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Hello! I've recently started a blog called... (as you can guess!) 'What Is Mastering?'

The difference between this resource and other similar resources/definitions is simply that it is an ongoing development with new content being added regularly and branching out from just answering the titled question. As well as the explanation and definition the aim is to give resources to improving mixdowns, tackling myths and helping clear up any misunderstandings created (mostly by the internet!) as well as offering advice and tips for self-mastering. I think this is useful as not everyone has the budget to send their tracks off to be mastered and rather than this just be a 'this is mastering now go master through my site' type blog it at least will point you in the right direction for improving your own self-masters.

Hopefully this will be useful to the members here and will help improve both understanding of as well as your own self-masters and I also want to keep this fairly open to what information you guys are after so if you do think of any topics you would like covered please feel free to reply to this thread or drop me a PM!

http://www.what-is-mastering.net/tools- ... rade-pt-1/

Just uploaded!

http://www.what-is-mastering.net/tools- ... rade-pt-2/

Part 2 just uploaded!

http://www.what-is-mastering.net/what-m ... -wont-fix/

Latest instalment!

outbound wrote:http://www.what-is-mastering.net/what-m ... -wont-fix/

I'm going to link this post to every poor mix I hear on sound cloud that is justified by, 'quick master' or 'not mastered yet'. Really highlights the fact that if you don't plan on mastering yourself, it pays to know the process so you understand what your trying to achieve at the mix-down stage and not have some fairy tale expectation of what mastering can do.

Part 1 is rad too. Probably the most efficient summary of why good converters, monitors, and room treatment are essential to mastering.

In terms of room treatment I like what you have there but It might be worth giving a little clarification on what is trying to be achieved when controlling reverberation with absorption vs. diffusion.

Absorption has two purposes:
1. Reduce reverb times (this relates to the amount of treatment)
2. Minimize early reflections. (this relates to placement)

By minimizing early reflections of the room it means you hear mostly direct sound and the reflections off the back wall. The point of this is you can then hear the early reflections present in the recording, rather then the room (which can take a lot of the headache out of stereo imaging). Diffusion then serves to breakup the reflections on the back wall so they are spread out evenly in the room. This gives a studio that is both comfortable and transparent.

It could probably be put more simply than I've written but I think eliminating early reflections is a pretty major selling point in well treated rooms.

Thanks for the input man!

Tbh room acoustics play such a massive role in determining the final sound that I'm most likely going to do a future post dedicated to this area. Will cover all the usuals:- rt60, what different treatment is used for, measuring the response of a room etc so will likely cover it in that

With lots of pretty Cumulative Spectral Decay plots!

thanks outbound as always.

Haha cheers guys!

http://www.what-is-mastering.net/what-m ... g-can-fix/

Just updated with a new part for the end of the weekend

Morning all!

Today's topic..... Dithering!

http://www.what-is-mastering.net/dither ... all-about/

outbound wrote:Today's topic..... Dithering!

lol @ the shameless audio geekiness in here

thanks will check in a bit

dididub wrote:

outbound wrote:Today's topic..... Dithering!

lol @ the shameless audio geekiness in here

thanks will check in a bit

outbound wrote:Morning all!

Today's topic..... Dithering!

http://www.what-is-mastering.net/dither ... all-about/

Thanks a lot!

Hope everyone's weekend going well!

http://www.what-is-mastering.net/red-book-standard/

Just created a new update giving a basic overview of Red Book Standard for CD

@Outbound: wondering if you could clear something up for me. I got into a bit of a back and forth with one of these 5 dollar/1 hour turnaround mastering guys about normalizing.

First, he was suggesting that one should normalize their tunes before sending it off to an ME as a general practice because the ME would just do it anyway. I'm almost positive that seems like the exact opposite of anything one would want to do.

He was then also claiming that normalizing would prevent clipping or fix any clipping that was happening.

What I assume is normalizing crazy talk starts a few posts below the OP. (my username on that forum is relic FYI, but I thought the other guy on there was making fair points as well) http://www.idmforums.com/showthread.php?t=124692

If you can't be bothered with this, I understand, but googling didn't really reveal any insight for me.

Ez! I had a quick scan of the thread. Regardless of what was said / implied / misinterpreted etc. Here's my view:-

- If a mix is peaking the master buss when going to export and there isn't a way to lower the individual channels without messing up your mix (for whatever reason) then simply lower the master buss fader. Normalising, even if it is to bring the levels down so that the highest hits 0.00 db makes no sense when you can just bring the fader down and then give the M.E some headroom from the word go instead of him adjusting the levels his side (keeps him happy!)

- No professional mastering engineer has any need for the 'normalisation' process found in some DAW's. If I want to make sure I don't overshoot I will just place a brickwall limiter at the end of the processing chain.

- From the way he said it, using normalisation to bring down levels so that they weren't overshooting 0db dbfs would avoid clipping. This would not fix clipped mixes that had already been bounced. However if I had a mix that was peaking at +1 dbfs and I bounced this with the normalise feature (or in Logic with the 'overload only protection' feature on then it would bring it down by 1 db to avoid clipping.

- However if you are running levels this hot then it isn't good practise anyway, if you have any plugins that have a fairly loud level going into them then they could be clipping the inputs so even if you have this 'overload protection' on then you could still have a clipped mix.

Does that clear things up a bit?

Yes. It does. Thank you very much. I think part of the problem may have been a language barrier.

fragments wrote:Yes. It does. Thank you very much. I think part of the problem may have been a language barrier.

Glad to help!

Today's update..... sub bass!

http://www.what-is-mastering.net/mixing ... -sub-bass/