Overcompression in mastering ? :)

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dylanf

Guest
hey guys how do i know if my mastered track sounds overcompressed ? (im talking dance music )
some people say that mixdowns are overcompressed in some instances , is there really overcompressed stuff in the master too ? if so how do i figure it / :D
 
yes what i mean is if the mixdown is normal , is there a chance overcompression can occur in the mastering stage , and if yes how does it sound like ?
 
Of course overcompression can be done at the mastering stage as well.
You know it occures when comparing at the same volume both mix-down and mastered tracks. Overcompression produces a flat steril sound killing the music groove.
 
...in other words, "knowing it" simply means listening and learning. There's no tool or plugin to tell you whether it's overdone other than your ears (ok, ****ing it up in a technical sense is of course well possible).
 
laurend said:
If the mixdown is over compressed, the mastering can't be done correctly.
Click to expand...

To a degree this is correct, but Madlib notoriously used generous amounts of vinyl sim compression from the sp303 while sending 2 two tracks to the mastering engineer Dave Cooley who was able to do a pretty good job with those squashed 2 tracks.
So perhaps not all ME's can deal with these types of tracks.....I don't know, but it came out sounding great!
 
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Over compression is a hard thing to define these days... A lot of big pop dance music is squashed to heck (and sounds cr@p in my opinion)...

That said; there is metering equipment and plugins that measure relative loudness (i.e. perceived loudness vs. Peak Loudness ---> or something like that). These are used to avoid over compression to a point where the audio is no longer compliant with Standards / Codes for audio distribution. Typically this is required for TV and I think radio... not sure about general music release; but the principal still works: Measure the peak vs. average loudness to determine whether it's "over compressed" (I guess that's how it works).

This was endorsed to prevent the loudness war in TV advertisements... If something was over compressed, it was required to be played back at a lower level to avoid a volume jump... I've got a funny feeling that it never made it general audio distribution...

This is just my understanding of it... it may be slightly different, so someone else should chime in (not too loudly) with corrections if needed! :)

All of this doesn't detract from the reality of a mastering engineers role: To listen and refine via processing a two track mix down... i.e. they should be using their ears as their guide as much as they do any equipment.
 
I used to squash the heck out of my mixes with L1+ and tons of compression, but when a project of mine got signed I soon learned I had to give the mastering engineers plenty of headroom (peaking at -6dB).
For a while I weaned myself off the squashy sound by having the limiter on the master channel purely for my comfort, then turning off when it came to rendering – but now I'm more used to the correlation between my mixing and the final-master – I make a much better effort of making my mix sound good, and doing away with all the limiters and crap on the master fader.
 
At the mastering step, it's possible to recover some dynamic. But the original information is lost forever, and the recreated dynamic never corresponds to the original. Usually this process leads to very unatural results.
 
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Some information that may serve you well in the future, when it comes to sound design, engineering, mastering and all of that stuff, you will generally find less is more. It is much easier to work with sounds that are not bogged down by lots of effects or over compression etc. You may already know this, who knows, but just something to bear in mind for the future maybe.
 
Chances are if you don't know what over compressed sounds like, you should not be mastering.. Know your stuff before you spend all your time trying to master.
 
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