 |
|
|
|
lol u no
retired?
Registered: Jul 2004
Posts: 26087 - Threads: 347
Location:
|
Quote:
| IRIDIUM wrote on 01-06-2009 07:03 PM
To me, if your needing to use EQ on a finished Wav, you either have not used any to begin with or not used it right? I don't know a whole lot about mastering. But i'm led to believe that producers make their tracks and take them to engineers to be cleaned.
|
|
Interesting thread, time for me to stick my oar in I think...
The whole principle of mastering is to work on the track as a whole, and to make each element of the track sound as good as it can without detriment to any other element. As has been mentioned best results is to use another engineer in another building, which is where people like me come in.
Applying some global EQ or compression to the 'master' channel of your track isn't mastering. It's not even close. All you're doing is colouring the sound and IMO if you feel you're having to do that then you haven't produced it right. The only exception I'd ever allow for a master EQ is if you haven't got a hardware DSP to fix your accoustics and room modes in your studio or bedroom setup. Then it's a global setting for every track you make sure and you don't cheat by touching it.
One of the main tasks of the mastering process is to remove the glitches and slew that the sequencer introduces into the mix when you do the render or mixdown. And believe me, even Cubase and Logic with their 32bit floating-point engines make mistakes.
The biggest mistake that nearly all producers make by far is to try to 'master' their track at the same time as produce it. Properly-made tracks should sound clean with a fairly level EQ curve. All the producer needs to do is to get the right sounds in the right place and at the right volume. All too often I see overcooked mixes with vast amounts of EQing and compression and it leaves me no where to go if it gets sent to me.
As for actual mastering itself, well you're either good at it or you aren't. There's no set way of doing anything and the art of it comes down to you to be able to use your ears and tell exactly what's missing or overpowering in the mix. After manually editing the wav (right down at the sample level) to remove glitches, clipping, timebase errors and L-R issues - none of which is done for 99% of non-commercial dance music - You use your savvy and build a plugin chain that corrects the musical issues in the mix.
No two tracks are ever mastered the same and I even have different methods for different genres. I won't bore you with the details but for dance music I tend to use additive EQing and compression, and for rock, pop, solists and instrumentals I go the other way and use subtractive EQing and expansion to get what I want; although it all depends on how the music was produced. I sometimes double-track vocals by adding the acapella back into the mix and offsetting the samples.
It just depends on what you think needs to be done and what you can do, but a good mastering engineer never breaks the main principle which is what I wrote at the top.
 HF Production teem boss. winnAr, etc.
[This Post was Written on Hardware, Stolen from Apple in California, Assembled in China - ]
Report this post to a moderator |
IP: Logged
|
 01-06-2009 19:46 PM |
|
|
|
|
|
IRIDIUM
Registered: Apr 2006
Posts: 225 - Threads: 59
Location: Grantham
|
[Edited by IRIDIUM on 01-06-2009 19:59 PM][Edited by IRIDIUM on 01-06-2009 20:06 PM] [Edited by IRIDIUM on 01-06-2009 20:07 PM] Hmmm interesting. I'm still unsure as to how you know a track needs mastering or not. If the production on the track is poor due to lack of Compression and EQ along with choice of instruments, what good is applying these effects to the overall mix? Multiband compressors only go so far surely? As I said before, i dont know a whole lot about it but i fail to see the point in applying these effects to the entire mix, to compensate for lack of power or certain frequencies within the mix?
Which is colouring like you said? What difference is there applying before the render or after it?
Never heard about this glitching and slew from sequencers lol that worries me haha!
I would consider myself to be both producer, and engineer to some degree.
Report this post to a moderator |
IP: Logged
|
| 01-06-2009 19:58 PM |
|
|
|
|
|
~deleted12332
Registered: Sep 2004
Posts: 18446 - Threads: 745
Location:
|
Quote:
| IRIDIUM wrote on 01-06-2009 07:58 PM
Hmmm interesting. I'm still unsure as to how you know a track needs mastering or not. If the production on the track is poor due to lack of Compression and EQ along with choice of instruments, what good is applying these effects to the overall mix? Multiband compressors only go so far surely? As I said before, i dont know a whole lot about it but i fail to see the point in applying these effects to the entire mix, to compensate for lack of power or certain frequencies within the mix? Which is colouring like you said?
I would consider myself to be both producer, and engineer to some degree.
|
|
I've always understood that mastering should be as transparent as possible only assisting the slight discrepancies. If the sound isn't correct and of a good standard at the sauce, then no amount of fx chains and mastering is going to sort it.
The idea behind using an engineer is because by the time the producer is done with the track, the ears are tired and some what tuned to the sound you have produced so you are never going to pick up on what a brand new fresh pair of ears will pick up.
Mastering is a debatable subject and people will always have there own way and opinions on the matter. I just think if most producers get the sounds right at the sauce then the mastering process should be as simple as possible and as I sad before, as transparent as possible.
TheOfficial HarderFaster Podcast Vol:5 Riots Special
The Unofficial Electrik Shandy Bootleg Series
Report this post to a moderator |
IP: Logged
|
| 01-06-2009 20:09 PM |
|
|
|
|
|
lol u no
retired?
Registered: Jul 2004
Posts: 26087 - Threads: 347
Location:
|
Quote:
| IRIDIUM wrote on 01-06-2009 07:58 PM
I'm still unsure as to how you know a track needs mastering or not.
It just comes down to experience really. The question you need to ask is, 'would I make it better or worse if I adjusted it?' Sometimes it's just trial and error. I'll start on something and think 'Well, I've fucked that up', so undo what I've done and decide on a different course of action or give up all together.
If the production on the track is poor due to lack of Compression and EQ along with choice of instruments, what good is applying these effects to the overall mix? Multiband compressors only go so far surely?
To an extent yes. If you applied no EQ or compression to your channels you'd end up with an absolute mess. When producing a track you should be using EQ to stop clashes and give each element its own space in the frequency range. Anything more and you might be overdoing it.
Mutiband compression is a really powerful tool, and it will do a hell of a lot for you, but you've got to know how to use them properly. They can really make or break something.
As I said before, i dont know a whole lot about it but i fail to see the point in applying these effects to the entire mix, to compensate for lack of power or certain frequencies within the mix?
Which is colouring like you said? What difference is there applying before the render or after it?
It's colouring the sound because you've built your track, EQ'd each channel layer or instrument and then your master EQ is undoing everything you've just done. Opposing EQ curves don't cancel each other out due to rounding errors that all computers make when they calculate things. When a sequencer renders a track it applies the master channel FX chain piecemeal, on a per-channel basis. If you had 24 channels it would calculate the master FX chain 24 times. This is opposed to working on a mix as a whole where that EQ curve gets applied to everything once. The difference might be negligable until you start to mess with the harmonics - then it might become really obvious. It all depends on the track but IMO it's bad practise because you're just increasing the amount of error.
Never heard about this glitching and slew from sequencers lol that worries me haha!
To be fair it's not something you really need to get too worried about, for a good setup it can be measured in milliseconds. Slew does become a real pain if you're doing multitrack recording of bands with a mix of live instruments, electronic gear and vocals. At higher sample rates (I frequently use 88.2Khz) the problem essentially doubles,
I would consider myself to be both producer, and engineer to some degree.
That's a fair comment to make, based on what I know about you and what you do. Now I can't produce a tune for toffee (based on my own efforts lol) but what I can do is listen to something and tell someone where they're going wrong. I can also sit in a recording studio and use ProTools (it's shit btw) to mix bands and vocalists until the cows come home, something which I also do completely live at places like Glasto. Just don't ask me to remix some BK tune.
I'd consider myself be a 'live sound' engineer, and I also do a ton of mastering, some of which comes from the above and some I do privately.
|
|
HF Production teem boss. winnAr, etc.
[This Post was Written on Hardware, Stolen from Apple in California, Assembled in China - ]
Report this post to a moderator |
IP: Logged
|
| 01-06-2009 21:05 PM |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Forum Rules:
You may post new threads
You may
post replies
You may post attachments
You
may edit your posts
|
You may delete your posts
HTML code is OFF
BB Code is ON
Smilies are ON
|
|
|
|
|
![[HarderFaster] - Work Hard, Play Harder!](/images/mainbanner_top1.gif)
