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Alright, so let's say I've got my tune mixed decent enough.. What can I do now to raise the levels up a bit, maybe for Soundcloud and what not..

I don't really have the money to get anything Mastered at the moment, so what can I do on my own for the time being? I know you can use Limiters and such, but what's the right way to go about this?

Export the mixdown, Open new project bring in the exported mixdown Slap a limiter on the new project master, set to -.03 and turn the gain up until it sounds loud enough. THats the cheap and dirty way to get louder.

I use ozone4(loudness maximizer and eprom tech on the multiband stuff) but if you jsut have stock plugs then a limiter can do in a pinch.

PSP Xenon is a really transparent limiter for just getting your track level up

Alright :] Thanks..

What else would Mastering consist of?

I'm guessing using an EQ To boost certain Frequencies? Just wondering

at first i thought eq'ing during mastering was a good idea... but i kept reading that artists/producers i enjoyed kept saying that you really shouldnt have to eq in the master stage if your mixdown was done correctly. Your mixdown should be on point as good as it can sound (minus being "loud"). Traditionally speaking mastering used to be the stage where an engineer would make tracks sound "uniform" as an album. He would be trying to not sound like other tracks so much but to have a nice sounding cohesive presentaiton as an album. In EDM mastering really ends up being the process where you try to add warmth and loudness with out sacrificing to much dynamic range. But thats just my take on things really.

blinx wrote:at first i thought eq'ing during mastering was a good idea... but i kept reading that artists/producers i enjoyed kept saying that you really shouldnt have to eq in the master stage if your mixdown was done correctly. Your mixdown should be on point as good as it can sound (minus being "loud"). Traditionally speaking mastering used to be the stage where an engineer would make tracks sound "uniform" as an album. He would be trying to not sound like other tracks so much but to have a nice sounding cohesive presentaiton as an album. In EDM mastering really ends up being the process where you try to add warmth and loudness with out sacrificing to much dynamic range. But thats just my take on things really.

Alright, I see!

Now question.. I'm using that PSP Xenon to boost the Levels up real high, it sounds decent to me, but could it possibly be squashing the sound a bit? Because it's getting real loud, with no clipping.. The Fruity Limiter couldn't do that! ..

Also, how's one go about this "Warmth adding" ? ;] I understand the loudness part, but is that all there is to it?

What do you usually use for your mastering, by the way?

Try some psp vintagewarmer to add "warmth" i know the pros love that plugin these days lol.

Im going to try using psp xenon in my next master and see what happens. but you will lose some punch and dynamics when you boost levels using compression/limiters it really just become what you want in the end. I personally enjoy a lot of dynamic room in my tracks to help add ambience over squishing every last db of heaadroom and loudness out of a track. When i dj i can really easily just boost the level of my tracks to fit into the louder compressed tracks.

That said there are genre's based on side-chaining and pumping the fuck out of compressors, even some dubstep artists use alot of compression and limiting in there producitons.

blinx wrote:Try some psp vintagewarmer to add "warmth" i know the pros love that plugin these days lol.

Im going to try using psp xenon in my next master and see what happens. but you will lose some punch and dynamics when you boost levels using compression/limiters it really just become what you want in the end. I personally enjoy a lot of dynamic room in my tracks to help add ambience over squishing every last db of heaadroom and loudness out of a track. When i dj i can really easily just boost the level of my tracks to fit into the louder compressed tracks.

That said there are genre's based on side-chaining and pumping the fuck out of compressors, even some dubstep artists use alot of compression and limiting in there producitons.

Alright!

So it's really down to what you want it to sound like in the end, and what sounds good to you, right? I keep forgetting that part, Haha..

yeah man the ears will not fail you, just train them. I do a little A/B with mastering but i dont get to stuck on it... Id rather have a full dynamic psuedo self master that can really get turned up, breathe and be clean. I jsut had my single played on a subfm show and it mixed in really well and its not super squashed at all.

It's so hard these days to not squash the fuck out of your tracks, just because over the last 10 years commercial music has just been getting louder and louder at the expense of dynamics. So people kinda feel they need to master super loud just to compete.

However, as blinx said, if you don't worry about it so much and keep your dynamics breathing, your tracks will have so much more impact when played next to the super-squashed tracks. For example, I've been playing out tracks that have been mastered so ridiculously loud, that I've literally had to turn the volume up when the drop kicks in just to get some impact, as everything is at the same level! You really don't want that

yeah i cant stand super squashed music, but when you dj you have to just make it happen sometimes lol

I can stand squashed music if it's good. But I would enjoy the same track much more without the squashing. If loudness is what the listener wants, they should turn up their amp.

MKRUGGER wrote:

blinx wrote:Try some psp vintagewarmer to add "warmth" i know the pros love that plugin these days lol.

Im going to try using psp xenon in my next master and see what happens. but you will lose some punch and dynamics when you boost levels using compression/limiters it really just become what you want in the end. I personally enjoy a lot of dynamic room in my tracks to help add ambience over squishing every last db of heaadroom and loudness out of a track. When i dj i can really easily just boost the level of my tracks to fit into the louder compressed tracks.

That said there are genre's based on side-chaining and pumping the fuck out of compressors, even some dubstep artists use alot of compression and limiting in there producitons.

Alright!

So it's really down to what you want it to sound like in the end, and what sounds good to you, right? I keep forgetting that part, Haha..

I would be careful with Vintage Warmer, it's a cool plugin for giving a channel in a mix or a bus some "vibe" but it's a bit of a transient squasher, you might find you undo some of the snappyness you carefully carved in the mix-down stage if you push it just a little too far.

Is Isotope Ozone A good investment, or Should I just Get A Really Good Mix In Reason and Master it using the included software?

Self finalizing is cool but not to be confused with mastering.
Without the right environment the tools are empty.

safeandsound wrote:Self finalizing is cool but not to be confused with mastering.
Without the right environment the tools are empty.

SafeandSound Mastering
online mastering services

Haha, not sure why that last guy bumped this thread.. Been a lot of old thread bumping going on here lately.

I've learned so much since this thread, wow.

ZACKBLAK wrote:Is Isotope Ozone A good investment, or Should I just Get A Really Good Mix In Reason and Master it using the included software?

You can master in Reason too, I don't use Ozone but I've seen it in class and it's pretty damgut.

fabfilter pro l is the shit
way better than ozone

The goal was to impart some knowledge. You can have $1,000,000.00 of hardware or $200.00 of plugins, if you do not have the resolution and accuracy of monitoring (which includes DAC, speakers, positioning, room) to hear what needs to be done how do you know you are making an improvement ?
Additionally you are quite possibly compounding tonal / dynamic issues that have already been moulded into the mix by using the same speakers with the same traits.

This is self finalizing not mastering.

My response is really for anyone else who views the thread so they don't get a inaccurate description of what audio mastering really is.
(i.e. it's not slapping vintage warmer or a limiter on)

SafeandSound Mastering
HCL VariS Vari Mu, Summit DCL-200, Custom Mastering EQ, PMC IB1S
music mastering

Using a brick wall limiter to push up the track volume isn't that difficult. EQing is much more tricky because of the monitoring requirements. Home made mastering must be compared with demo offered by most mastering facilities. Then, you can understand what's the difference between self finalizing and a serious mastering.