Mastering Myths and some cold hard facts Pt1

[Danny Danzi]

Quite a few people questioning this...some know a little about it, some are in the dark. I do this for a living and have been for many years. It doesn't make me any better than anyone else, but I know quite a bit about the subject and wanted to share what I know in hopes of helping you.

What is mastering? This question pops up from time to time. Most people think you just eq a few things, add a compressor and make the tune super loud. There's a bit more than that involved, honest. The first thing a mastering engineer needs is good ears to make the right calls along with a good room and good monitors. While I'm on this subject, I'd like to share something I posted in another thread that I think is VERY important here.

The stereo master NEEDS to be polished in a way that only the mastering engineer can do. If you only have one set of monitors, you'd not be able to master correctly anyway. Seriously....think about it, when you render that audio and export that song, in your mind you're done unless you listen to it and want to make changes. How could you master it on the same speakers you mixed on and decide what to enhance? See my point?

See, when your tune is completely finished, the first thing the mastering engineer is going to do is listen for things you can't even hear because you are way too close to the material. Way too close! You figure, you have been working on this for how long? Maybe a month...maybe 6 months...who knows? You will struggle to make the right calls if you engineer, mix, perform on the material for long periods of time. The mastering guy has a fresh set of ears...he's not heard the mixes 20,000 times like you have when you did what needed to be done...and he's not biased. He'll listen to it and make mental notes about what he thinks may need to be changed on speakers that are perfect for the job.

As he makes his notes and gets to know the song/songs, he'll listen again to make sure what he has written down is what he thought he heard. On the 3rd listen, he'll have a scope up to see if his thoughts about what he would change eq wise are close. Now keep in mind, if you are thinking the master is supposed to come back to you sounding like something completely different, you hired the wrong mastering engineer. The object is to preserve the mix you have given him, he removes sub low rumbles, extreme high end, levels and compresses the mix and if it loses any spaciousness, he adds it back in. He checks for clicks, pops, artifacts, hums from guitars being left open where someone may not have slip edited a clip...the list goes on and on.

This is what I listen for and fix with every tune that comes my way: Leveling of all audio for consistency, Fade ins, Fade outs, Stereo wideness and separation, Stereo narrowing, Noise, hiss, hum, crackle removal, Eqing, Compression, Over-all loudness maximization, Professional Dithering: higher audio projects from 24/96, 24/48 down to CD format at 16/44 and DC Offset removal.

Those are the things you need to be doing to totally improve your mastered tunes. There are times where it is also a good idea to provide what we calls "Stems" of stereo audio taken directly from your project mixed at the exact song levels with effects processed on the tracks. This allows the mastering engineer to fly in something that may need a little extra push. Most good mastering engineers will demand to have those things and will ask you to export your audio at a certain dB level so they have the headroom to work on your project. Each mastering engineer will have his own rules. It's best to follow them and hopefully, if the guy is anything like me, he'll work with you before you actually send the material to be mastered. This is one thing that I do that many do not. I have a listen review of the material and tell the client whether they should remix it or not before I even touch a thing. My name is at stake here too and none of us has time to polish what may be a turd or even take someones money for something that may not be worth it. This of course is at the engineers discretion.

To do this right, in my opinion, you need the right tools and you need to know what to listen for. I can't stress that enough. There are times when you shouldn't even waste the money going to an engineer to get things mastered. If you are just giving out a demo to people or are a hobbiest, there is no reason to spend the money on an engineer unless it's something you just want to sound great. If you will be selling the cd or have an indy label deal, by all means don't even procrastinate and waste your time trying to do this on your own. You're too close to the material to make the right calls. Trust me when I tell you!

Can I use Ozone or T-Raxx? Yeah you can and they do a decent job, but if you cannot achieve what I have mentioned above properly, you need to get the right software and tools to get the job done. Keep in mind, though Ozone and T-Raxx are good products that can help you achieve good results, they are consumer products that were not made to handle what you could be capable of doing in a real mastering environment with the right stuff. The great mastering guys we all know and love are not using programs like that because they are very limited. Waves plugs and the equivalent as well as a mastering program made for mastering is essential due to having graphs, numbers and other tools to assist you in making the right calls. No one needs to rely on a graph or a group of numbers when mastering. However, when those numbers are all correct and you can achieve a min/max sample value of 32767 or less with DC offsets of 0% at 16/44 you better believe you're mix will not only sound good, but it will literally look good on your graphs as well as your wave form presentation. They all walk hand in hand. Sure, sometimes you'll see a weird eq curve that just sounds good. If it sounds good, it is good first and foremost. Everything in moderation and graphs, charts and numbers only if you are having issues pinpointing something.

[Danny Danzi]

How do I get my master super loud? The key to a super loud master is to have an incredible mix before it even gets mastered. This is why I have my clients send me files to listen to so I can tell them what to adjust before we go to the mastering process. The better the mix is on its own, the better it will sound when it's mastered and the louder it can be without distortion yet maintain dynamics at all times.

The key to a clean mix is the eq curve used on the instruments in the mix. There is only so much a mastering engineer can do with a 2-track stereo mix of your tune unless of course he has the stereo stems I mentioned where not all people supply them. His job is to preserve what you sent him and improve upon it in a sonic way IF he feels the need to. The mark of a good mastering engineer is when you get your project back and notice it sounds like what was sent, but can be turned up louder and it will remain clear with no sub low rumbles, harsh high end sibilance or pumping and breathing. To accomplish this, low end and mid range congestion is usually removed. This alone can improve the sound of your material by 100%.

I had a client send me a project that was one of those things where he couldn't remix it. I knew going into it there would be some surgery needed on the track and turned the job down at first. But, he was desperate and I really liked his material and told him due to the surgery nature of this material, it wouldn't be cheap. Still he wanted it done...so hey, I did it and gave him the best master I could. He used a 5 string bass and everytime he hit that low B, you'd hear it. You have 2 options in a situation like that. You either kill the right low end where that B comes in and automate your eq everytime that B comes up, or you can run a multi-band compressor on the track and smooth out that particular frequency when it comes in which is about 62hz.

Not only that, but the guy was going for a thumping kick which was hitting in the 30hz range. Removing 30hz on down totally cleaned up his low end issue and I gave him a little thump in the 75hz range instead. We don't need those sub low rumbles in our material unless the client specifically asks for them to remain. Some rap and hip hop calls for that, so you just have to contain it. Another problem this guy had was mid range congestion because he wanted his mix to be super w a r m sounding. This hits at anywhere from the low mid of 200hz up to the mids of 800hz. Removing a bit of this gave him some sparkle. His high end sizzle was a bit much for the cymbals, so removing 18k on up while tweaking 8-12k made a huge difference.

Due to his lack of compression usage, I of course had to compress a bit more than I normally would on a mastering project. This in turn affects the spaciousness of the mix because the compression will shrink your stereo field slightly and narrow the mix a bit. Spacing the mix out a bit more using a PSP Stereo imager brought the mix back to where it was originally on the spacious side of things. By the time I was done with the master and sent it back to the client, he was in awe at how incredible the mix now sounded. I had to perform some surgery here, but sometimes this is the stuff you have to do. I also had to remove the clicks in his punch in spots which were not cross-faded properly. You have to know what to listen for and every bit of fidelity you can gain will improve your material that much more. Trust me when I tell you.

How do I maintain consisteny for my entire album? I can just run the eq template I made on the entire album and I'll be fine right? Well, yes and no. Yes because that eq curve will make for a good starting point if it was used on song 1 and all the songs were recorded at the same studio during the same period of time with the same engineer. No because no eq curve will work on every tune. It needs to be tweaked. Each section of a song may need it's own eq curve and cross-fade for consistency. Let's say you have a crushing hard rock tune going on that breaks down into a beautiful orchestrated bridge.

You bring in strings, piano, some 12 string guitar, maybe a flute solo...who knows? There is no way the eq curve we drew for the first song and part of this song, will work in this section. It will need to be split and treated like a new tune. You THEN will have to try and make it sound like it fits the song...so you see, it's not an easy process. You'll need to level it, maybe use less compression on this part because it's so dynamic and intimate and you'll need to eq it differently because you now have a totally new array of instrumentation in the mix. You can't just throw a full template on it and move on. This is the stuff that makes a real mastering engineer just that.

Trust me when I tell you, handling this any other way is just not professional nor is it what happens in the real world. You're curious how the pro's do it, this is many of the ways they go about things. Cutting corners is not an option. There is a lot more I can add to this, but for now this will hopefully get you thinking differently and feed your head with some ideas. I hope a few people find this useful. Best of luck!

[C. Hanson]

Good to know all this, and thanks for taking the time to post it.
I just wonder how many amateur home recordists are going to take their work to a professional (and possibly expensive) mastering studio when there is affordable stuff aimed at the consumer that does a very good job.

(This could be the subject of another thread)

[bozmillar]

I think the reason there is so much confusion on the subject is because we home recording guys don't really come out with "albums." We come out with a song and stick it up for people to bash. What we home recordists call mastering isn't really mastering, it's polishing a mix down to sound as good as possible for single song distribution.

I think it does a disservice to our music and the mastering process to call what we do to our songs mastering. Maybe we should just come up with a new name so the topic isn't so confusing for people. How about polished, or distribution ready, or limiter slammed? Anything but mastering, because it just confuses people to have one word that means 2 different things.

[Audio~Geek]

Great post!
It shall be stickified!

[Danny Danzi]

Originally Posted by C. Hanson

Good to know all this, and thanks for taking the time to post it.
I just wonder how many amateur home recordists are going to take their work to a professional (and possibly expensive) mastering studio when there is affordable stuff aimed at the consumer that does a very good job.

(This could be the subject of another thread)

You're quite welcome C. As to the answer to the question you asked, I get quite a few single songs from amateur guys believe it or not. The reason being, after they spend a load of time on their stuff, it gets to a point where they now fall into the "Serious Hobbiest" category. You know how this field can be I'm sure. You sit down to mix a tune and hours fly right on by. The next thing you know, you're on a mission and are asking yourself why you are going through the pains of hell to do a tune just for your head or to share with your friends. LOL!! At that point, you figure you invested enough time, you might as well reall make the thing kick some butt.

I get guys that give me song at a time and may do an 8 song album over the course of a year. So when I do a song for them, I save the tune and all their templates and plug settings to a file and just revert back to it each time they send me a new song. The issue there is, over time, even my ears change so if I'm not totally down with something, I may change things up a bit. I try to stay away from these types of jobs because they can be quite tedious. But it's actually quite a amazing how many walk-ins I get each week for a song here or a song there. But in all honesty, the numbers for those types of clients aren't big. It's really not needed to be honest and I also try to talk them out of it if a mix is on the border of being really good. It's not about the money for me, it's more about the art and enjoying every minute of it while hopefully making a difference on someone's "child" so to speak.

95% of the jobs I do are for clients that either own studio's or indie record labels. I have one client in Arizona that bought out hundreds of one-hit wonder bands that put out huge hits, recorded follow up albums and got dropped before they were released. This issue with this client is, most of the stuff he bought into is in vinyl format! LOL!! So it's a bear doing those because you're looking at nearly an hour just to get the project onto the computer and I use a new needle on my turn-table for each side of the album to try to preserve as much of it as I can.

Those are double the price of regular digital mixed albums because so much more work has to go into them. Hiss all over, pops and clicks from the album itself if it's not brand new...and sometimes even if it is. But those are good money makers but can be really time consuming. An album I did for the guy about 2 years ago was in such bad shape, it took me 14 hours to create the template for the first tune. Uggh what a mess that was. Noise all over, pops, clicks, re-eq's for every section of every song...total nightmare. But you can make enough from a job like that to where it's more than some people make in a month. So it kinda makes the hell ya go through much more worth while.

But you're right, there is definitely enough consumer greatness that can be applied without going this route. I just wanted to take the time to explain to people how extensive it really is. Sure you can get great results throwing your stuff through an all in one plug suite or something...but there's a huge difference in outcome when you give it the proper tender loving care....and I just wanted to let people know what it's all about.

Originally Posted by bozmillar

I think the reason there is so much confusion on the subject is because we home recording guys don't really come out with "albums." We come out with a song and stick it up for people to bash. What we home recordists call mastering isn't really mastering, it's polishing a mix down to sound as good as possible for single song distribution.

I think it does a disservice to our music and the mastering process to call what we do to our songs mastering. Maybe we should just come up with a new name so the topic isn't so confusing for people. How about polished, or distribution ready, or limiter slammed? Anything but mastering, because it just confuses people to have one word that means 2 different things.

Interesting take boz, yet pretty honest I'd say. I wouldn't go as far as to say "disservice" and the reason for that I believe is people just don't know what's really going on totally in this field and how extensive it really is. What's strange is, I've talked to mastering guys that have been doing it for years about some of my methods and they were like "huh, you do what?" And these are guys that were making a decent living for years. I would have never known how much even they were in the dark until I approached a few of them to help me out with a few jobs when I was completely swamped. I told them they needed to do things a certain way and this is when I found out how little they actually knew about this field.

That said, they do decent work, but I couldn't use them because they just didn't know enough about what was going on to take the chance. The last thing I want to do is trust in someone and then have to redo the entire job. So, I just do them myself. What sucks there is I'm actually an artist and started doing this for fun. I never expected to be so swamped I can't put out another album. LOL! But hey, in this ecomony, I'll deal with it. Sometimes with the way the music business is, you never know when you may need to get another job...so I do as much as I can just in case.

But I'm with you, "polished mixdown" sounds like a good way to keep the 2 apart. I was just hoping those that are really interested in this would maybe get a little something out of it. Worst case scenario, at least they know a little more about what goes on. There are a few decent books out that cover some good stuff, but to be honest, most of the stuff I've read about goes so in depth with the math of the whole process, you lose focus as well as the desire to want to do it. Almost like a speaker that is just so monotone, he bores you to sleep. That's how some of these books are. It's like..."look, I didn't want to learn the mathematics of this or the hidden formulas behind the intense gear you own that I don't....just tell me what this is about in a language I can understand!" They lose you with big, intimidating words that are sometimes a voice for the sake of a voice.

A huge vocabulary is not going to impress me as much as someone giving me incredible examples on how to do this stuff as well as the reasoning behind them. That's where it matters most in my opinion. Sure, some of it is quite intailed but it doesn't have to be something that is so difficult, it deters people away from wanting to really hone in on it. But for the most part, hobbiests are better off having fun and not getting too wrapped up with this stuff unless they want to. It's way too easy to get lost in it, that's for sure. This is where one song once in a while using an all in one program can take the stress away.

[Danny Danzi]

Originally Posted by Audio~Geek

Great post!
It shall be stickified!

Thanks AG, much appreciated. Just trying to hopefully make a helpful difference around here.

[bozmillar]

I must say, I like your approach to explaining things here. You actually give enough detail to make it useful information. Waiting for part 2.

[Danny Danzi]

You're too kind, thanks boz! I know I'm a bit long winded and wordy sometimes, but I try my best to explain things with detail as well as a bit of personality sharing some of my own experiences within the information so that the read has a bit of energy and life in it.

I always hated how someone with some knowledge would sort of hold back and get me interested in something and then not quite let the cat out of the bag, ya know? Kinda like some of the recording books I've purchased. It's like no one shares the stuff we really wanna hear. Always a watered down, generic version of something.

I've actually been working on an E-book with video (nearly complete...just putting the finishing touches on it) that I'm calling "Audio Crimes and Punishments" © where the purpose of the book is to cover every possible thing I can think of and how to fix it step by step. The book part of it of course will explain the "crime" and then the steps on how the offending situation was "punished" or fixed if you will. The video part of it will show how it would look, tools used, as well as different ways to fix things up close and personal.

I actually give video lessons on how to fix things as well as lessons on how to mix peoples tunes. It's something I started about a month ago that has really been catching on with nothing more than a little advertisement I've added on my site and then word of mouth. It's pretty cool actually....people send me wave files of their tunes and I run the cam program in real time so they see exactly how I mix and fix the stuff, how things are edited, eq'd, mixed, effected and then mastered if they want to see that as well. All the while when this is going on, I have a live mic going and I'm explaining what they are seeing as well as why it's being done.

Kinda like watching a Dr perform surgery. It's just another thing I felt like doing to have a little fun. I never once expected it to catch on. I put up a little sample video to get people interested on my site which shows how to create and set up templates for all projects you do to save time. Pretty long vid but I wanted to give something out for free that would show what I'm about as well as allow people to see my personality. My funny accent alone will probably be as entertaining as the video. LOL! I talk a lot how I type...long-winded, but I try to be informative, make ya laugh and just try to show I'm human. I even leave all mistakes in speech, funny things that happen during the vid...I might forget to do something and call myself an aayzzzhole or something. LOL! It's just me being me and it kinda makes them entertaining. Anyway...see, I'm getting all long-winded again. Wasn't trying to advertise the vid thing or anything....just wanted to speak about it toshow how passionate I am about this sort of thing. I'm tired of the world being so secretive in this field. People need to understand we're all here together....we need to make the best of it.

[TonyB]

Originally Posted by Danny Danzi

Quite a few people questioning this...some know a little about it, some are in the dark. I do this for a living and

Spot on! I use ME's for a lot of my mixes because of those very reasons!