Master of Disappointment

Everywhere I go I hear about how great home studios have gotten and are only getting better. But the final word always seems to be when it comes to Mastering, professional studios are the only acceptable route.

What do the pro-studios have that we don't & won't ever have? What makes them so damned "professional"?

Education? How much and how profound?
Experience? How much?
Technology? How much and how powerful exactly? (Feel free to get as scientifically technical when explaining this)

Could someone please elaborate on exactly separates the Masters from the Boys.

ez
mainly its the Mastering engineer with years and years and **** years of experience dealing with mixes from different people.

its a whole different world to recording engineers.

A properly designed room (bass traps etc...)
properly set up good monitors
good mastering software (sonic solutions etc..)
bunch of stereo eqs, compressors and limiters (maselec, prism etc..which costs $1000s)
a good set of ears is essential
Its the engineer who makes it all come together tho IMO..anyone can plug a stereo mix thru a compressor lol

well i was just in this studio that was a guy that used to work at sigma sound.

he said he wasn't getting any work, because nowadays pretty professional recording gear is cheap enough for whoever to get, and people were just getting their own ADATs and stuff.

so he opened a new studio, and spent about half a mil upgrading to professional standards, which involved not only a ridiculous digital mixing board and a two-inch reel to reel, but perfectly tuned rooms for recording and monitoring. alot of the stuff he has running is mostly to comply with standards that major labels require (they still prefer masters on 2" reel to reel) so he could get work with them, but when i was over there he was dumping my a couple of my friends tracks into the system and mastering them, and though my boy is quite good on his mastering already, even with a rough eq he had it bumping unbelievable.

the real reasons you'd want to go to a studio in my opinion:

recording live instruments (especially drums) - to control the mix well you want lots of mics positioned so they dont mess each other up and you might want different mics for the different parts of the kick. a professional studio will have experience micing drums and they'll have a nice collection of the extremely pricey mikes you're gonna want.

recording vocals - famously the hardest thing to record well. human voice has mad dynamic range and our ears are attuned to its subtleties so even small alterations to vocals can sound real crappy.

getting the knowledge from an experienced engineer - i talked to this guy at the studio long enough to realize he knows an awful lot about music. I like and trust him as a person. he's been in the game long enough that he'll be able to improve my beats even if he was still running an ADAT and a rack and a analog mixer. the blingtacular equipment he has just makes it better.

personally, when im about to get a 12" pressed up, ima take my beats to him and just get him to run a quick eq so i can get the most headroom and bass without overloading and distorting systems, and push it through the 2" reel to reel for that fat analog sound. Shouldn't take him more than an hour and though i could spend more the returns will diminish - that hour will be the most bang for my buck - and it'll make my stuff sound a hundred percent better.

"push it through the 2" reel to reel for that fat analog sound"

completely forgot about the tape machines mang! a nother whole world of knowledge lol see a lot of mixes will come on a half inch tape and engineers will even taylor their mixes for the sound of the machine their puttin it down on. so if it wos mixed down to a studer A 80 ud want the mastering studio to have that machine and the mastering engineer should know all about that shit. But, tape machines are $$$ and take a lot of looking after.
the difference between dat and 1/2 tape sound can be like night and day tho mang.

el-kitos wrote:"push it through the 2" reel to reel for that fat analog sound"

completely forgot about the tape machines mang! a nother whole world of knowledge lol see a lot of mixes will come on a half inch tape and engineers will even taylor their mixes for the sound of the machine their puttin it down on. so if it wos mixed down to a studer A 80 ud want the mastering studio to have that machine and the mastering engineer should know all about that ****. But, tape machines are $$$ and take a lot of looking after.
the difference between dat and 1/2 tape sound can be like night and day tho mang.

yeah man the 2" reel to reel at that studio is a monster! so gigantic it looks like a cartoon.
my friend was taking pictures, and the guy had him open up this panel on the reel to reel so he could see the tape heads. and he was like - be careful thats a hundred grand right there to replace (just the tape heads!). Yikes.

for me - i've been thinking about getting an old half inch 8 track recorder to hook up to the mpc. mmmmm....

el-kitos wrote:A properly designed room (bass traps etc...)
properly set up good monitors
good mastering software (sonic solutions etc..)
bunch of stereo eqs, compressors and limiters (maselec, prism etc..which costs $1000s)
a good set of ears is essential
Its the engineer who makes it all come together tho IMO..anyone can plug a stereo mix thru a compressor lol

exactly right

You get what you pay for. That includes experience. Mastering houses like the Hit Factory and others' have digital EQ's and AD/DA converters that cost about $15K apeice. Well out of the range of most home studios. True the technology is getting more and more affordable and accessable, but it seems like a fair amount of the amateur and semi-pro stuff that I hear still sounds like sh#t. Experience is the key word.

mastering pros are tight lipped as f\/ck. i haven't looked recently but you don't really see mastering pros divulging their expertise often. years of practise helps too im sure.

^^ if they give up their expertise they'll lose their high paying jobs just like all the engineers that's out of work cause of the home studio revoloution. Every time I look in a newspaper here in NY I see an ad "IAR Graduate looking for work in a recording studio"....

fa sho, mastering engineers hear things that we don't, they got
ears! Gon have to agree with el kitos, they got gear that cost
more than your house, and perfect environment. Plus ears of
experience.

a goos studio has ssl mixing boards.(thanks ripper )

People think that this new "mastering software" will make them be able to master but the truth is software can't emulate that "know-how" that educated mastering engineers have learned and trained their ears for hours to do.

peace to toecutter, thats like when people cop an mpc and think they are a producer. its the know how. that shit you cant buy.

ok, there is a art to mastering but the way things are going with technology allot of individuals are doing there production and post production in there home studio. just like how individual are learning to write and record music at their home studio the next logical step is to learn to master in your home studio. just my opinion. to be a musician in this time and age you must be proactive and if you are reactive your game is over. i am at the point where i want to do everthing write, producer, mix, master and do the art work on my cd case. total control of my product. this where the music business is heading.

Everyone's making great points here! The home studio, in my opinion, can't be the last stage for a complete song. The professional studios have engineers with experience, vocal booths of varying coloring to vocals, room for live instruments, back-up singers, etc. But, the home studio is where all of the ideas and creative juice should be able to flow freely with no pressure of the pay-clock!