First off I'd like to say thanks to everyone who had a part in selecting me as the mastering engineer for this. And what a great track from Bluffmonkey. I feel like I'm in a james bond movie here!
Good stuff.Here is the link to download the master (its big, so you might want to right-click and download it):
http://www.vitalmastering.com/audio/KVR ... tering.wav
The first thing I noticed about the mix was that the hi-hat was very "clicky" and the big cymbal crash was wayyyy harsh. I did my best to deal with these issues, but I didn't want to do too much altering since I have no idea what bluffmonkey wants to get out of this mix. Which is what made this job a bit different from most others. Usually I'm in direct contact with the artist and/or mix engineer, so I have a good idea of what they are trying to achieve. With this master I was only in contact with Sami (Aiynzahev). So aside from the reference track by Hyrbid, I had no idea what direction bluffmonkey wanted to go with it. For this reason I took a much more utilitarian approach than a creative one.
This leads me to my first critique of the masters posted by everyone so far:
There's a wide range of sounds here. About half of you really got creative and took the track in a new direction, mainly with the use of EQ. This can certainly be a great thing if that's what the client wants, but 9 times out of 10 this isn't the case. Generally speaking, a mastering engineer has to assume that the client/artist has sat for many hours with the mix engineer making sure that the mix is EXACTLY how they want it to sound. So if I was to alter the mix too much, I will usually be going back for revisions. I think someone actually mentioned this earlier in the thread; something along the lines of "making the track loud without destroying it" can sometimes be all that a mastering engineer really has to do.
Which brings me to my 2nd general critique:
A good number of you guys really destroyed the track with very aggressive limiting. The two worst offenders (and I wont name names, but I think you'll figure it out) actually did the same thing as one another. It sounds to me like they set their limiting threshold while listening to the quiet intro of the song, so when the actual beat kicks in the track is then slammed to death. I'm not sure if they even listened to the rest of the song....
But in general I'm hearing a lot of aggressive limiting, which is something you want to avoid as much as possible. As a rule of thumb, you don't want to be limiting by more that 3-4dB. 1-2dB is ideal. Let the bulk of the "loudness" be achieved with careful use of compression, EQ, and harmonic enhancement. Our goal is to enhance "perceived loudness". "Actual" loudness can become quite fatiguing.
Now this leads me to my process and techniques, and what makes electronic music different:
In my experience, music that is made up entirely of, or relies very heavily on synthesized sounds, takes very well to digital processing. Namely limiting. You'll find that the sound imparted by 4, 5, or even 6 stages of analog gear, simply doesn't benefit electronic music in the way it does with "organic" music. So because of this, I kept the analog processing to a minimum:
1. Sony Oxford Inflator: This plug-in can be compared to the Precision Maximizer by Universal Audio. These plug-ins "magically" increase perceived loudness while maintaining dynamic range. They achieve this with the use of harmonic generation and some soft-clipping. The bulk of the track's loudness comes from this.
2. Brainworx bx-digital v2 EQ: Now for some mid-side EQ. On the sides I'm rolling off everything below 50hz and boosting 3.7k with a wide Q by 3dB.
3. Manley Massive Passive EQ: Finally we're in analog. Here I HP at 22, medium-wide Q boost at 47hz by 1dB, medium Q cut at 780hz by 1dB, and a medium Q boost at 5.6k by 1.5dB.
4. KuSh Clariphonic EQ: This thing is my secret weapon for tracks that need brightness and extra clarity. It sounds like a harmonic enhancer to me but smoother.
4. Sony Oxford Limiter: And now back to digital for the limiting/dither stage. At this point, I didn't have to limit very much at all, only 1 dB of gain reduction maybe every 10 seconds or so. This is thanks to the Inflator (not to mention a well balanced mix). Fast attack, medium release, hard knee. "Enhance" at 60%. Output at -.3dB and 16bit dither, type 4 at 100%
And that's about it! I actually didn't need to use any compression at all for this one. It was a really well balanced mix, so I didn't want to mess with it too much. So let me know what you guys think and if you have any questions. I'll be back tomorrow with my favorite masters. Post yours and we can compare
FAIL ME... lol
