mastering at home...

[MARCHMELLOW]

I'm at work aswell, also bored beyind belief. Perhaps that explains why I managed to write 150 words of complete irrelevance.

I would say that the advice I have always got is to minimise your compression on the sub, you'll lose the harmonics and it will end up sounding flat.

if your sub was pretty basic in terms notes being played and a pretty clean sample, would you consider leaving it uncompressed? or is that just my borderline insanity of still being at work shining through?

[MARCHMELLOW]

beware of how compression affects the harmonics of a sound

by pushing up certain frequencies and harmonics in order to 'squash' the sound, it may have a knock on affect with other instruments in that region

plus, may generally push out the wrong harmonics for what you're trying to do

its one of the bastard subtle situations where a good monitoring set-up really comes into its own!!

This is a good point on why you wouldn't want to compress your sub. You want the sub to be a sub you don't want its high end brought up in the mix you want it for its sub properties, if you do want more high end on your sub then don't filter it so much!

what about if you heavily heavily filter, and then do what was mentioned above? would that still manage to bring out the the mid and high frequencies even if you have completely filtered them out?

Well yeah the more you filter the less your going to hear it, but regardless there will be less sub and more high than what you started with. Why are you trying to compress your sub?

i don't mate, thats the thing, just wondered if and how i should!

[wasteman]

ok, that makes sense, but my question was more along the lines of;

an unfiltered sub with a multiband compressor on it would bring out unwanted frequencies, as everyone knows. but i was curious...if you heavily heavily filtered the sub, then put a multiband compressor on this, would it still bring out unwanted frequencies, even if you have totally flitered them out? and would it boost the sub better then a normal compressor?

i don't wanna actually do it (unless its good), i'm just sitting at work, bored beyond belief!!

I think your confused on what a compressor does. Again its just an automated level control. Think of a volume fader going up and down and what effect that has on a signal, now that is what a compressor does. If your compressing a sub then the frequencies that are going to trigger the threshold are the low frequencies, all your going to be doing is turning the sound down when the low frequencies are at their loudest.

[cryptic]

lol hears another one for you (cheers for the reply on the two compressor question)


When mastering a tune, ive always heard that you should leave some head room for the masterer

what levels do you have your all your samples at?

i know this can really vary, depending on what tune it is lol, anyone got a ruff guide?


my kicks normally peak -3db and bass at normally -8db

clap/snare -4db

[Sharmaji]

ok, that makes sense, but my question was more along the lines of;

an unfiltered sub with a multiband compressor on it would bring out unwanted frequencies, as everyone knows. but i was curious...if you heavily heavily filtered the sub, then put a multiband compressor on this, would it still bring out unwanted frequencies, even if you have totally flitered them out? and would it boost the sub better then a normal compressor?

i don't wanna actually do it (unless its good), i'm just sitting at work, bored beyond belief!!

easier solution is to just use a sub-- sample, synth, re-sampled synth, whatever-- that doesn't need eq or compression to sit nicely in the mix.

also-- a sub, to make your life easier, can really just be a sub. like, nothing going on under 150 hz (if even that high)-- at that point, there's not a hell of a lot to filter out. and if you use multiband compression-- not a lot to multi-band there.

in my head, the only reason to compress a sub is if certain notes really poke out, volume-wise-- and i mean not just in your room, but on every system. otherwise... compression on low-end stuff really changes peoples physical response to a tune. It can move something from being heavy and deep and introspective to oppressive and smothering-- something to take into account...

seriously if you keep your levels low enough and get your sounds good, you shouldn't have to worry about mastering until it's time to either release your tune, or send it out to be cut for dubs. All through the process, though, you need to worry about how what you're doing is going to affect the end product. it IS dancemusic, right?

[MARCHMELLOW]

your right TeReKeTe, i don't wanna worry too much about mastering, and ofcourse if it was gonna be released , i'd get it done properly, but always good to get your tune sounding crisp on your own to start with, then ofcourse send your clean mix to a proper masterer!

[wasteman]

lol hears another one for you (cheers for the reply on the two compressor question)


When mastering a tune, ive always heard that you should leave some head room for the masterer

what levels do you have your all your samples at?

i know this can really vary, depending on what tune it is lol, anyone got a ruff guide?


my kicks normally peak -3db and bass at normally -8db

clap/snare -4db

As you've said it completely depends on the tune and your taste, do what ever you think sounds best. Remember its nice to have some dynamics in a tune so you may not what you kick and snare always peaking at the same point.

With the mastering question, why not just have your track peak at say -10db. If your track did peak at 0db then the mastering engineer could always just turn the volume down, this will have some effect on the signal but then so does everything. Bob Katz has a good book on mastering which explains all these kinds of things in a lot of detail. I really wouldn't worry about shit like this though.

[flippo]

if i'm home-mastering stuff, i'll set up a chain of (usually in this order) compression, eq, limiting.

why comp before EQ? do you really want to have frequencies involved in your compression dynamics that are you are going to get rid of anyway?

I've always thought you should EQ before dynamics for that reason.

[Sharmaji]

why comp before EQ? do you really want to have frequencies involved in your compression dynamics that are you are going to get rid of anyway?

I've always thought you should EQ before dynamics for that reason.

it's not set in stone, but in general, compression will downplay what you do in EQ, and make the changes less clear. always worth swapping out to see what the changes are though.

i think of it this way: i want to compress what already sounds balanced. so maybe i'll do some subtractive eq before compression, at the track level and such (or on the master... again, nothin's set in stone), take out some super-lows, some 500hz, some 800, etc (we're talking like 1-2db here). then compress after the mud is taken out. then start slightly adding in highs that maybe got lost in the compression, etc.

and yeah-- sometimes it sounds better w/ compression after eq. hell, sometimes it sounds better using multiband compression rather than both. always worth investigating. The busier your arrangement is, or the more disparate the sounds are, the greater difference you'll see w/ dynamic processing. you can squash a tune and all of a sudden, that bare sub you have doesn't sound as raw, but the drums are popping-- that kind of thing.

if you go comp/eq, you generally don't have to worry about level changes after eq because the limiter's there.

anyway we just finished masters for the upcoming SubSwara EP a few weeks back and each of the 5 tunes had some combination of compression (1-3db on the master, max), some eq's, really just to boost the highs and create a balanced spectrum, and some limiting and/or saturation after it all, in case it needed it.

We worked really hard to make things slamming before doing anything to the master bus; the mastering was really minimal, and served to bring the overall level up and slightly balance the dynamics. otherwise it's a pretty transparent process. it's like anything else really-- work hard early on and the end is a piece of cake.

and really, as long as people are dancing and you get the occasional rewind....

[distro]

ok, that makes sense, but my question was more along the lines of;

an unfiltered sub with a multiband compressor on it would bring out unwanted frequencies, as everyone knows. but i was curious...if you heavily heavily filtered the sub, then put a multiband compressor on this, would it still bring out unwanted frequencies, even if you have totally flitered them out? and would it boost the sub better then a normal compressor?

i don't wanna actually do it (unless its good), i'm just sitting at work, bored beyond belief!!

a multiband compresser is simply splitting the freq ranges up for compression. so u can treat the hi range differently with dif attack/release and gain for example. How u use it is completely subjective.. but yeh there are more options to filter out ranges or not compress them at all (bypass)

If u can get something sounding phat using a compresser or however.. ignore the bandwagon and do it

this is dance music.. anything goes!!!!!!

[osk]

ok, that makes sense, but my question was more along the lines of;

an unfiltered sub with a multiband compressor on it would bring out unwanted frequencies, as everyone knows. but i was curious...if you heavily heavily filtered the sub, then put a multiband compressor on this, would it still bring out unwanted frequencies, even if you have totally flitered them out? and would it boost the sub better then a normal compressor?

i don't wanna actually do it (unless its good), i'm just sitting at work, bored beyond belief!!

easier solution is to just use a sub-- sample, synth, re-sampled synth, whatever-- that doesn't need eq or compression to sit nicely in the mix.

also-- a sub, to make your life easier, can really just be a sub. like, nothing going on under 150 hz (if even that high)-- at that point, there's not a hell of a lot to filter out. and if you use multiband compression-- not a lot to multi-band there.

in my head, the only reason to compress a sub is if certain notes really poke out, volume-wise-- and i mean not just in your room, but on every system. otherwise... compression on low-end stuff really changes peoples physical response to a tune. It can move something from being heavy and deep and introspective to oppressive and smothering-- something to take into account...

seriously if you keep your levels low enough and get your sounds good, you shouldn't have to worry about mastering until it's time to either release your tune, or send it out to be cut for dubs. All through the process, though, you need to worry about how what you're doing is going to affect the end product. it IS dancemusic, right?

This is the most sense spoken in the thread thus far. Sound advice right here.

[cryptic]

If u can get something sounding phat using a compresser or however.. ignore the bandwagon and do it

this is dance music.. anything goes!!!!!

Exactly!

[distro]

[gomb]

incoming terrible advice:



Do whatever the fuck you want. If it sounds good, it sounds good. If not, you fucked something up. I'm not a professional engineer or anything, so I'm sure there are lots of people who would disagree with me...but most people listen to music either on stereo systems, on their ipods, or in their cars. Since this is dubstep, you probably want to master it for two spots: Clubs, and cars. So you don't need to use any fancy techniques or advanced calculus since both of those systems are inherrently terrible....they're just loud and bassey.

Just make sure everything is balanced so you're not the douchebag responsible for blowing up systems cause they weren't expecting that F# to come in 3 times louder than the rest of the bassline.