In this pro mastering tutorial I am going to reveal a pro mastering technique you can use in order to achieve a better sounding final master.
You may or may not know that every set of speakers or headphones have a gain sweet spot. When you find this sweet spot on the right reference mix, it feels amazing, the sound is so sweet and vital!
This is one key to great monitoring, to capture the voltage/signal level of that gain sweet spot and during the mastering session have that dialed in, so that you can tune the song against that precise playback level. Mastering inside of this "vital" gain window is key to achieving a great sound. When you find the sweet spot you might have found it with some hardware fader/knob set to some very specific hard to recall setting so that you don't exactly know how to re-position it to re-gain that specific setting. You can solve that by using a digital meter and re-calibrate the output volume against that digital meter, which shows the signal level in terms of fixed digits.
What I do prior to a mastering session, is that I tune the monitoring volume to this very precise setting, then I play the reference mix at this volume from start to finish, since the sound is so incredibly sweet it gets me in a good mood, so when I start the mastering session I'm very excited to master great sounding music like this... At that point I have the great sound well memorized, so my mastering moves can be validated against that, which helps a lot.
But the way I understand this is that it kind of tunes myself before I start to tune something else. When I play my particular reference material at this gain sweet spot and focus hard on the beauty of the music, man it's like the music re-arranges stuff in my heart, it is an amazing feeling actually. It makes me feel really alive, fulfilled and awake, it's awesome! You should really discover this if you haven't, because this is something that will boost your energy a lot and give you really nice inspiration prior to starting any mastering session! You have to be in tune before you can make the music in tune.
You may or may not know that every set of speakers or headphones have a gain sweet spot. When you find this sweet spot on the right reference mix, it feels amazing, the sound is so sweet and vital!
This is one key to great monitoring, to capture the voltage/signal level of that gain sweet spot and during the mastering session have that dialed in, so that you can tune the song against that precise playback level. Mastering inside of this "vital" gain window is key to achieving a great sound. When you find the sweet spot you might have found it with some hardware fader/knob set to some very specific hard to recall setting so that you don't exactly know how to re-position it to re-gain that specific setting. You can solve that by using a digital meter and re-calibrate the output volume against that digital meter, which shows the signal level in terms of fixed digits.
What I do prior to a mastering session, is that I tune the monitoring volume to this very precise setting, then I play the reference mix at this volume from start to finish, since the sound is so incredibly sweet it gets me in a good mood, so when I start the mastering session I'm very excited to master great sounding music like this... At that point I have the great sound well memorized, so my mastering moves can be validated against that, which helps a lot.
But the way I understand this is that it kind of tunes myself before I start to tune something else. When I play my particular reference material at this gain sweet spot and focus hard on the beauty of the music, man it's like the music re-arranges stuff in my heart, it is an amazing feeling actually. It makes me feel really alive, fulfilled and awake, it's awesome! You should really discover this if you haven't, because this is something that will boost your energy a lot and give you really nice inspiration prior to starting any mastering session! You have to be in tune before you can make the music in tune.
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