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I'd like to get your guys insight on mastering or perhaps jsut mixing in general on your master bus and other busses. But mainly your master bus.

Its weird because I have heard that you should "put light compression, barely any eq, subtle this, not to much of that" on your master bus. But I can't pay for a mastering engineer and I want to make my tracks sound loud and full and glued together. SO for example i'll have like 5 plugins on my master track. I'll have ozone choopping off the high end (14k and above), rolling off the low, adding stereo image to the mid/highs and highs, then I'll have maxbass adding more sub presence, then perhaps a BBE sonic maximizer (which just sounds GREAT) and sometimes even MORE. Maybe an L2 to pump out some more gain or just ableton limiter.


Now I'm sure this can't be right. You guys are gonna be like.. "your a fucking idiot, who does that, learn to mix", But the thing is it sounds really good to me. Like when I have all those plugins on my mix it sounds "pro", "commercial' w.e like "a song" or something. But when I take even 1 or 2 out of the mix it loses its glued ness and it sounds less like a "song" and more like a beat in ableton.


Any seasoned mix/masters have some advice?

Instep wrote:I'd like to get your guys insight on mastering or perhaps jsut mixing in general on your master bus and other busses. But mainly your master bus.

Its weird because I have heard that you should "put light compression, barely any eq, subtle this, not to much of that" on your master bus. But I can't pay for a mastering engineer and I want to make my tracks sound loud and full and glued together. SO for example i'll have like 5 plugins on my master track. I'll have ozone choopping off the high end (14k and above), rolling off the low, adding stereo image to the mid/highs and highs, then I'll have maxbass adding more sub presence, then perhaps a BBE sonic maximizer (which just sounds GREAT) and sometimes even MORE. Maybe an L2 to pump out some more gain or just ableton limiter.


Now I'm sure this can't be right. You guys are gonna be like.. "your a fucking idiot, who does that, learn to mix", But the thing is it sounds really good to me. Like when I have all those plugins on my mix it sounds "pro", "commercial' w.e like "a song" or something. But when I take even 1 or 2 out of the mix it loses its glued ness and it sounds less like a "song" and more like a beat in ableton.


Any seasoned mix/masters have some advice?

Can't say I'm a seasoned masterer, but I used to do what you did to an extent (iZotope preset with like 5 settings on + EQ + Multiband comp), I did it mainly as you said - because it sounded better. In reality I was trying to compensate for either a)bad synth work or b) bad mixing. As I've continued producing I've tried to improve mixing, improve my fx chains and consitently EQ on every mixer channel. Now when it comes to mastering I use iZotope solely as a harmonic exciter and I use a compressor (which one varies depenign on the track) and my tracks sound better and clearer imo.

Also two more notes from me (again I'm not a pro so...) but I wouldn't cut your highs at 14k, thats just silly., and don't use MaxxBass on your master, use it on the bass channel/buss in your mixer.

wow wow wow. You are definitely going too crazy with your processing.

Instep wrote:I'll have ozone choopping off the high end (14k and above)

Why are you taking out all your high end? That's over a quarter of the human audible frequency range you just filtered out. This will make your mix sound dull. Madness!

Instep wrote:rolling off the low

Unless you've got loads of low freq noise, why are you doing this? Even if you do have low freq noise on certain channels, why aren't you filtering that channel/s rather than the master bus?

Instep wrote:adding stereo image to the mid/highs and highs

Why not add your stereo imaging to the channels which are full of mid/high freqs instead?

Instep wrote:maxbass adding more sub presence

Why not just give your sub channel more presence to begin with?

Instep wrote:perhaps a BBE sonic maximizer (which just sounds GREAT)

Right...not sure what this is but I'd guess its a limiter/exciter. Fair enough slap a limiter on your master bus if you're mixing or comparing your music with other mixdowns, but DO NOT rely on anything on your master bus to make your mix sound 'done'. If you take the processing off your master bus and your mix suddenly sounds shit, you unfortunately have a shit mix.

Instep wrote:sometimes even MORE

Absolutely no need.

Instep wrote:Maybe an L2

Fair enough.

Honestly, there is no substitute for fixing things in the mix. Anything which sounds wrong with the finished tune can be fixed by processing each channel differently or using different sound sources. Relying on DIY master bus processing or professional mastering will only cause you problems in the long run.
Mastering was originally 'invented' in order to make music technically capable of being released (e.g making sure your sound wave will actually cut on to acetate and press on to vinyl successfully) - not in order to fix the mistakes, laziness or incompetence of the producer or musician.

Mastering engineers aren't generally expected to work miracles or alter the sound of your recording significantly.
Think of your tune as a house, and your mastering engineer as a painter and decorator. You can't ask your mastering engineer to build you an extension or start knocking down walls and changing the size or layout of your rooms. It's only reasonable to ask your mastering engineer to give your house a new lick of paint and re-position your furniture. If you've got a shit house (mixdown) to begin with, you're not giving your ME much of a chance to do his job.

The best you can ever expect from a mastering engineer is to make a 95% perfect mixdown sound 99% perfect.

£10 Bag wrote: Think of your tune as a house, and your mastering engineer as a painter and decorator. You can't ask your mastering engineer to build you an extension or start knocking down walls and changing the size or layout of your rooms. It's only reasonable to ask your mastering engineer to give your house a new lick of paint and re-position your furniture. If you've got a shit house (mixdown) to begin with, you're not giving your ME much of a chance to do his job.

This quote is damn good

i only got as far as "chop off the high end" and "roll off the lows"

and gotta say that's just wrong, don't do that. you gotta trust your ears, when you roll off everything above 15k doesn't it sound dull to you? It's not totally dampened and muffled? rolling off the low, you aren't losing the bass weight?

to be honest i think you nailed it in the first line: light compression, barely any EQ, subtle and end the chain with a -0.1dB limit to catch the peaks from clipping.

Mixing, I mix into Bootsy's Density mkIII.

For home masters, it normally goes (EQ -> Compressor -> EQ -> Limiter).

I'm not great at mastering so I don't push my mastering chain too hard.

Also, in the same way it's better to fix things in the mix rather than on the master bus, it's obviously better to get a pro mastering engineer to master your stuff than it is to master it yourself. There is no comparison.
Other than a bit of compression or limiting in order to make a DJ-ready copy, I wouldn't do anything else to my master channel personally.

If you start doing homebrew mastering you will more than likely end up making the same mistake twice - e.g say your room attenuates the 300hz-500hz range; you may well end up boosting these frequencies in your mixdown stage to compensate, then you may do it yet again at the mastering stage and just increase the problem. Then you come to play it out on a well balanced soundsystem in a good room and it sounds like shit. Pro mastering engineers have great ears, a treated room and the ability to analyse the music both from a technical and artistic standpoint - there's no comparison!

I've noticed that a lot of professional tracks DO have highend cuts. Some excision songs that I played through ableton and observed the waveforms with Span showed that everything after 14 sometimes 16K was just brickwalled out.

and when I do it I don't notcied the mix becoming dull.. you just lose a bit of that hissy shit on top

Instep wrote:I've noticed that a lot of professional tracks DO have highend cuts. Some excision songs that I played through ableton and observed the waveforms with Span showed that everything after 14 sometimes 16K was just brickwalled out.

and when I do it I don't notcied the mix becoming dull.. you just lose a bit of that hissy shit on top

16k cutoff? Someone's sourcing their tracks from YouTube.

You might not hear the sound loss, but cutting ~4kHz worth of sound will be noticeably on any hi-fi/monitor/club system.

£10 Bag wrote: Honestly, there is no substitute for fixing things in the mix. Anything which sounds wrong with the finished tune can be fixed by processing each channel differently or using different sound sources. Relying on DIY master bus processing or professional mastering will only cause you problems in the long run.
Mastering was originally 'invented' in order to make music technically capable of being released (e.g making sure your sound wave will actually cut on to acetate and press on to vinyl successfully) - not in order to fix the mistakes, laziness or incompetence of the producer or musician.

Mastering engineers aren't generally expected to work miracles or alter the sound of your recording significantly.
Think of your tune as a house, and your mastering engineer as a painter and decorator. You can't ask your mastering engineer to build you an extension or start knocking down walls and changing the size or layout of your rooms. It's only reasonable to ask your mastering engineer to give your house a new lick of paint and re-position your furniture. If you've got a shit house (mixdown) to begin with, you're not giving your ME much of a chance to do his job.

The best you can ever expect from a mastering engineer is to make a 95% perfect mixdown sound 99% perfect.

We've got a /thread on the first post!

Don't chop off above 14k... the human ear can hear up to 17k from what I've read so if you roll off somewhere above that. Also, roll or below 20-35hz to get rid of any sub you can't hear that is taking up head room. If you mix your song right your should need too much compression on the track. You're going to want a limiter on your master. How much you use it is your choice depending where you stand within the loudness war.

OfficialDAPT wrote:Don't chop off above 14k... the human ear can hear up to 17k

It's 20kHz.

mthrfnk wrote:

OfficialDAPT wrote:Don't chop off above 14k... the human ear can hear up to 17k

It's 20kHz.

oh ok

Make sure to adjust gain so that it's equal loudness after processing otherwise these plugins will always make something sound better (it's making things louder, louder most of the time sounds "better")

outbound wrote:Make sure to adjust gain so that it's equal loudness after processing otherwise these plugins will always make something sound better (it's making things louder, louder most of the time sounds "better")

+1 Loudness tricks the human hearing system. Comparing before and after processing tracks at the same average level (RMS) usually leads to choose the unprocessed track as the clear winner about the sound quality. Only a very careful setting of the process can make the processed track sounding better at the same RMS level. Using 5 plug-ins on the master section is clearly not the best way to achieve this goal.

http://izotope.fileburst.com/guides/Mas ... _Ozone.pdf
Everyone needs to read this

Instep wrote:
Now I'm sure this can't be right. You guys are gonna be like.. "your a fucking idiot, who does that, learn to mix", But the thing is it sounds really good to me.

Any seasoned mix/masters have some advice?

A paradigm shift in what listeners want? Giving the illusion of a 'powerful' sounding track and ensuring that it smacks it through playback systems such as headphones/computers/hifi speakers and small monitors. Compression and limiting will do that but probably won't stand up against other tracks on more powerful transparent systems.

FWIW i heard a skrillex tune (the one with damian marley) on a dub-wise sound system one evening recently (system was around 20k), i was surprised by how compressed it sounded at that volume (especially on the drums which were snappy and thin sounding), compared to what had been played previously (roots dub reggae and UK dub)...compression/limiting appeared to be non-existent on the roots and uk stuff and they sounded clean and just as powerful.

in your case, sounds like a mixdown problem (?)

Instep wrote: I'll have ozone choopping off the high end (14k and above), rolling off the low, adding stereo image to the mid/highs and highs, then I'll have maxbass adding more sub presence, then perhaps a BBE sonic maximizer

your chain is basically un-doing and then re-doing what you un-did. Why roll off the lows, if you're just going to add low-end to the track with maxxbass? Why shave off the high harmonics if you're just going to add harmonics back in w/ a maximizer?

Sort things out in the mix. Most importantly, sort things out in the mix without using the solo button, and constantly reference other tracks. learn to use limiting and compression and you'll get all the power, excitement, and harmonics of a finished mix, just with a lower volume.

fucking maxxbass on the master, unreal

I can't wait to catch OP rocking gigs in brooklyn doe

Sharmaji wrote:Most importantly, sort things out in the mix without using the solo button

x10,000

No one cares if you're kick sounds sick when solo'ed if it muddies up the rest of the mix when put in context.