Tips for a Mastering Noob?

[Tiger Blood]

Hey guys

So ive taken a look at the mastering thread at the top of the forum, but its almost to much to take in so was hoping for some easier to take in advice for a beginner to mastering.

I wanted to know in regard to plugins what would be a default setup for a starter, i know its a case of doing what suits the track when you know what your doing, but as a starter. Up to now I was just throwing ozone on the master and finding a preset that sounded good with no knowledge of what was actually happening.

Would you advise sticking with ozone and following some youtube tutorials or something? Or switching to individual plugins such as waves/ t racks instead?

Thanks for any guidance, it seems to be a lot harder to get the hang of than i first thought!

[eldoogle]

If I were you I would stick with Ozone and learn it. Ozones website has manuals for it's products, you could read those. I don't have anything made by Ozone but I read the manual on dithering. It suggests to use Ozones own dithering algorithm when exporting your final song.

[Genevieve]

You're looking for a shortcut for something there's no shortcut for. Read the links again. Those are to get you started.

How good are your mixdowns? How well is your room treated? How good are your monitors? How much experience do you have mixing down, shaping sound and sound designing?

Try to consider if mastering is the thing for you right now after reading those links.

If it's just for a 'quick self-master' to make your stuff louder. Put an EQ and limiter on the master. Keep it minimal as fuck. My advice.

[Tiger Blood]

You're looking for a shortcut for something there's no shortcut for. Read the links again. Those are to get you started.

How good are your mixdowns? How well is your room treated? How good are your monitors? How much experience do you have mixing down, shaping sound and sound designing?

Try to consider if mastering is the thing for you right now after reading those links.

If it's just for a 'quick self-master' to make your stuff louder. Put an EQ and limiter on the master. Keep it minimal as fuck. My advice.

My room isnt treated as i am not a serious level producer, i use KRKs with a saffire 6. I have just been using a limiter for my mid project exports but now i want to move to the finalization stages.

[eldoogle]

http://downloads.izotope.com/guides/iZo ... hOzone.pdf

http://izotope.fileburst.com/guides/Dit ... _Ozone.pdf

[Tiger Blood]

so ozone will do all the jobs well? no need for anything else?

[Genevieve]

You're looking for a shortcut for something there's no shortcut for. Read the links again. Those are to get you started.

How good are your mixdowns? How well is your room treated? How good are your monitors? How much experience do you have mixing down, shaping sound and sound designing?

Try to consider if mastering is the thing for you right now after reading those links.

If it's just for a 'quick self-master' to make your stuff louder. Put an EQ and limiter on the master. Keep it minimal as fuck. My advice.

My room isnt treated as i am not a serious level producer, i use KRKs with a saffire 6. I have just been using a limiter for my mid project exports but now i want to move to the finalization stages.

Well, I'd say try to get your mixes to sound as good as they can and read up on mixing more and watch more tutorials on it. You can fix things much more easily in a mix than in a master. It's just so counter productive. If you can make your mix sound clean, punchy, balanced and loud on its own, then a limiter is all you'll need to get it sounding great and loud later on.

But uno, that's my take on it. If you wanna learn mastering go ahead but use those links in the mastering thread. If it took as much as 1 post with a bunch of plug-ins to get you started, then that's all we'd have in that sticky

[Tiger Blood]

You're looking for a shortcut for something there's no shortcut for. Read the links again. Those are to get you started.

How good are your mixdowns? How well is your room treated? How good are your monitors? How much experience do you have mixing down, shaping sound and sound designing?

Try to consider if mastering is the thing for you right now after reading those links.

If it's just for a 'quick self-master' to make your stuff louder. Put an EQ and limiter on the master. Keep it minimal as fuck. My advice.

My room isnt treated as i am not a serious level producer, i use KRKs with a saffire 6. I have just been using a limiter for my mid project exports but now i want to move to the finalization stages.

Well, I'd say try to get your mixes to sound as good as they can and read up on mixing more and watch more tutorials on it. You can fix things much more easily in a mix than in a master. It's just so counter productive. If you can make your mix sound clean, punchy, balanced and loud on its own, then a limiter is all you'll need to get it sounding great and loud later on.

But uno, that's my take on it. If you wanna learn mastering go ahead but use those links in the mastering thread. If it took as much as 1 post with a bunch of plug-ins to get you started, then that's all we'd have in that sticky

thanks ill look into mix downs as well, i normally just adjust as i go to get everything how I want

[NinjaEdit]

I've started not liking limiters much. Just some ~2:1 compression.

[swerver]

You're looking for a shortcut for something there's no shortcut for. Read the links again.

[mthrfnk]

Guys I pirated a 250$ plugin and the presets don't make my tracks sound pro = this thread.

Yes Ozone is all you need (tbh its more than you need), T-racks is just another suite with similar tools - there's no special tricks, mastering is a whole different art in itself...

Seriously read the manual and I mean read ALL of it... the iZotope guides are brilliant regardless of what software you're using. I posted a thread just for them, although I think someone posted them above.

And yeah, your "master" will probably sound shit if you haven't even done a proper mixdown... Take things one step at a time and don't rely on Ozone to make your tracks sound good - they should sound as good as possible before you even load it up.

Fuck...

[swerver]

Just read this one......posts by 'macc'

http://www.dubstepforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=74832

All you need to know imho

[Tiger Blood]

Guys I pirated a 250$ plugin and the presets don't make my tracks sound pro = this thread.

Yes Ozone is all you need (tbh its more than you need), T-racks is just another suite with similar tools - there's no special tricks, mastering is a whole different art in itself...

Seriously read the manual and I mean read ALL of it... the iZotope guides are brilliant regardless of what software you're using. I posted a thread just for them, although I think someone posted them above.

And yeah, your "master" will probably sound shit if you haven't even done a proper mixdown... Take things one step at a time and don't rely on Ozone to make your tracks sound good - they should sound as good as possible before you even load it up.

Fuck...

cheers yea im following those steps now, you sound overly angry about this though, everyone started somewhere.

[Sharmaji]

4 main tools in modern mastering: compression, corrective/additive eq, saturation, and limiting.

So slap each one- by itself- on your stereo buss and see what it does. See what over compression does, etc. make a note of it. Learn to hear it.

I learned more about mixing and mastering by attending mix and master sessions when I was younger than anything in a book or on the web taught. Spend some $ on someone's expertise, shut up and take notes.

[fragments]

4 main tools in modern mastering: compression, corrective/additive eq, saturation, and limiting.

So slap each one- by itself- on your stereo buss and see what it does. See what over compression does, etc. make a note of it. Learn to hear it.

I learned more about mixing and mastering by attending mix and master sessions when I was younger than anything in a book or on the web taught. Spend some $ on someone's expertise, shut up and take notes.

Hoping to take a project someone local soon for exactly this.

[mthrfnk]

Guys I pirated a 250$ plugin and the presets don't make my tracks sound pro = this thread.

Yes Ozone is all you need (tbh its more than you need), T-racks is just another suite with similar tools - there's no special tricks, mastering is a whole different art in itself...

Seriously read the manual and I mean read ALL of it... the iZotope guides are brilliant regardless of what software you're using. I posted a thread just for them, although I think someone posted them above.

And yeah, your "master" will probably sound shit if you haven't even done a proper mixdown... Take things one step at a time and don't rely on Ozone to make your tracks sound good - they should sound as good as possible before you even load it up.

Fuck...

cheers yea im following those steps now, you sound overly angry about this though, everyone started somewhere.

Lol someone at work pissed me off just before I came on DSF for a little browse...

Anyways I agree with Sharmaji - I'm currently saving up to get a few potential tracks mastered at a nice place in London with the idea of attending the session and properly learning something.

Idk if anyone gets Future Music but their last issue was on mastering ("the ultimate guide"), and they had a couple of video tutorials on the disc - one was a full session with a ME talking through him mastering a track. It's an awesome video, just watching the guy work and picking up on frequencies and sounds I didn't even notice was revealing in itself.

[efence]

My advice is you should not self master. I didn't start to even think about self mastering until I had been producing for 6 years. If your tracks don't sound how you want them to sound mastering will not help.

[Tiger Blood]

hey guys

I had my first go at mixing and mastering and got this, though i think my mix may be a bit off, all done with ozone. I know the track isnt dubstep, i wanted to make something different to learn something new!

Soundcloud

I wanted to know, when would i EVER use a limiter on a track? i normally use a compressor to make something quiet louder and i dont get what a limiter is doing on a instrument track? (I understand its use in mastering obviously)

[eldoogle]

If it's your first go at mixing, I wouldn't delve into using Ozone yet. Maybe just work on the mixdown and once you're finished then put a limiter on the master track. The limiter boosts the level of the whole track. The way I gain stage my tracks I usually add 6 db with a limiter and sometimes the snare will hit the limiters threshold.

[Sharmaji]

I wanted to know, when would i EVER use a limiter on a track?

when you've got an element that really shouldn't have any dynamics (a pad, really distorted lead, etc), but is moving all over the place-- squash it down.

limiting works great on things where you want to lose the transient and keep the sustain-- ambient drum mic's, effected pianos and guitars, etc.