Pre Mastering Tips?

[hakka]

Ok so i contacted a mastering house few months back and asked if they could master my track (obviously). He sent me a message back with all sorts of techy words and things i needed to do to the track. Some of the things he was saying i didnt have a fuckin clue. I asked him to explain in detail and didnt get a reply lol. Is there any tips on getting a tune ready to send to a mastering house? Im working in Reason 5

[staticcast]

A few tips:

- Give em headroom. That means the mixdown should peak at -6dB or so.
- Mix down to 24 bit WAV
- Don't do anything to the track that the mastering engineer is likely to want to do himself -- give him a blank slate to work with. That means don't put anything on the master bus unless it's absolutely critical to preserve your vision of how the track should sound or feel. No limiters, compression, EQ, etc, and especially no "exciters", stereo widening tools etc.
- Leave plenty of time at the end for any reverb tails, etc, to fade out

There's probably more, but that's what springs to mind right now.

[GRAYSKALE]

Ok so i contacted a mastering house few months back and asked if they could master my track (obviously). He sent me a message back with all sorts of techy words and things i needed to do to the track. Some of the things he was saying i didnt have a fuckin clue. I asked him to explain in detail and didnt get a reply lol. Is there any tips on getting a tune ready to send to a mastering house? Im working in Reason 5

If he hasn't replyed then you should probably consult a different mastering engineer, you want somebody that you know is gonna be reliable and not e-mailing clients back is pretty bad. Other than that, static-cast pretty much hit the nail on the head.

I suppose a crucial one is you wanna make sure that eveyrthing in the track is EXACTLY how you want it to be, don't want to be getting it mastered and then realising you hate a rise in one section or a sound FX somewhere else or that the bass has too much high frequency content and is causing your ears to bleed

[Depone]

A few tips:

- Give em headroom. That means the mixdown should peak at -6dB or so.
- Mix down to 24 bit WAV
- Don't do anything to the track that the mastering engineer is likely to want to do himself -- give him a blank slate to work with. That means don't put anything on the master bus unless it's absolutely critical to preserve your vision of how the track should sound or feel. No limiters, compression, EQ, etc, and especially no "exciters", stereo widening tools etc.
- Leave plenty of time at the end for any reverb tails, etc, to fade out

There's probably more, but that's what springs to mind right now.

Sounds spot on to me, except i dont get the bit about the reverb tails... Thats an artistic choice really, its hard to control reverb tails from a 2 track stereo bounce, unless you have the stems!

[staticcast]

A few tips:

- Give em headroom. That means the mixdown should peak at -6dB or so.
- Mix down to 24 bit WAV
- Don't do anything to the track that the mastering engineer is likely to want to do himself -- give him a blank slate to work with. That means don't put anything on the master bus unless it's absolutely critical to preserve your vision of how the track should sound or feel. No limiters, compression, EQ, etc, and especially no "exciters", stereo widening tools etc.
- Leave plenty of time at the end for any reverb tails, etc, to fade out

There's probably more, but that's what springs to mind right now.

Sounds spot on to me, except i dont get the bit about the reverb tails... Thats an artistic choice really, its hard to control reverb tails from a 2 track stereo bounce, unless you have the stems!

Just meant that when you bounce to a stereo mix it's easy to accidentally set the start and end markers too short and clip off the end of whatever might be reverbing away at the finish..

[Depone]

A few tips:

- Give em headroom. That means the mixdown should peak at -6dB or so.
- Mix down to 24 bit WAV
- Don't do anything to the track that the mastering engineer is likely to want to do himself -- give him a blank slate to work with. That means don't put anything on the master bus unless it's absolutely critical to preserve your vision of how the track should sound or feel. No limiters, compression, EQ, etc, and especially no "exciters", stereo widening tools etc.
- Leave plenty of time at the end for any reverb tails, etc, to fade out

There's probably more, but that's what springs to mind right now.

Sounds spot on to me, except i dont get the bit about the reverb tails... Thats an artistic choice really, its hard to control reverb tails from a 2 track stereo bounce, unless you have the stems!

Just meant that when you bounce to a stereo mix it's easy to accidentally set the start and end markers too short and clip off the end of whatever might be reverbing away at the finish..

Right getcha. i leave about a bar intro and outro from any sound audible

[paravrais]

A few tips:

- Give em headroom. That means the mixdown should peak at -6dB or so.
- Mix down to 24 bit WAV
- Don't do anything to the track that the mastering engineer is likely to want to do himself -- give him a blank slate to work with. That means don't put anything on the master bus unless it's absolutely critical to preserve your vision of how the track should sound or feel. No limiters, compression, EQ, etc, and especially no "exciters", stereo widening tools etc.
- Leave plenty of time at the end for any reverb tails, etc, to fade out

There's probably more, but that's what springs to mind right now.

Sounds spot on to me, except i dont get the bit about the reverb tails... Thats an artistic choice really, its hard to control reverb tails from a 2 track stereo bounce, unless you have the stems!

Just meant that when you bounce to a stereo mix it's easy to accidentally set the start and end markers too short and clip off the end of whatever might be reverbing away at the finish..

Right getcha. i leave about a bar intro and outro from any sound audible

I add the silence at the start of a track in audacity after rendering the wav. Is this bad practice?? It just pisses me off working a bar ahead of where I should be, I like being able to look at the number 17 and know that means 16 bars ends there etc. It makes my world collapse if I try and move it all forwards one. Leaving space at the end is never a problem though.

[Depone]

A few tips:

- Give em headroom. That means the mixdown should peak at -6dB or so.
- Mix down to 24 bit WAV
- Don't do anything to the track that the mastering engineer is likely to want to do himself -- give him a blank slate to work with. That means don't put anything on the master bus unless it's absolutely critical to preserve your vision of how the track should sound or feel. No limiters, compression, EQ, etc, and especially no "exciters", stereo widening tools etc.
- Leave plenty of time at the end for any reverb tails, etc, to fade out

There's probably more, but that's what springs to mind right now.

Sounds spot on to me, except i dont get the bit about the reverb tails... Thats an artistic choice really, its hard to control reverb tails from a 2 track stereo bounce, unless you have the stems!

Just meant that when you bounce to a stereo mix it's easy to accidentally set the start and end markers too short and clip off the end of whatever might be reverbing away at the finish..

Right getcha. i leave about a bar intro and outro from any sound audible

I add the silence at the start of a track in audacity after rendering the wav. Is this bad practice?? It just pisses me off working a bar ahead of where I should be, I like being able to look at the number 17 and know that means 16 bars ends there etc. It makes my world collapse if I try and move it all forwards one. Leaving space at the end is never a problem though.

In logic I can set Bars as - numbers. So i have -1 bars of silence before anything. Then i may adda sound effect /roll in for that -1 bar

[paradigm_x]

Tend to agree with everyone else in this thread.

Only caveat, if you use master bus compression (mixed INTO this) then leave it on. Definitely dont stick a comp limiter etc on at the last minute tho. If you do use a bus comp, taking it off will make your mix collapse!

Depone - god i wish cubase had a pre-roll/set 0:0 at a certain bar. (it might do, have searched but cant find). I tend to start at bar 64 so at least if you zoom out you get the bars landing at roughly the right place.

I tend to build my 8/16 bar loops at the start then leave them there and build arrangement from bar 64.

[Depone]

Tend to agree with everyone else in this thread.

Only caveat, if you use master bus compression (mixed INTO this) then leave it on. Definitely dont stick a comp limiter etc on at the last minute tho. If you do use a bus comp, taking it off will make your mix collapse!

Depone - god i wish cubase had a pre-roll/set 0:0 at a certain bar. (it might do, have searched but cant find). I tend to start at bar 64 so at least if you zoom out you get the bars landing at roughly the right place.

I tend to build my 8/16 bar loops at the start then leave them there and build arrangement from bar 64.

Interesting! Yeah I have different zooms and window arrangements set to the number pad on my keyboard, so i either zoom normally or switch to whatever screenset needed.

PS I for got its called pre-roll. You can even set the amount of pre-roll in recording, so you have have upto like 4 bars of pre-roll before the recording initiates.

[decree]

A few tips:

- Give em headroom. That means the mixdown should peak at -6dB or so.
- Mix down to 24 bit WAV
- Don't do anything to the track that the mastering engineer is likely to want to do himself -- give him a blank slate to work with. That means don't put anything on the master bus unless it's absolutely critical to preserve your vision of how the track should sound or feel. No limiters, compression, EQ, etc, and especially no "exciters", stereo widening tools etc.
- Leave plenty of time at the end for any reverb tails, etc, to fade out

There's probably more, but that's what springs to mind right now.

Sounds spot on to me, except i dont get the bit about the reverb tails... Thats an artistic choice really, its hard to control reverb tails from a 2 track stereo bounce, unless you have the stems!

Just meant that when you bounce to a stereo mix it's easy to accidentally set the start and end markers too short and clip off the end of whatever might be reverbing away at the finish..

Right getcha. i leave about a bar intro and outro from any sound audible

I add the silence at the start of a track in audacity after rendering the wav. Is this bad practice?? It just pisses me off working a bar ahead of where I should be, I like being able to look at the number 17 and know that means 16 bars ends there etc. It makes my world collapse if I try and move it all forwards one. Leaving space at the end is never a problem though.

you could just move it one bar up AFTER you finish everything else

[brex]

In logic I can set Bars as - numbers. So i have -1 bars of silence before anything. Then i may adda sound effect /roll in for that -1 bar

hey man how do you set the pre roll?? i use logic also but never knew you could do that...that would be real nice because i always just start at bar 2 and subtract 1 from everything lol

[Sharmaji]

start your project at 0, but start everything lining up at 1.

[Depone]

In logic I can set Bars as - numbers. So i have -1 bars of silence before anything. Then i may adda sound effect /roll in for that -1 bar

hey man how do you set the pre roll?? i use logic also but never knew you could do that...that would be real nice because i always just start at bar 2 and subtract 1 from everything lol

Top left of the time bar. click and drag that lil box

[serox]

Ok so i contacted a mastering house few months back and asked if they could master my track (obviously). He sent me a message back with all sorts of techy words and things i needed to do to the track. Some of the things he was saying i didnt have a fuckin clue. I asked him to explain in detail and didnt get a reply lol. Is there any tips on getting a tune ready to send to a mastering house? Im working in Reason 5

my tip is, if he wants the business he will help you does he want ur money or not!

Speak to Macc, always been cool with my questions!

[Neff]

when you say no eqing compression or anything does this just apply the the master output or every single channel?

[GRAYSKALE]

when you say no eqing compression or anything does this just apply the the master output or every single channel?

just the master output - eq'ing and compressing on individual track channels is pretty much essential for a decent mix down. Anything that shapes the track as a whole, bar filter sweeps etc that are for creative purposes, is best left off so the mastering engineer has a clean slate when sorting out the track (and some more technical reasons that I wouldn't even claim to understand!)

[Sharmaji]

if you have anything on the master that you think should be there because you heard it on an interwebs forum, take it off.

otherwise, don't clip your mix, and just simply have your mix sounding GOOD. have the balance between the elements that you want, have the weight you want in the low end, the presence of the kick, etc. if you can get these but you can't get the mix as loud as you want-- perfect. that's what me's are here to do.

and for the love of god, DON'T add 12db of 10k to your mix because it makes it sound 'clear.'

[Neff]

haha yeah i thought that taking off all of that would like change all of the sounds and how is the mastering guy meant to know how you want it to sound cheers for clearing that up

[GRAYSKALE]

haha yeah i thought that taking off all of that would like change all of the sounds and how is the mastering guy meant to know how you want it to sound cheers for clearing that up

yeah, the aim is to get it sounding how you want before sending it off for mastering and then the mastering engineers job is just to maximise the loudness, add a bt of depth to the mix amongst many other things.