mastering

what's the best way to master your music after using the MPC. heard a lot of guys use ProTools. Are there other ways that you could recommend that wouldn't cost a fortune?

Thanks
Jørgen

do you mean mixing? me personally, if i had the dough, and a project that was mixed properly and ready to be mastered, i would take it to a mastering house.

but mixing, you can mix in fl studio. get the producers edition for around $150. but you will need an interface, cables, etc.

there are plenty of good plugins that come with the program, plus there are a lot of free ones out there.

eyyo lamp. is it you spittin' on "The Illest" track???

The TC Electronic Finalizer is supposed to be a cheapish way to master something. All in one box.

if you know a little bit about dynamics, frequencies the "entire picture" of tracks, giving your beats a little gloss and boost isnt too hard...

that being said, if you cant even operate a simple compressor, leave it to somebody else.

I normally add a handfull of tools to a 2track, of course depending on what youve done to it before...

1. overall eq and rolloffs...

keep in mind that youre doing tiny boosts/cuts here, I try to keep a wide Q and stay under 1db.
i cut off some lowend and try to keep it tight...the key here is the interaction with the other tools.

2. exciter...

i like myself some lowend exciting to really get things fat and juicy. beware of clipping and interaction w/ the master eq

3. multiband compression/master compression...

there are loads of different styles of eqs..in vsti as in the real outboard world. some will tell you a opto is the way to go others will swear by the ssl buscomp which is 1band. i often use a multiband comp so i can interact with the eq and exciting going on...pretty tricky to get this right

4.reverb...

jus' a lil bit.
try using middle long verbs with no predelay or very little with an exremely low wetness

5. limiting...

last thing in the chain is the limiter. if you wanna get tight youd even say dithering comes last, which you can find in most vsti master limiters like the famous l2. dither basicly helps you bringing the bitrate to the cd-norm which is 16bit. the limiter kinda smashes the peaks of the track and packs it up for you.
be carefull here...squashed dynamics sound kinda cool hearing it the first time...
but believe me IT DOES NOT SOUND COOL!

about the overall thing...

the idea of the entire concept is to ice the cake. not to make the entire thing sound like a rocket launch. so if you find yourself having night and day experiences when listening to your master and the mix you tried mastering then you should sit down and listen what the problem was in the first place...
i.e. remix and remix untill you wont have to cure bad mixing by sqeezing it in mastering and making everything sodun fake.

the other main thing for me is linearity vs. sound and style.
for example the limiter will press down the peaks of the 2track depending on your threshold.
now if your mix has a giant lowend the limiter will start pumping the bass making the difference even more harsh often resulting in a lowend dist/clipping. by linearity i mean the overall picture of the frequency spectrum and the dynamics. if your track is unbalanced in the spectrum the limiter will grab those peaks first, however if your overall sound is balanced you might get a nice slightly thickish kick to it. keep in mind that you mixed certain instruments and tracks like they were for a reason...or atleast you were trying to. if you go for a non modern more 90s thing you might want to keep in mind that you will have to take care of the highend, making sure its slightly cut off and not too dull.

i always tell people that are new to this matter that they should keep inproving their mixes and fix things BEFORE trying to master the crap out of em. on the other hand the mastering process can give you a pretty good idea what you did right or wrong when comparing your final master to something professional in the style of your work.

all in all the worst thing you can do is what i like to call dial-mastering. this is basicly someone sitting infront of a comp or eq or limiter trying to turn all the knobs and push sliders and buttons trying to dial in a better sound. real mastering is all about hearing the tiny problems and fixing them with the right tool. not dripping it in candypaint!

hope that gives you some points to start a research...before you come back asking about certain tools and techniques, search the web...there are loads of informations on how comps and limiters work.

tools i like in the vst world:
waves plugins...c4, l2, their eqs for rolloffs, urs plugins, waves ssl plugs...

enjoy.
.toon

to add to the overall eq,


use narrowest q you can get to cut resonating frequencies. you hear them by boosting and sweeping across frequencies.

on compression, usually i get a "better" compression by using multiple compressors. each reducing maybe 1-2db at a time. not slapping one multiband or whatever and slamming the shit out of everything, pumping shit to hell.

good compression is compression you can't hear. a lot can be done in mixing, so don't rely on mastering making your stuff sweet.

Don't confuse mixing with mastering. Mixing comes first, which includes compression, EQ, limiting, Verb, Delay... etc just like the cats above mentioned. There is no magic "settings" either, it just comes with experience and keeping banging at it.


There are a lot of books that really help.

Mixing Engineers Handbook, Mastering Audio by Bob Katz to name a few.

Mixing is a life long art thats very difficult to learn. Its best to leave it to someone who does it a lot. Im still getting my chops @ mixing, but if you need a beat mixed you could holla @ me.

c.toon wrote:if you know a little bit about dynamics, frequencies the "entire picture" of tracks, giving your beats a little gloss and boost isnt too hard...

that being said, if you cant even operate a simple compressor, leave it to somebody else.

I normally add a handfull of tools to a 2track, of course depending on what youve done to it before...

1. overall eq and rolloffs...

keep in mind that youre doing tiny boosts/cuts here, I try to keep a wide Q and stay under 1db.
i cut off some lowend and try to keep it tight...the key here is the interaction with the other tools.

2. exciter...

i like myself some lowend exciting to really get things fat and juicy. beware of clipping and interaction w/ the master eq

3. multiband compression/master compression...

there are loads of different styles of eqs..in vsti as in the real outboard world. some will tell you a opto is the way to go others will swear by the ssl buscomp which is 1band. i often use a multiband comp so i can interact with the eq and exciting going on...pretty tricky to get this right

4.reverb...

jus' a lil bit.
try using middle long verbs with no predelay or very little with an exremely low wetness

5. limiting...

last thing in the chain is the limiter. if you wanna get tight youd even say dithering comes last, which you can find in most vsti master limiters like the famous l2. dither basicly helps you bringing the bitrate to the cd-norm which is 16bit. the limiter kinda smashes the peaks of the track and packs it up for you.
be carefull here...squashed dynamics sound kinda cool hearing it the first time...
but believe me IT DOES NOT SOUND COOL!

about the overall thing...

the idea of the entire concept is to ice the cake. not to make the entire thing sound like a rocket launch. so if you find yourself having night and day experiences when listening to your master and the mix you tried mastering then you should sit down and listen what the problem was in the first place...
i.e. remix and remix untill you wont have to cure bad mixing by sqeezing it in mastering and making everything sodun fake.

the other main thing for me is linearity vs. sound and style.
for example the limiter will press down the peaks of the 2track depending on your threshold.
now if your mix has a giant lowend the limiter will start pumping the bass making the difference even more harsh often resulting in a lowend dist/clipping. by linearity i mean the overall picture of the frequency spectrum and the dynamics. if your track is unbalanced in the spectrum the limiter will grab those peaks first, however if your overall sound is balanced you might get a nice slightly thickish kick to it. keep in mind that you mixed certain instruments and tracks like they were for a reason...or atleast you were trying to. if you go for a non modern more 90s thing you might want to keep in mind that you will have to take care of the highend, making sure its slightly cut off and not too dull.

i always tell people that are new to this matter that they should keep inproving their mixes and fix things BEFORE trying to master the **** out of em. on the other hand the mastering process can give you a pretty good idea what you did right or wrong when comparing your final master to something professional in the style of your work.

all in all the worst thing you can do is what i like to call dial-mastering. this is basicly someone sitting infront of a comp or eq or limiter trying to turn all the knobs and push sliders and buttons trying to dial in a better sound. real mastering is all about hearing the tiny problems and fixing them with the right tool. not dripping it in candypaint!

hope that gives you some points to start a research...before you come back asking about certain tools and techniques, search the web...there are loads of informations on how comps and limiters work.

tools i like in the vst world:
waves plugins...c4, l2, their eqs for rolloffs, urs plugins, waves ssl plugs...

enjoy.
.toon

^^^ Knowledge ..
GR8 POST

Just wanted to point out you should use broadband or multiband exciters before the eq stage in the chain.

Dj Solace wrote:Just wanted to point out you should use broadband or multiband exciters before the eq stage in the chain.

care to elaborate why?


i get the impression that maybe you guys should concentrate more on mixing the songs right...

i mean, even with at least a decent mix, you only need maybe 2 eq's, couple of comps, limiting and thats it.

Eemo1 wrote:

Dj Solace wrote:Just wanted to point out you should use broadband or multiband exciters before the eq stage in the chain.

care to elaborate why?


i get the impression that maybe you guys should concentrate more on mixing the songs right...

i mean, even with at least a decent mix, you only need maybe 2 eq's, couple of comps, limiting and thats it.

Thats how it is supposed to be done.

You get the band in, mix it, then when you are happy with that you send it off to the mastering house.

I'm gathering up some pieces to do a bit of mastering too. For hardware, I'm waiting on a finalizer 96k to be delivered, plus I already own 2 dbx digital dynamic processors (one with the digi I/O card).

I'm also thinking of using an older aphex 104 aural exciter I have since I haven't made that jump to using a full digital mixer yet. Still working with a 24x8 until the funds get right.

But so far I think I have enough tools to use between s/w such as izotope ozone 4 & the formentioned h/w.

Hopefully, things will sound a lot better than they did in the past.

Lampdog wrote:Yes, that's me spittin (years ago), one of my boys made the beat the first week we ever met, I told him to "give me that track neeyuccuh!"

Ok Big Dog, let's hear it!