Mixes are perfect but I need help Mastering the finishing product!?

Z

zthechosen1

New member
So I have been recording songs for a little while and i'm always satisfied with my mixes. Vocals sit right wether its the chorus or the verses. Ill always get the song down to about -6db. Once I bounce it I usually import the song into a mastering program such as Izotope Ozone. I guess I just do not know the proper techniques. (fyi most songs I record we are rapping/singing over mastered instrumentals) What is the easiest/most beginner friendly mastering program on the market?


Any help is appreciated!
 
Mastering isn't a program so much as a process. Part of the process is to control the dynamic range of the song and to find the right volume for a song. But equally important is to fix any problems with the song to make it sound right for its genre on the widest range of stereos.

You really want somebody that is more experienced than you to do it, and you want him to do it on a monitoring system that is much nicer than yours. If you do it on your system, you still are working with your (potentially) flawed preferences and your (probably) flawed monitoring system. Not to mention your bias to the track, since you've spent so long listening to it already.

If hiring a mastering engineer isn't an option, then read up on how to do it. There is a lot of bad advice out there, but Ian Shepherd is good at what he does and very open with his advice. Read his articles to make better decisions. And also, carefully compare against several well-engineered reference tracks in your genre, and test your track on many, many systems to teach you how to engineer for transferability. (If it only sounds good on your monitors or headphones, not any other stereos, you have a problem.)


There's only so much you can do if you are singing/rapping on top of a finished, mastered track. The track is already pushed farther than it should be, probably. I'd aim to do most of your effects on vocals only, then lightly compress and lightly limit the vocals and track together.
 
If your mixes sound perfect, then the ONLY thing you need to do in mastering is apply a limiter to get the volume up to the point where you want it so it's of similarish volume to other records of the genre (so people don't feel the need to reach for the volume knob to turn your song up OR down). So basically, just use the limiter in Ozone and that's it.
 
chris carter said:
If your mixes sound perfect, then the ONLY thing you need to do in mastering is apply a limiter to get the volume up to the point where you want it so it's of similarish volume to other records of the genre (so people don't feel the need to reach for the volume knob to turn your song up OR down). So basically, just use the limiter in Ozone and that's it.
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It really depends on the song and the kind of energy you want to portray. Mastering can be as simple and placing a limiter on the master channel...and sometimes it is not.


You can master your own songs...there is nothing wrong with that. While a professional mastering engineer is the easiest option if you can shell out that kind of money, it is not always the best.

The first thing you need to make sure of is that your mix doesn't sound good...make sure it sounds better than great. The fact that you are taking into account headroom is good. Leave your mix alone for as long as possible. Come back with fresh ears and use various systems. The trick with mastering is very subtle changes. If your mix already sounds good why try to mess with it in mastering? This is why it is sometimes better to send a track to someone else for mastering, even if that person is not a mastering veteran. Get a friend who is into the same music you are and work together. Build your skills with that person and critique each other's work.
 
chris carter said:
If your mixes sound perfect, then the ONLY thing you need to do in mastering is apply a limiter to get the volume up to the point where you want it so it's of similarish volume to other records of the genre (so people don't feel the need to reach for the volume knob to turn your song up OR down). So basically, just use the limiter in Ozone and that's it.
Click to expand...



This would mean each and every mix done by great mixing engineers like Brauer, CLA, Schmitt and so on isn't 'perfect' or at least great sounding 'cause they all are sending their mixes to a mastering engineer instead of squashing it with just a limiter by themselves. :D
 
I promise you (because he's said it many times), CLA generally doesn't like it when mastering engineers screw with his mixes. The issue is that these guys and people like me, we don't mix for OURSELVES like the OP is doing. They mix for clients, who usually have a bunch of people who get a "say" in the final product. Not to mention that most of mastering is really about getting a consistent sound from one song to the next, setting the overall volume, sequencing, and all the technical stuff that you have to do NO MATTER WHAT. Bottom line, a commercial release (certainly anything oh physical media like a CD) HAS to go through the mastering process. You can't skip it if you wanted to or not.

BTW - there is a difference between "perfect" and "great sounding". If it's perfect, that means there's nothing you can do to improve it, by definition. The OP is both the 'client' AND the mix engineer. If it's not perfect, WHY ON EARTH would he try and fix it in mastering? Every person on the planet will tell you that, provided you have the tools and skills, you are better off fixing something in the mix than in mastering.

Most great mix engineers shoot for perfect. But we KNOW that there are lots of opinions involved (particularly with record labels) and what we think is perfect, and maybe what whoever signed off on the thing thinks is perfect, might ultimately not be what winds up being perfect down the road when others chime in. And usually we don't even say perfect if we work with great mastering engineers that we have relationships with because we often trust them for their input... which is more of a "great sounding" thing, using your words. But in this case the there are no other people involved. The only opinion is the OP's. So if he/she says it's perfect, but peaking at -6, then that's what it is. End of story. Turn up the volume with a limiter and call it a day.

Now if the OP wants to revise his/her statement and say that it's NOT perfect and that there is room for sonic improvement, then my recommendation is go back to the mix and fix it there.

I say this, because on this forum the vast majority of people don't understand what mastering is, how it's done, or why it's done. So they just make sloppy mixes and then try to make them sound better by mastering them. That's entirely the WRONG approach.
 
Well said, Chris.


Does CLA need a mastering engineer? Or the other legends of mixing? A lot less than you or I in regards to fixing issues, that's for sure. A big part of mastering is giving what the song needs, which is different for every song, and the pros generally put together a mix that doesn't need much. A less experienced mixer with frequency response biases (maybe he is a bass-head) and a less accurate monitoring system (maybe his speakers are too dull, so he mixed too bright to compensate) creates a lot of issues, and mastering serves as a quality control check.

CLA and others likely need that a lot less. But, like Chris said, somebody needs to bring the mixes up to level, make sure all the mixes are the same level, make sure all the mixes match each other in tonality, make sure the micro-dynamics are controlled, and make sure that the macro-dynamics provide impact. Not to mention track ordering, applying appropriate fades and silence between tracks, turning the entire album into one audio file with track markers for CD, quality control check for clicks and pops, and delivering the content to the CD replicator.


And, exactly like Chris said, if one person is both mixing and mastering a project, it's absolutely preferred to fix the problem in the mix. If the bass guitar is 1dB too tubby at 100 Hz, mastering can only bring down all instruments at 100 Hz, not specifically the bass guitar. It's a no-brainer to fix it in the mix.


A good mixing engineer doesn't make a half-decent mix and expect mastering to fix it. A good mixing engineer makes the song sound as perfect as he possibly can, and as complete as he can. Though it's definitely best practice to leave master bus compression and limiting off the track, since the mastering engineer can't restore dynamics if the mixing engineer goes too far. In those cases, a decent mastering engineer has to ask the mixing engineer to turn off the limiter and send it again. If that can't happen, the mastering engineer just has to turn the loud track down to match the others, meaning it had the life smashed out of it for no reason. I've seen it happen, and it's not pretty.
 
Mastering is more about experience and making informed decisions in a room that doesn't lie.

Programs and gear are secondary. Working in an environment with less than stellar acoustics can have you chasing your tail,
but if you're going to do it yourself, you'll have to start somewhere and reading some of the Izotope pdf's isn't a bad place to get some pointers. Good luck
 
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