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Trying to get some a bit punchier mixdowns, cos as good as I ever think mine are as soon as a stick them next to anyone else's (mastered or not mastered) they sound weak and quiet. I have always tried to stay pretty far away from the Reason mastering suite, but its so damn tempting now!

Basically... Should I forget using any digital mastering? (I am gonna start getting things cut this year hopefully) Are there any good presets in Reason or to download? If I do it manually what kind of devices and in what way should I use them?

Thanks in advance!

I don't really get what your trying to say at all, but if you simply slap a mastering suite on anything it will instantly sound way better. If your not down with presets you might have to actually research some stuff or at least turn some knobs then you can sound even louder or punchier than a preset.
I'm curious why are your tempted to use the m-class suite now, the v5 announcement?

Any preset for mastering will generally be useless. Each track dictates what a mastering engineer will do to it to emphasize its strengths. Custom job sorta dealie.

That being said some compression and limiting will increase the average level of your track making it seem louder. The biggest misconception about mastering is that a louder average level means more power therefor the more compression you apply the more powerful your mix will be. You can compress and normalize your track to zero dB and compare it to a professionally done track and you'll most likely find that although they are playing at the same volume, your track won't have as much clarity or punch. This is a problem with mixing and cannot be fixed in mastering, only slightly improved.

The reason why it doesn't sound as loud as a pro track is because there's usually a lot of bullshit in the mix that's eating up headroom. Compression gives you extra headroom by lowering the peaks of tracks which are too dynamic. The second culprit which a lot of people overlook is unnecessary frequencies filling up space. If you cut out the lows of all but the instruments that need it, you'll find you'll gain back a lot of lost headroom. You'll be able to turn things up and everything will be clearer which will give the effect of making each element sound louder.
It's not just for lows, cut out any unneeded frequencies in each instrument and you'll give yourself more headroom and a better sounding mix which can then be compressed by a mastering engineer without sounding like a shit ball of mush.

as people have written above ^^^

Using presets for mastering is like an oxymoron (but its not really is it?). Mastering is subjective to the material at hand. Every track will need a different approach and therefore different techniques and mastering chain.
That and the ME's ears...

cycle through the different presets and see what each one does-- processes used, eq curves, compression (how much? what kind?), limiting etc. figure out what make something sound a certain way and then go for it yrself.

Now i think about it of course presets is a stupid idea. I will experiment and try messing with some compression and limiting.

Just to clarify, mastering isn't going to make a mix "punchier"? Maybe louder but is the actual quality of the mix the only thing that is gonna basically get it sounding sick?

You got er
Can't polish a turd


Unless it's a brass turd...

Use EQ's for a punchier sound, i dont use mastering at all in reason. You got a clip so we can have a listen?

I was talking in general terms more than a certain track really. Just noticed last few times i have had a Radio play (*cough* Distance *cough*) that my tracks just are too quiet in comparison to others. Never wanted to get into all this software mastering but if my tracks do get played and they sound half the volume of everyone else what choice do i have?

Just gonna work more on mixedowns and just do a little bit of subtle compression and limiting to get the levels sounding okay!

SunkLo wrote:You got er
Can't polish a turd


Unless it's a brass turd...

actually their is a Japanese art form that takes dirt and polishes it into shiny balls (weird i know) and plus mythbusters did manage to polish crap in one of their episode... but the statement still holds

wow that's crazy
I guess a better phrase would be "You can't season a turd into something you'd want to eat."

Pulling more punch out of track very much depends on the underlying drums within.
(and to a degree how the bassline ties in with the beats).

Firstly as it seems you are working on your own material try and coax it out using the mix elements themselves
rather than treating the entire mix, you are in a good position to maximize the perceived punch on a track
by track basis, kick, snare, bassline, it will take time but you could stand to learn a lot (do a "save as" on your project first though)

Some tips are try a good quality compressor set up properly, transient reshapers and of course as someone mentioned a few carefully selected EQ moves can bring some snap and absolutely go easy on any limiting as it will round off the transients present fairly swiftly. These can a be applied to the master bux
for icing on the cake but you need to be able to hear clearly the trade offs so concentrate on mix elements first.

cheers

-dubson- wrote:Now i think about it of course presets is a stupid idea. I will experiment and try messing with some compression and limiting.

Just to clarify, mastering isn't going to make a mix "punchier"? Maybe louder but is the actual quality of the mix the only thing that is gonna basically get it sounding sick?

punch comes from dynamics, not eq-- you can definitely add 'punch' to a track at the mastering stage, but more often than not it's gonna involve sacrificing something else-- much better left handled at the mix stage.

in an ideal mastering world, all the mastering engineer has to do is turn the level up, so that the tune sits well with current material. All dynamic relationships, frequency balance, etc, is exactly as the artist would want it-- it ALL comes down to the mix.

Open up a default suite, and make everything to default setting (hold shift and click on each parameter) , so its a clean patch. All you need is the EQ, compressor, imager, maxaimer, and your ears. All processors are subjective to the track at hand.

nitz wrote:Open up a default suite, and make everything to default setting (hold ctrl and click on each parameter) , so its a clean patch. All you need is the EQ, compressor, imager, maxaimer, and your ears. All processors are subjective to the track at hand.

fixed

To tell the truth, I wouldn't bother using the mastering suite. I did used to, but compressing everything can cause big problems.

How I set things up now is:

One mixer for drums. I usually use individual hits now days. Each hit is in a combi which has eq, various effect and maximizers. The maximizer brings the hit up to the max volume without clipping. You will need to play with it to get the best results.

One mixer for everything else, samplers, Thor etc. Same again as with the drums, everything goes through eq, compressors, maximizers before going into the mixer.

Next thing I do is eq both mixers (lose the very bottom bass and add some shine around 5khz) and put both mixers into another mixer. The second mixer (Thor,etc) is first sidechained (not to harshly) against the Drum Mixer before going into the 'Master Mixer' though.

Then after the 'Master' mixer, more eq and straight out of Reason.

The idea is, everything is 'polished' and brought up to level before going to a mixer. You don't have the problem of other sounds being messed with because you want more bass or compression on another sound and other sounds not needing it.

After , I usually chuck the WAV through Ozone using Reaper, but not using it a great deal or as harshly as I used to with other set ups.

how my tunes come out now below.

Soundcloud

Wow thats a pretty crazy way of doing it! Fair play though. It obviously works for you!

I'll definatly play around with some of the techniques you just mentioned.