Mastering?

[osbornkt]

I'm finishing up recording an album for my solo project, and although I'm totally handy at recording and mixing, I don't trust myself whatsoever with mastering and stuff.
Do any of you guys who have gotten albums mastered have any recommendations of good (reasonably priced) mastering engineers? Any input would be great!

[The4455]

Read what I wrote on mastering in this thread, there's some good stuff in it as well:

viewtopic.php?f=42&t=29166&hilit=recording+help

I would not hire someone to "master" anything ever, mix yes, master no.

[osbornkt]

Interesting. I've never thought of mastering that way. That really helped a lot! Thanks, man!

[The4455]

No problem, that is what mastering is. When my band finished recording our album the engineer played all of the songs at once (ten songs) and compared the overall volumes of them together so that the volume of any given track was the same as the other. So two or three songs were made a bit louder to match the rest or something. The amount of decibels is so marginal in the end that unless you totally screwed up the recordings you'll be fine.

Basically you need to be able to listen to all of the songs at once and be able to pick each one out. Provided songs with quiet(er) parts etc just have to be.

[osbornkt]

Wow. And people charge ludicrous amounts of cash to listen to tracks and carefully adjust volume...
I'll definitely be working on this myself, then!

[The4455]

Well, people would just go to studios to record and then go to master, which then included all of the outboard gear you see in studios now that you use while you record. Fo a number of reasons these two things hadn't been put together.

[AxAxSxS]

I'm gonna just go ahead and quote you cause I think you're on point. Just in case folks dont feel like clicking to another thread. Sometimes some compression can be a good thing but generally this-

For sure. Mastering is a term that has a few meanings. Many of people think that mastering is when you take your recorded tracks and change them with eq, filters, editing etc. which is wrong, that is mixing. Mastering is when you, and this will sound odd, listen to all of your songs at once to see if they are all equal volume on the album as not have one really loudly recorded song and then a really quietly recorded song so the volume of teh song as a whole form song to song is equal and that the volume of your recorded tracks or songs are the standard (or close) for loudness. Also putting overall effects on the track as a whole, which I recommend against, but it happens a lot in remastering of old music.

A lot of the time what happens is that during a mastering session the artist or producer will have the sound engineer make their tracks louder and then put a compressor/expander on them, to I don't even know what. Which takes away from the dynamics in the song and the overall tonality of the song. I try not to listen to remastered versions of anything, because this is usually what happens. Although if it's been remastered from analog to digital for obvious formatting reasons, you can't download vinyl to your computer, then you have to. But that mastering is necessary, the way vinyl is mixed mastered and produced is very different form the way digital audio is.

In remastering a lot of tracks are carelessly mastered for digital consumption. From old master tapes and vinyl to digital for iTunes and such the tape and vinyl are converted to digital and put into a music editing software (like pro-tools) and is then mixed about until the producer (and perhaps the artist) is pleased. At the end of said mastering session most always the track is increased in volume to match today standard of commercial music. Which like I said really does ruin the music.

The main points would be:

1. Mastering is not mixing, know teh difference

2. Mastering is very simple and should take less than twenty minutes tops, but is often over compensated for

3. Remastered music is often not a good representation of the original, although there are exceptions for some in which the original recordings had a very low production value. Two examples would be Led zeppelin two and Raw Power by Iggy Pop and the Stooges

I hope this answers your question of "What is mastering?" feel free to ask whatever you like and I'll answer it to the best of my abilities.

Side note: When I was in the studio mastering my band's album It was a very interesting experience to listen to ten songs at once, i highly recommend doing it at least once.

[MannequinRaces]

All the above info posted in this thread (I haven't read the other thread) is only one side of the coin of mastering. What is accurate already is the volume leveling of the tracks so they all sound equal in volume relative when played back to back to each other. Other aspects are EQ (to get the tracks sounding the same frequency wise), Dynamic Range (which can be lumped in with volume leveling but will make it so all your tracks don't have wildly displaced dynamic ranges), also another one is the song sequence or order of the tracks and getting all the fade ins and outs of the tracks to get along with each other nicely.

A well mixed album will need no mastering done at all so it's perfectly possible you don't need to pay anybody to master your songs for you. What a mastering engineer is good for is another set of ears that will hear things that you might not have.

The above quote that mastering should take no longer than 20mins is somebody using iZotope's Ozone (don't get me wrong it's fabulous software) just using the presets and that's it. If everybody could do a bang-up mastering job on their own in 20 minutes mastering engineers wouldn't exist.

Also remember mastering is done on a stereo file. Mixing is done on multiple stereo files and mono files to make a single 'master' stereo file of the song.

At the end of the day use your ears, if you play your album/songs on multiple playback systems (car stereo, iPod, cell phone, home stereo system, also check the mix in mono) and the mix holds up and there's no glaring frequency or dynamic range issues pass on mastering, if you hear problems go back and try and fix them in the mix, rinse and repeat.

[osbornkt]

Also great advice, Mannequin!
Making sure you listen on multiple systems is so important. Bands I was with previously attempted mixing and mastering themselves never did that...Just in demos I've done, I've found the necessity of listening to the tracks on every possible playback method for consistency.

[rustywire]

All the above info posted in this thread (I haven't read the other thread) is only one side of the coin of mastering. What is accurate already is the volume leveling of the tracks so they all sound equal in volume relative when played back to back to each other. Other aspects are EQ (to get the tracks sounding the same frequency wise), Dynamic Range (which can be lumped in with volume leveling but will make it so all your tracks don't have wildly displaced dynamic ranges), also another one is the song sequence or order of the tracks and getting all the fade ins and outs of the tracks to get along with each other nicely.

A well mixed album will need no mastering done at all so it's perfectly possible you don't need to pay anybody to master your songs for you. What a mastering engineer is good for is another set of ears that will hear things that you might not have.

The above quote that mastering should take no longer than 20mins is somebody using iZotope's Ozone (don't get me wrong it's fabulous software) just using the presets and that's it. If everybody could do a bang-up mastering job on their own in 20 minutes mastering engineers wouldn't exist.

Also remember mastering is done on a stereo file. Mixing is done on multiple stereo files and mono files to make a single 'master' stereo file of the song.

At the end of the day use your ears, if you play your album/songs on multiple playback systems (car stereo, iPod, cell phone, home stereo system, also check the mix in mono) and the mix holds up and there's no glaring frequency or dynamic range issues pass on mastering, if you hear problems go back and try and fix them in the mix, rinse and repeat.

There are mixes that have nothing to gain from mastering, and there are mixes that have everything to gain from mastering.

[MannequinRaces]

There are mixes that have nothing to gain from mastering, and there are mixes that have everything to gain from mastering.

Very true!

[MannequinRaces]

Also great advice, Mannequin!
Making sure you listen on multiple systems is so important. Bands I was with previously attempted mixing and mastering themselves never did that...Just in demos I've done, I've found the necessity of listening to the tracks on every possible playback method for consistency.

Yeah, it's real easy to rush at the last stages of mixing and mastering because the final product is almost done and sometimes there's pressure to ship it out the door but you don't want to screw up mixing or mastering!

[The4455]

The main point I try to get across when people ask about mastering is what it really is and that it's really nothing compared to mixing, a remastered album is dumb, a remixed and mastered album is great, as ideas.

It's just annoying to hear people use the word mastering like they know what it really means, same as when singers talk about "levels."

[MannequinRaces]

It's just annoying to hear people use the word mastering like they know what it really means, same as when singers talk about "levels."

Singers and level.

[Forrrest]

I had my album last year mastered by pro in a 100,000$ studio. it was the only expense (everything else was DIY). got a bro-deal, but it was worth every penny!
I had done my own attempt at mastering, and I don't regret going with a pro.
comparing his mastering to mine he managed to get it to sound 3db louder & more dynamic then my mix. it's like magic.
inspecting both with a TT Dynamic Range Meter, my eyes tell me that he decreased the dynamic range & lowered the RMS... but my ears don't lie. its weird
he brought out the mids, highs and lows in ways that had so much more impact.

I watched the guy work and when I'm done my recording band this summer I'm not going to hesitate to get spend the money again.