprit was a multiband he had put on it. He's made a couple of other changes and it's sounding a lot better. Still a couple of tweaks here and there but overall it's sounding pretty good now. Your feedback helped a lot!

Sounds like the mastering engineer is a good one who takes feedback into account. Then it's all well there! As long as YOU are happy, that's all that matters. Communication is always the key.

[jamcat]

It's possible that people simply value their artistic work and want it sounding as good as possible..

This is a reasonable point, and I won’t argue with your logic. In fact, I will extend it further: it doesn’t just apply to mastering and 3rd-party plugins. You can also include going to a commercial studio to record and mix with a professional engineer. That will get you the best results for your money. Perhaps you should also consider hiring session musicians and an arranger, too. Hiring Diane Warren, Desmond Child, or Dr. Dre to help flesh out your songs wouldn’t hurt, either.

[Uncle E]

It's not always about the money spent but rather the results and pleasure it gives the artist. It's the same old argument used over and over again for things like "You should only use stock plugins.." or "Why bother paying somebody else for <insert whatever here> when you could just do it yourself?".

Maybe OP should download the Ozone demo and see how its mastering assistant compares to the mastering he paid for.

[stoopicus]

Maybe OP should download the Ozone demo and see how its mastering assistant compares to the mastering he paid for.

harsh but fair. Though also to be fair the Ozone assistant would at least have hit a sane lufs at some point in the track.

[_leras]

You should get a refund and master it yourself.
"Mastering" these days just involves exporting the track at the proper LUFS for the particular target streaming service(s). A monkey could do that. If you don't have a monkey, use a preset.

It won't come out any worse, either way.

This is a ridiculous comment. You are completely incorrect.

[jamcat]

You are completely incorrect.

Then correct me

[_leras]

Sorry, no. If you have no realistic hope of ever recouping what you paid for mastering from sales of your music, you most certainly should not be spending the money.

“Mastering” one-off amateur tracks for mp3 is superfluous.

Wow... The negative angle you bring here is really impressive. Not in a good way.

If you've taken the time record and mix a track, why wouldn't you want to take the final step to present your efforts in the best possible light?

An objective experienced ear in a good room with good speakers can really spot and fix errors that a lot of peoples monitoring might not pick up. A good mastering engineer can do quite a lot even if just with EQ, compression and limiting.

I'd say you need to be very objective and diligent to be able to master your own work and not just worsen any issues your mix had due to the room etc.

[camheine]

Good news, I've spoken to him again and turns out the culprit was a multiband he had put on it. He's made a couple of other changes and it's sounding a lot better. Still a couple of tweaks here and there but overall it's sounding pretty good now. Your feedback helped a lot!

Sounds like the mastering engineer is a good one who takes feedback into account. Then it's all well there! As long as YOU are happy, that's all that matters. Communication is always the key.

Thanks for your help mate, you were able to narrow down the issues and help me figure out what to communicate back to him.

[_leras]

You are completely incorrect.

Then correct me

Sure. You say mastering is just exporting a track at a high level of LUFS.

However, for just a single track, so no album concerns, the list of processes that you pretend doesn't exist, but that mastering engineers use can include:
Corrective EQ, including deess
Tonal shaping EQ
(Often with dynamic EQ these days, sometimes multiband compression)
Some m/s to widen mixes
High quality compression, which can accentuate groove as well as glue things together
Tasteful saturation
Sometimes noise and click removal
Occasionally reverb
And finally some limiting for final level

Just look at the equipment list of mastering engineers...

But most importantly mastering provides an objective look at your mixes, that you otherwise likely don't have.

Tbh, it sounds like you've never attended a mastering session and heard music you've sweated and agonised over suddenly played back on an blindingy accurate and honest system. It can be a humbling experience, but a very informative one.

[_leras]

Well, sort of. It's just way exaggerated due to how the master brings everything to the forefront and how the clipping/distortion is highlighting some areas. I also have a feeling the dude who mastered this has a multiband compressor going. These always run the risk of breaking the groove a bit, causing things to be more hectic than the original audio actually is.

Keep in mind, this type of side-chaining is entirely subjective (which I should have written in my original post). To my ears the shape of the sidechaining is a bit jarring. It's like the slopes are a bit too abrupt or a bit in front of the music. Hard to describe.

If you do want a bit of change to the groove it is something you can actually tackle slightly in mastering itself by very gently applying a slow compressor that does the opposite of the tracks motion, thus calming it down a little.

Reading back through this thread that's impressive you picked up on over doing a multiband.

Side chaining and getting it to sit right is a bit of an art form at times. Tiny changes can make all the difference. It also depends on how you've done it i.e. actual side chain compression or with a volume shaping tool, or even good ole zoomed in by hand automation.

Getting the groove right in mastering is one of my favourite parts of the process. Elysia Alpha is my favourite for this. It can push or relax a groove so well.

I'm gutted I missed the track links to hear the examples. (I'd have dropped them straight into wavelab )

[Uncle E]

You say mastering is just exporting a track at a high level of LUFS.

I don’t think jamcat was making statements about mastering in general. I think he was making statements about this particular mastering job.

[El°HYM]

Being the Vegan who I am; why cant an independent Artist sell 20 or more Albums on BC to pay the Mastering Engineer?

[_leras]

You say mastering is just exporting a track at a high level of LUFS.

I don’t think jamcat was making statements about mastering in general. I think he was making statements about this particular mastering job.

Nah, he specifically told the op to get a refund and master it himself, because it's just a matter of getting high enough LUFS.

Maybe he's never had anything mastered for himself.

[EfreetiSultan]

Don't forget he basically called every single mastering engineer monkeys.. Or at least equivalent/no better than monkeys.

[Uncle E]

OP is happy now so the engineer redeemed himself, but in this particular case, AI would’ve done a better job than the first version.