Beginners question

bartek95

New member
Hi guys, I don't know where to post it so I'm posting it here.

I'm curious - let's say for example - I made a beat in Ableton or Reason and then I send the files to professional engineer for mix and mastering or record the vocals, and he uses ProTools. Can somebody explain me how it works? Maybe it's stupid question but I think this is what that forum is for.
 
If you want to send your track off to be mixed you'd usually export all the individual tracks as audio and try to make sure it's not clipped, send it neat little package along with a reference track (like the version you mixed yourself so the person can get an idea of what you're looking for) and that's pretty much it.

If you wanted to send a track off for mastering, well then you just send the entire exported track as a wav, again try to make sure it's not clipped (unless it's intentional) and just send it to the engineer.

You could also ask the engineer too if he or she wants certain effects on the track or not, usually the creative effects get to stay on the tracks while the rest is disabled.

Some people are gonna want to say that you need to leave 6db's of headroom (the difference between the highest peak and the 0dbfs mark) on the master output but you don't need to do that for this purpose at all.
 
For mastering, I'd leave plenty of headroom. For mixing, just make sure that all your tracks will be in sync/the right places when they are lined-up to "zero." If you did any "slipping and sliding" for timing purposes, you need to consolidate/render those tracks so everything lines-up in a different program.

GJ
 
Why would you need to leave headroom though, if the track isn't clipped what's stopping the mastering engineer from simply lowering the track to a desired level him/herself?
 
you should try not to make things difficult for oneself and the other

if someone tells you to color the tracks and name them you can tell them to f oneself because you don't need to abuse oneself just to make things easier for the other

but you don't need to make things complicated for the other like sending files on 10 different emails like one mail telling here is my kick the other telling here is my bass that is getting too much complicated there it may become a difficult puzzle to solve , and on this case you abusing the other its so unprofessional and you dont want to do that even if the other has no problem with it

so its about to simplify, to make things easier for both on everything
 
Why would you need to leave headroom though, if the track isn't clipped what's stopping the mastering engineer from simply lowering the track to a desired level him/herself?

Not sure if there's any technical reason behind it as I'm no mastering engineer, but a mastering engineers works 9-5 or something just mastering track after track, and so repetitive things that just needs to be done gets tedious, such as having to normalize a track down to -6 dBFS to get necessary headroom, and so engineers rather tell their customers that they need to normalize down the tracks they're sending - I mean these customers don't work with as many tracks, so normalizing gets less tedious for them than for an engineer.

To sum it up, this image probably describes the thoughts of a mastering engineer when a customer refuses to normalize his tracks (given that there is no technical reason behind it, correct me if I'm wrong)
(This is not aimed towards anyone)

78be62f68a84116500dd40052c820fbed5ab2831658d6cd3c0836c110d35a88c.jpg
 
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>>>>Why would you need to leave headroom though, if the track isn't clipped what's stopping the mastering engineer from simply lowering the track to a desired level him/herself?<<<<

Because that is (part of) the mastering engineers job. The mastering engineer is supposed to apply a different set of ears than yours (a well-tuned, task-specific set of ears) to make sure that each track, and all tracks on an album, sound "finished and professional," and like they belong together. They are also supposed to make sure that your ultimate mix sounds great and translates to as many different formats and on as many different systems as possible (yes, you do this in mixing, but the mastering engineer has the final say, if you are working with a pro that you can trust). The nuts and bolts of executing this task is managing overall volume, track volume and fades (yes, fade-outs are supposed to be done by the ME), and overall EQ. Sometimes, a specific overall effect may be applied.

Volume management is a huge part of mastering. During the "Volume Wars" era (that we are just crawling out of at this time), it became de rigueur to have the absolute LOUDEST track possible (headroom and dynamic range be damned), and every mix engineer was pre-mastering their tracks with the files maxed-out to the hottest/loudest possible extent; each and every individual track, and the stereo buss, would be soaked in compression and limiting. Then, they'd send the track to an ME and say "Please make it louder." This drives most MEs out of their minds. Ask any _pro_ ME, and they will tell you the best thing you can do to prepare your mix to be mastered, is to make it _quieter_ to begin with, leave lots more headroom, and lay-off the 2-buss brick-wall limiting. This gives the ME something to actually work with, rather than arbitrarily limiting their ability by maxing-out the track before they even get to hear it.

If you want to save money and master it yourself, do that. But if you're hiring a pro, then let them master!

GJ
 
Not sure if there's any technical reason behind it as I'm no mastering engineer, but a mastering engineers works 9-5 or something just mastering track after track, and so repetitive things that just needs to be done gets tedious, such as having to normalize a track down to -6 dBFS to get necessary headroom, and so engineers rather tell their customers that they need to normalize down the tracks they're sending - I mean these customers don't work with as many tracks, so normalizing gets less tedious for them than for an engineer.

To sum it up, this image probably describes the thoughts of a mastering engineer when a customer refuses to normalize his tracks (given that there is no technical reason behind it, correct me if I'm wrong)
(This is not aimed towards anyone)

78be62f68a84116500dd40052c820fbed5ab2831658d6cd3c0836c110d35a88c.jpg

This makes sense, and sure it doesn't require much to do that just out of courtesy. I was more thinking about the technical aspect of the whole thing rather than the moral one. To me it just seems simple enough that if I load up a track that has not been normalised to - 6dbfs, but isn't clipping, I would just set - 6db for that track and be over and done with it.


>>>>Why would you need to leave headroom though, if the track isn't clipped what's stopping the mastering engineer from simply lowering the track to a desired level him/herself?<<<<

Because that is (part of) the mastering engineers job. The mastering engineer is supposed to apply a different set of ears than yours (a well-tuned, task-specific set of ears) to make sure that each track, and all tracks on an album, sound "finished and professional," and like they belong together. They are also supposed to make sure that your ultimate mix sounds great and translates to as many different formats and on as many different systems as possible (yes, you do this in mixing, but the mastering engineer has the final say, if you are working with a pro that you can trust). The nuts and bolts of executing this task is managing overall volume, track volume and fades (yes, fade-outs are supposed to be done by the ME), and overall EQ. Sometimes, a specific overall effect may be applied.

Volume management is a huge part of mastering. During the "Volume Wars" era (that we are just crawling out of at this time), it became de rigueur to have the absolute LOUDEST track possible (headroom and dynamic range be damned), and every mix engineer was pre-mastering their tracks with the files maxed-out to the hottest/loudest possible extent; each and every individual track, and the stereo buss, would be soaked in compression and limiting. Then, they'd send the track to an ME and say "Please make it louder." This drives most MEs out of their minds. Ask any _pro_ ME, and they will tell you the best thing you can do to prepare your mix to be mastered, is to make it _quieter_ to begin with, leave lots more headroom, and lay-off the 2-buss brick-wall limiting. This gives the ME something to actually work with, rather than arbitrarily limiting their ability by maxing-out the track before they even get to hear it.

If you want to save money and master it yourself, do that. But if you're hiring a pro, then let them master!

GJ

I'm quite familiar with the process and why its done, I think that you may have misunderstood what I was asking.

I agree that you should not send brick wall slammed tracks to any engineer and then hope it will turn out anywhere near good. However in my hypothetical scenario I have a finished track without any limiting or compression or anything like that, it has dynamic range but is peaking at -0.3db. So what I was trying to ask was if this is the case, then why can't the mastering engineer simply take that audio track and lower it by 3dbs, 6dbs or even more if he or she needs to.

I would consider it my job to make sure that the track isn't clipping and overly processed in any way so there is actual room to work with, not that I needed to be the one to set the level of headroom the engineer wants (unless specifically asked to do so)
 
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