Anyone used LANDR? (Automatic A.I mastering)

the.boy

New member
Hi

Has anyone here use LANDR? Its and 'instant online audio mastering' service.

I produce and sell hip hop beats online, and I heard people talking about this service. I thought the idea sounded terrible and riciculous. But out of curiosity I gave it a go (You can test some for free on their site) and it actually sounded pretty good... So now i'm considering signing up for their service, but I wanted to ask if anyone else has experience with it and what are you thoughts?
 
It tends to make the bass lines and low kicks crackle on the high energy or medium energy (whatever they're called) masterings. You may not hear this on nice speakers and heaphones, but you can on ipod headphones and other basic headphones. It could be partly due to bad pre-upload mixing, but i do notice a lot crackle on the low end after their system masters songs.

I really recommend mastering on our own, or paying a mastering engineer/dude to do it. ...It's a nice idea, but it can't get the low end quite right yet.

just my thoughts on it..
 
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If nice speakers don't produce crackles while shitty ones do, the problem isn't LandR but the crappy speakers.
 
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^ ya well, it's a frequency issue. They can't reach the lower frequencies. ..but it's not there before the master. I just test tunes on as many headphones and speakers as possible. Most people will be listening on average headphones so it has to sound good there. I'd be careful with landr., I think they purposely mess with the quality to make you buy the higher res options.

And it's a shortcut to something we should all learn. It's like microwaving a dish vs. cooking it.
 
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The free stuff on LandR is only mp3 @ 192 kbps. This format sucks but it can't introduce crackles problems.
 
lol, ya ...well idk. I've heard 'em a few times. the masters I've tested with landr are hit and miss. some work, and some glitch (a little bit). but if it works, its really nice. It's a good service. We just have to double check our tunes after it's done.
 
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The free stuff on LandR is only mp3 @ 192 kbps. This format sucks but it can't introduce crackles problems.

I guess it depends what you mean by "crackles"...but if the source material is pushed too close (way too close) to 0dBfs, the mp3 conversion can cause clipping.
 
I guess it depends what you mean by "crackles"...but if the source material is pushed too close (way too close) to 0dBfs, the mp3 conversion can cause clipping.
The required safe margine for a 192 kbps concersion is -2 dBFS from my experience.
But such crackles would also exist on good speakers and headphones which isn't the case here.
 
I suspect the 'crackles' is actually from some extreme limiting they apply, as the preset name 'high energy' suggests. If a limiter is pushed too far, the low end is the first thing that breaks up.
On top of that, suppose you attenuate a bit of noise and rumble by -6dB, but then apply +5dB of limiting in an aggressive master, that's gonna bring that noise and rumble back up too.

In general if you make really bass heavy music.... and I mean BASS, not the mid-range cack that often passes for it these days. Going for those aggressive masters is generally not a great idea.
You either participate in the loudness wars, or in the bass wars.. not both ;) The best way, in my opinion, to get both loud and bassy is to mix as loud as possible so you don't need to apply heavy compression and limiting just for loudness' sake.
 
If you're going the automated route, Aria is my pick. Ariamastering.com . It's a robotic arm that turns analog gear based on program analytics. Not kidding.
 
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