Hi, just curious as I'm beginning to get more people listening to my tracks I feel I need to step up the mastering game as its probably my biggest weakness.. just wanted to make this post for you guys to maybe share some little tricks and tips as well as some good vst's that all help mastering..
I use reason 5 to produce but I really don't feel that it masters very well and its pretty much always clipping no matter how clean it sounds and therefore clips when exporting which is abit annoying. but I do have a good knowledge of ableton and have recently thought about firing that up and loading the wav file of tracks produced in reason and mastering in ableton, I have t-racks 3 and izotope ozone as well as the built in vst's
please feel free to share anything
thanks
Re: Mastering - Techniques, VST's, Programs
Posted: Tue May 03, 2011 7:23 pm
by Kombatant
DJ Vespers tutorial on Ozone is a useful starting point (He uses Ableton but it should translate to any DAW.)
societyloser1 wrote:Mastering won't solve your problems... You'll need to mix your tracks right (search google for the difference between mixing & mastering)
thanks but I know the difference between mixing and mastering, I understand how to mix down to stop the track clipping but then its when mastering to gain the volume and make the track more crisp and clear that I think I need work on.
Re: Mastering - Techniques, VST's, Programs
Posted: Tue May 03, 2011 7:52 pm
by alphacat
societyloser1 wrote: (search google for the difference between mixing & mastering)
This. I think it's possible you still might not get the difference, because many folks who really know their stuff would never, ever master their own material: it requires dedicated gear and a listening environment that's totally different from the studio, for starters.
Your gain staging should be moderate, not hot, and your mix as clear as you think it can possibly be before you hand it over to the mastering engineer.
Re: Mastering - Techniques, VST's, Programs
Posted: Tue May 03, 2011 7:55 pm
by lowpass
FuzionDubstep wrote:
societyloser1 wrote:Mastering won't solve your problems... You'll need to mix your tracks right (search google for the difference between mixing & mastering)
thanks but I know the difference between mixing and mastering, I understand how to mix down to stop the track clipping but then its when mastering to gain the volume and make the track more crisp and clear that I think I need work on.
Crisp and clear sounds like a mixdown issue to me,
Crisp - making the high frequencies more present using equalisation
Clear - giving each instrument / sound it's own place in the mix, using a process of both eq and possibly dynamic processing to give everything a balanced and seperated sound
Re: Mastering - Techniques, VST's, Programs
Posted: Tue May 03, 2011 7:56 pm
by FuzionDubstep
alphacat wrote:
societyloser1 wrote: (search google for the difference between mixing & mastering)
This. I think it's possible you still might not get the difference, because many folks who really know their stuff would never, ever master their own material: it requires dedicated gear and a listening environment that's totally different from the studio, for starters.
Your gain staging should be moderate, not hot, and your mix as clear as you think it can possibly be before you hand it over to the mastering engineer.
I do know the difference between mixing and mastering, I'm quite a known producer not been big headed here but I obviously must have some idea If I manage to rack up hundreds of thousands of views on youtube/soundcloud etc. .. but yeah I would prefer a mastering engineer to master tracks, but I am 16 years old and I imagine it isn't cheap to hire a mastering engineer? and I don't have the money at all, and the money I do have I'm investing into equipment such as mics/midi keyboards etc. so its quite hard to fork out hence why I'm trying to learn how to make a decent sounding track by yourself
Re: Mastering - Techniques, VST's, Programs
Posted: Tue May 03, 2011 8:06 pm
by alphacat
FuzionDubstep wrote:I do know the difference between mixing and mastering, I'm quite a known producer not been big headed here but I obviously must have some idea If I manage to rack up hundreds of thousands of views on youtube/soundcloud etc. .. but yeah I would prefer a mastering engineer to master tracks, but I am 16 years old and I imagine it isn't cheap to hire a mastering engineer? and I don't have the money at all, and the money I do have I'm investing into equipment such as mics/midi keyboards etc. so its quite hard to fork out hence why I'm trying to learn how to make a decent sounding track by yourself
Chances are if he can't help you out directly he can give you good tips in the right direction...maybe he knows someone near you that's trying to get established. It ain't cheap, but if your mixes are already nearly as good as they can be then it's the only logical step to do the tracks justice (IMO.) Hopefully their quality will help recoup expenses too by making them stand out against all of the self-mastered (usually horribly) tunes out there. You may even be able to negotiate a percentage with them instead of paying upfront, but that's gonna rest heavily on your sales track record to date.
Either way - it's an investment in the final quality of your work that can be as important as any piece of gear or anything else sometimes.
PS: Dude, hundreds of thousands of views on Youtube is in no way shape or form any kind of measure of ability/talent/knowledge... I mean, this video here got 300 million hits.
Re: Mastering - Techniques, VST's, Programs
Posted: Tue May 03, 2011 8:59 pm
by Mad_EP
alphacat wrote:
PS: Dude, hundreds of thousands of views on Youtube is in no way shape or form any kind of measure of ability/talent/knowledge... I mean, this video here got 300 million hits.
^^^ this.
Re: Mastering - Techniques, VST's, Programs
Posted: Tue May 03, 2011 10:18 pm
by hifi
societyloser1 wrote:Mastering won't solve your problems... You'll need to mix your tracks right (search google for the difference between mixing & mastering)
this looks helpful. I have been using ozone for a while for just quick mastering and it always gets the job done. I'm not sure if I really would like to get into mastering my own tracks myself as it would be really time consuming and can get frustrating if you are just starting out. since your 16 op i don't think you should learn this yet, I can tell you still have a lot to learn of just mixing down your stuff from what I can tell in your tracks. worry about mastering later, or if you want to then go ahead i don't think it will make a difference if you can't mixdown your tracks well. clipping won't automatically go away from mastering it's a proper mixdown that does it
and having a bunch of "views" on a tune of yours doesn't mean it is automatically properly mixed down... that was just you gloating a bit.
listen to this
that has more views than every single one of your tracks combined and it sucks ass.
I'm also not trying to be a dick here. And I'm not saying your mixdowns are bad either. You just need some more practice that's all.
Re: Mastering - Techniques, VST's, Programs
Posted: Tue May 03, 2011 10:45 pm
by amphibian
FuzionDubstep wrote:
societyloser1 wrote:Mastering won't solve your problems... You'll need to mix your tracks right (search google for the difference between mixing & mastering)
thanks but I know the difference between mixing and mastering, I understand how to mix down to stop the track clipping but then its when mastering to gain the volume and make the track more crisp and clear that I think I need work on.
Mixdowns are more than just stopping shit from clipping. This shouldn't be happening anyway, if you've started the tune correctly (all channels at -6db, minimum).etc. See links posted previously - they offer great advice/guides.
