Mixing e Mastering

B-Wise wrote:

Lo Spesso wrote:I'm running to watch the videos... thank you very much

Enjoy! Conan is the best right now for mixing & mastering on the MPC.

sorry... but who is conan in these videos?

Lo Spesso wrote:sorry... but who is conan in these videos?

He's the best youtuber IMO (the channel is the Crates motel), lots of mixing and mastering tips from someone who is actually a mastering engineer rather than whatever these other guys are or claim to be.

BTW, check your email inbox regarding the Italian translation we were discussing

Lo Spesso wrote:sorry... but who is conan in these videos?

Here's his YT link: https://www.youtube.com/@TheCratesMotel

Well, I guess people here don't even know what is a pro mastering.
You can make some sort of levelling, sure, as you can make it with any device on the market, more or less.
For a pro mastering you need the right devices though, at least pro plugins if you have no devices, a real limiter, a good multiband comp, stereo image, some visual help to tame some frequencies and so on.
MPC is not made with that in mind.
Can you make a mastering with the tools you have on standalone?
If you want a pro one, nope.
If you want to just squash some hiphop beats until they are square waves, do it and put it on youtube.

1 A multiband comp is not just 4 comps one next to the other. It is an optimized mb, with the right crossovers, to avoid phase issues which would make a bad mastering.

2 On the limiter, you need to see what is levelled, how much is cut, when and where.

3 On a stereo image, you need a correlation meter to avoid (again) phase issues.

4 There is no LUFS reference anywhere on MPC.

So if you make a mastering on standalone MPC you can easily end up with phase issues everywhere, no chance to know integrated or momentary LUFS, possibly a squashed sound (no visual control) and unpredictable stereo image.
Mastering is all about control of any detail of the source material.
That is not possible on MPC standalone.

Straker wrote:Well, I guess people here don't even know what is a pro mastering.
You can make some sort of levelling, sure, as you can make it with any device on the market, more or less.
For a pro mastering you need the right devices though, at least pro plugins if you have no devices, a real limiter, a good multiband comp, stereo image, some visual help to tame some frequencies and so on.
MPC is not made with that in mind.
Can you make a mastering with the tools you have on standalone?
If you want a pro one, nope.
If you want to just squash some hiphop beats until they are square waves, do it and put it on youtube.

What is considered “pro” ?
No offense but this is the type of thinking that destroys the art in making music. You can mix and master a track in the mpc that the majority of average listeners would never even notice. The goal should be putting out music for others to listen to and enjoy. There’s nothing that an mpc has or doesn’t have that would prevent that.

Conin has already been mentioned several times here and he’s an actual professional and he says you can finish a track in the mpc.

J.O.BEATS wrote:

Straker wrote:Well, I guess people here don't even know what is a pro mastering.
You can make some sort of levelling, sure, as you can make it with any device on the market, more or less.
For a pro mastering you need the right devices though, at least pro plugins if you have no devices, a real limiter, a good multiband comp, stereo image, some visual help to tame some frequencies and so on.
MPC is not made with that in mind.
Can you make a mastering with the tools you have on standalone?
If you want a pro one, nope.
If you want to just squash some hiphop beats until they are square waves, do it and put it on youtube.

What is considered “pro” ?
No offense but this is the type of thinking that destroys the art in making music. You can mix and master a track in the mpc that the majority of average listeners would never even notice. The goal should be putting out music for others to listen to and enjoy. There’s nothing that an mpc has or doesn’t have that would prevent that.

Conin has already been mentioned several times here and he’s an actual professional and he says you can finish a track in the mpc.

No offence, but a pro mastering is a mastering made as it is supposed to be made, I wrote a list of things that are missing on MPC for that, just read it and it can be clear enough.
Then you can make whatever you want.
You can also use MPC as a guitar preamp if you want, you have the connection and some amp emulations on Air fx.
Well, if you use a real guitar preamp it will sound much better because MPC is not made for that, at least not intended to be a guitar preamp.

hello everyone... I'm replying in a single message without mentioning each of you who kindly replied to me... I opened this post precisely because of the doubts I have in mixing and mastering on mpc standalone... as said by more than people here I think that the lack of visual tools has a big influence, lufs, eq, phase etc etc... I hope that in the future the new mpc machines have a bunch of upgrades in this sense because it would be fantastic to do everything standalone even if I think that with professional hardware and software equipment the product will always be better. I follow Conan and certainly for publishing music on social media it can be enough but I don't think that a professional project can be done only with mpc. I work with an apollo x8p card and the UAD plugin suite and the differences are notable, but I repeat, I would like to be able to start and finish my work on mpc in standalone. this is an excellent discussion that I hope will bring other comments and points of view to the forum. thanks to everyone

MPC-Tutor wrote:

Lo Spesso wrote:sorry... but who is conan in these videos?

He's the best youtuber IMO (the channel is the Crates motel), lots of mixing and mastering tips from someone who is actually a mastering engineer rather than whatever these other guys are or claim to be.

BTW, check your email inbox regarding the Italian translation we were discussing

hi Andy... thanks... I answered you in the email...

Lo Spesso wrote:hello everyone... I'm replying in a single message without mentioning each of you who kindly replied to me... I opened this post precisely because of the doubts I have in mixing and mastering on mpc standalone... as said by more than people here I think that the lack of visual tools has a big influence, lufs, eq, phase etc etc... I hope that in the future the new mpc machines have a bunch of upgrades in this sense because it would be fantastic to do everything standalone even if I think that with professional hardware and software equipment the product will always be better. I follow Conan and certainly for publishing music on social media it can be enough but I don't think that a professional project can be done only with mpc. I work with an apollo x8p card and the UAD plugin suite and the differences are notable, but I repeat, I would like to be able to start and finish my work on mpc in standalone. this is an excellent discussion that I hope will bring other comments and points of view to the forum. thanks to everyone

I think the solution would be a Mastering Rack to be used only with stems or stereo mix.
But for that they should make a good MB comp, a good visual eq, a stereo image with correlation meter, a proper limiter, a spectrum analyzer with momentary/integrated LUFS.
It sounds a bit complicated for standalone, I don't see it coming in the near future.

I agree with your analysis... but I think the direction that Akai has taken with these new updates and external collaborations opens the door to what the future will be... in my opinion there will soon be a line of new machines that will have more processing power and more integrated plugins to do everything we are talking about.

Straker wrote:1 A multiband comp is not just 4 comps one next to the other. It is an optimized mb, with the right crossovers, to avoid phase issues which would make a bad mastering.

2 On the limiter, you need to see what is levelled, how much is cut, when and where.

3 On a stereo image, you need a correlation meter to avoid (again) phase issues.

4 There is no LUFS reference anywhere on MPC.

So if you make a mastering on standalone MPC you can easily end up with phase issues everywhere, no chance to know integrated or momentary LUFS, possibly a squashed sound (no visual control) and unpredictable stereo image.
Mastering is all about control of any detail of the source material.
That is not possible on MPC standalone.

your point on the limiter, do you mean seeing exactly which track/source is hitting peak?

are there any other options on the MPC besides the air limiter

oldee wrote:
your point on the limiter, do you mean seeing exactly which track/source is hitting peak?

are there any other options on the MPC besides the air limiter

on a scope so you can see how much is an acceptable amount of trim. (where the majority of signal peaks and what peaks need toning down)

A limiter plugin from the LSP Plugin suite

See the pink line? that's the limiter threshold and any peaks under that -10.81 threshold set in the image will be removed from output signal. A useful and insightful plugin nay? and here's the mpc offerings:



and this is my girlfriend annabelle:


If anyone get's that reference..

Erm.. anything *OVER* -10.81 db. sorry was tired and rushing through the post.