#266

Hit me up, sounds exactly like the kind of thing I’d be interested in working on.

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#267

I used it properly for the first time for a project this past weekend that had a 72 hour turnover from writing to mastering. So, I didn’t get to spend as much time with it as I would have liked, but in general, I found Ozone like a lot of other Izotope products, they are undoubtedly great tools. If you know what you are doing, there’s no reason you couldn’t master in Ozone, though of course unless it’s a well treated room, it doesn’t really matter anyway. I would still love an analog setup for mastering, no doubt it doesn’t replace that, but what it does, it does very well. If you are just getting going with the mastering side or otherwise, I found the mastering assistant to be surprisingly great as well. Most of Izotope’s machine learning tools feel like black magic to me lol, especially Rx. It’s insane how far the technology has come in the last few years.

3 Likes
#268

@Gregg is super proficient and well worth getting on board.

1 Like
#269

I don’t have the budget to have a full album mastered, but I did just have two shorter tracks from an upcoming album mastered by Nathan Moody at Obsidian Sound – on the theory that I’d learn from the process and hopefully raise my own mastering game. Even before sending the invoice, he had helpful suggestions on recording the Lyra-8 and on improving my recording/mixing generally. I’m really happy with the results, and he also explained what he did in a way that I find pretty clear.

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#270

I haven’t, but this talk by Nathan Moody is superb, imo:

(skip to 56m)

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#271

I released my debut album yesterday, and a good friend of mine mastered it. He did it for not much money, as he hasn’t mastered electronic music before (learning experience for both of us) and mastering isn’t his main thing in audio space. Anyway, I’m super happy with the results, and after spending so much time on composing, recording and mixing it felt so good to just let the tracks out for someone else for the final touch. I had been interested in learning to master my music properly so I could handle the whole process from an idea to a release, but this pretty much killed that interest. I’ve heard the songs hundreds of times already, it’s impossible to listen to the music with fresh ears on mastering stage after that. On this master, especially on one particular song he dug out little nuances I didn’t even know were there as I had become deaf for there being something else than what I had heard too many times already. For some quick tracks I just want to get out quickly I probably will just run them through Ozone or something myself, but for any larger or more refined projects I will surely hire a mastering engineer in the future.

3 Likes
#272

Good talk, and it aligned with what I learned from him mastering my tracks. My mixes had some of those common problems he listed :blush:

The thing about infrasonics is, not all spectrum analyzers will catch them, depending on settings. So I had assumed I didn’t have a problem! But I’ve since found Voxengo Span at 8192 block size and a minimum frequency of 5Hz will reveal them.

As far as phase issues go: I used to assume that some half-hearted nod toward “keep the bass centered” was good enough, without actually measuring. Now I realize how naive that was…

I’m mastering the rest of my album myself. Getting the first one right has taken probably twice as much time as I spent in recording and editing it – it had the weirdest phase issues, since it was a 2x Rings/Mimeophon cross-feedback patch – but I have just minor tweaks left to do to it now and I’m really pleased with it.

Aside from Span, I’d have to say Toneboosters EQ4 has been my most important tool, mostly for mid-side surgery but also general filtering. (Though for “flavor” EQ I generally prefer Uhbik-Q.)

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#273

@Gregg you are a font of useful knowledge sir. thanks for taking the time to contribute.

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#274

Thank you, and it’s a total pleasure.

I have NO SECRETS with regards to mastering. I hate that people think it’s a “Dark Art”, as it’s so not. It can be summed up by having a good monitoring/listening environment and listening to loads and loads of different music in it. :wink: With experience it becomes easier to hear what might be improved, and know how to do it. A few good tools are required, (and there’s no reason people can’t master entirely ITB with incredible results these days). The tech stuff can be learned pretty quickly, but it’s the experience that counts.

I’m happy to answer all and any questions on mastering. I just celebrated my 10 year anniversary as a mastering engineer. :slight_smile:

27 Likes
#275

three sanity check questions beyond “it depends” then: 1 what do you do in the 200Hz region and if you end up taming that, do you find there’s a corresponding high-mids region that also needs correction to account for the other? 2 more broadly, do you run into literally the same problematic frequencies across unrelated projects - say 110Hz or some other arbitrary number(s) that mean you have to reshape the surrounding region? and 3 when no one is looking, how loud do you master (in -dB RMS)?

2 Likes
#276

  1. It depends how the 200Hz region is sounding. Will occasionally dip somewhere around 200-400Hz a bit to reduce mud, but only if it needs it. Have to be really careful in this region as it’s where the fundamentals of most of the lead/solo/vox parts lie, and you don’t want to make things sound too thin/wimpy.

  2. No, not at all. Every person/studio/track/album/genre is different, so they all need different things. I guess something I do notice occasionally is horrible digital sounding top end in a lot of all ITB mixes, but that’s usually from inexperienced mixers. I have been at it long enough and am in the right price bracket now to ensure most of my clients are providing very good quality mixes. I do far more lily gilding than turd polishing these days. :wink:

  3. It totally depends on the client (and to a smaller extent, genre), I am there to serve them. I can educate on best practise, but at the end of the day it is their music. A lot of my Chillout and Ambient clients are very happy with things around -14 dB LUFS Integrated, a lot of my Trap and Hiphop clients want things at -6dB LUFS. Pop stuff generally lies somewhere in the middle of that. I can accommodate all three. There is great skill in getting things loud without falling apart, but at the end of the day it all depends on the quality and “loudness potential” of the raw mix.

Just want to note that any LUFS figures are NOT meant to be prescriptive, they are just where things end up after the mastering, for that particular genre or client

So it really does all depend. :wink:

4 Likes
#277

precisely why i asked “when no one is looking”, as in what is your personal preference.

I very much appreciate the answer to 2, illuminating.

1 Like
#278

Someone is always looking, the client. If I make it too quiet, they will complain. If I make it too loud, they will complain. This is why great communication is at least 50% of a master that both me AND the client can be proud of. There are no prescriptive numbers, and every track has a different loudness potential.

All else being equal, I will try to make things as loud as possible before audible degradation, but that only really applies to singles. The LUFS Integrated figures where that ends up could fall anywhere. Again, the numbers are not prescriptive or “targets”. With an album, all the tracks need to sound cohesive, and that doesn’t necessarily mean the same loudness. The track that needs to SOUND the loudest still has to have no audible distortion, and all the others need to be juggled around that.

Sorry to sound obtuse but that’s really how it is. I have no “personal preference” without another qualifier, such as “What’s your personal preference for well mixed, sparse, beaty Chillout with decent dynamic range”, which I would hazard would end up somewhere around -12 to -15 dB LUFS Integrated, etc.

Here’s a compilation I mastered for Interchill last year, of just such music, I think the average LUFS Integrated figure is around -14. AFAIK BC doesn’t change the volume, so should give you an idea:

I no longer use RMS as LUFS is just RMS with a better weighting curve to match more closely with human hearing. It’s not perfect though, which is why it’s still necessary to do everything by ear, and let the numbers fall where they may!

5 Likes
#279

I think it does. Drops it by 3dB in what I’ve heard.

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#280

Yeah just checked, it’s definitely quieter.

#281

How would you approach mixing an inherently muddy track, ie one composed with few if any high frequencies? Or inversely, one with few low frequencies? I sometimes find myself making compositions that don’t cover a particularly wide frequency spectrum and have often wondered how to approach this from a mixing perspective.

3 Likes
#282

Hi folks. I’d like to aim a question at the mix engineers in the room. Is there an advantage to using a 500 series effect as opposed to a stomp box? For example, both Meris and JHS offer a few different effects in both formats. I don’t own any 500 series gear, but am always looking for another way to be poor. Or is the main advantage being able to house preamps, compressors, and the like in a format smaller than in olden days?

#283

If you take the Meris Mercury7, the biggest difference is input/output – Burr-Brown precision balanced input and output drivers in 500 vs. Analog Devices JFET input circuitry on the pedal (not sure what sort of balanced output circuitry is on those). Both are high-quality (and not cheap) parts, so far as I know. The Pedal can’t do fully balanced stereo in/out, but can do unbalanced stereo in (or balanced mono in) and balanced stereo out. Pedal also has pretty high headroom, and there’s configuration for running at either line or instrument level. IMO, for guitar use, I think the pedal feels like it doesn’t mess with dynamics in front of a tube amp like some other pedals or devices do. The pedal has extremely low noise, I get about 100dB SNR using the bundled PSU if I’m running it loopedback into my interface.

Historically, Meris started with the 500 series modules first, and the pedals came later (my guess is so they could increase their potential market). It doesn’t look like they are abandoning and discontinuing their existing designs for 500, but they have not created 500 versions of their newer pedals.

So far as why 500? It’s cheaper and takes up less space than getting 1u or 2u pieces of gear. Compared to guitar pedals, I feel like it would be a lot easier for a studio with a lot of outboard gear to dedicate 3U of space to a 500 case, with I/O they could easily map to the patchbays they have set up the same way they do with their other gear. Many 500 cases have fancy (expensive) linear power supplies that are supposedly better (though if you read through some of the eurorack power supply threads on here, you’ll find people have gotten as impressive results out of switching PSUs). There are a few interesting DIY options in the 500 world that are (relatively) affordable (such as CAPIs stuff). Outboard professional audio gear is in general pretty expensive, which partially explains why 500 series modules are in general more expensive than eurorack modules. In addition, some 500 units are fully shielded, and can use fancy & expensive parts (like transformers)…though some Euro modules do too. Most of this is speculation, I don’t own any 500 series gear

All that being said, the pedal would be the better and more obvious choice for most people. I have been extremely impressed with the quality and features of the Mercury7 and Polymoon I have from them, and would highly recommend.

No idea about JHS.

2 Likes
#284

Is there a mastering course (online, preferably) the hivemind would recommend? My (Lines) search-foo isn’t turning up anything.

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#285

Just a suggestion, but you might be better off finding a respected local mastering engineer and asking if you can study or intern with them for a bit. There’s only so much you can learn about mastering from books or courses. It’s mostly about having worked on many different types of music over many years, with great monitors, in a great room, i.e. experience, that really delivers the mastering skill set.

2 Likes