Distorted bass in mastering??

[Ginger Sir]

So I have a track. It's EDM because that's what most people are doing these days. The track itself is sort of a Jazz/Electro fusion and the mix itself sounds okay. Relatively acceptable anyway. When I bounce the mix, I make sure there's around -6 db of headroom for the mastering stage.
This is where the problem occurs.
I use FL Studio for everything and my mastering technique consists of a lot of a few plugins. Namely: Fruity WaveShaper, FabFilter ProQ, Fruity Compressor (or sometimes the multiband compressor), Fruity WaveShaper again (for saturation), Fruity Reeverb 2, Izotope's Ozone Exciter thing, Fruity Soft Clipper, maybe Ozone's Maximiser if needed, and finally a Limiter in the form of Maximus. It usually happens in that order on my effects chain/rack thing.

The thing is, with all these plugins combined, I get a lovely loud sound from the mids up. Any frequencies below that just sound like a pregnant whale. It's not distorted fully, but it's tipping distortion at parts. That doesn't mean the rest sounds fine, it still sounds shit down in the low end.

So, before you laugh at my lack of musical knowledge, I'll say that I'm extremely amateur at this and still haven't much of an idea about anything. I'm 15 like.

So, is the problem occuring in the mix? Is it overcompression or something? I'm confused and I'm losing motivation with the track

Thanks

 

[Ddream]

Do you take care of not using too much distortion before the maximization? Example: You cited Waveshaper twice, then Ozone Exciter, then Soft Clip.

You also used Multiband compressor, Ozone's Maximizer AND Maximus for compression, that's too much IMHO.

When doing this, I use normally one instance of Camelphat, some EQ, no verbs, one instance of Pro-L and that's it.

 

[JustBeyond]

Well to be honest, the mastering talent takes the longest to "master" in music production. It's not something most people can do very well, even professionals leave the master to someone who truly has the knowledge for it. More often than not, beginners will make their tracks worse by attempting it. If you are not selling tons of music commercially, or have a huge amount of fans, there really is no reason to waste your time with it. If you really want to learn it though, I would suggest making 2 finished versions of your songs.. One mastered, and one non-mastered. The non-mastered is the one you release to the public and the master is one for practice. Also, if your tracks do not have vocals, it seriously is a waste of time. If you sell your music to an artist, they will have to have the non-mastered version anyway- If they plan on mastering it themselves that is.. The only people who master beats are the ones who are already selling a lot of them and do it to make them sound louder for the preview- it helps get more sales.

If it is something you want to learn though, find a nice book. I can guarantee that most people responding on forum sites are not professionals.. It can sometimes just be like the blind leading the blind. I recommend any books by Bobby Owsinski for building good foundation knowledge.

 

[Wapiti]

It's EDM because that's what most people are doing these days.

First of all that is the wrong approach. Make what you want to make, not what "most" people are doing.

That being said, your mastering chain is absurd! It sounds like you are trying to save a terrible Mix. I am not sure why you are applying any reverb, that is purely a mixing technique, secondly any Reverb on lows will absolutely ruin them and it sounds like you haven't separated anything into separate bands. The saturation sounds like overkill, again saturation should be a mixing process for some warm harmonics, too much and you will destroy a track (and could lead to lots of distortion). You don't want to be able to hear the saturation, turn it down until just after you stop hearing it. No need to apply it twice and maybe just keep that to the mixing stage. I have never used any of Fruity loop plugins. But to me a clipper sounds like a limiter, and too much of that you will destroy your dynamics, and send all of these saturated harmonics and "excited" things through the roof. Don't know what that ozone maximizer does.

So to say it all simply...

1)You need to be able to answer the question of why am I using this? On every single one of those plugins. And if you can't hear the added benefit from A/Bing them, then that plugin will be taking away from the track oppose to adding to it.
2) Try separating the master chain into separate bands and SPARINGLY apply plug-ins on just the frequency bands that actually need them. Low end generally has more compression and less "exciting maximization via saturation"

I would strongly recommend forking up 50 bucks and send a final mixdown that you are happy with to a master engineer, don't have any stereo compression or anything on your mixdown. While the master engineer is mastering your track, you try mastering your track yourself. Then compare his master and your master, you will learn a lot about the subtly of what the master engineer does, and you shouldn't be able to audibly hear a difference in the mix, but you should be able to hear all of the little things that make a track shine even more.

Remember a master engineer does not save a mix, that is impossible and sounds like what you are trying with those plug-ins. Just keep at it, don't get so absorbed in one track, mixing takes many, many, many mixdowns to become good, or even great at. And Mastering a track is an entirely different world from the mixdown. Don't give up and don't spend too much time on a track or you'll go crazy. Every track you get better at, best of luck!

 

[DarkRed]

So I have a track. It's EDM because that's what most people are doing these days. The track itself is sort of a Jazz/Electro fusion and the mix itself sounds okay. Relatively acceptable anyway. When I bounce the mix, I make sure there's around -6 db of headroom for the mastering stage.
This is where the problem occurs. I use FL Studio for everything and my mastering technique consists of a lot of a few plugins. Namely: Fruity WaveShaper, FabFilter ProQ, Fruity Compressor (or sometimes the multiband compressor), Fruity WaveShaper again (for saturation), Fruity Reeverb 2, Izotope's Ozone Exciter thing, Fruity Soft Clipper, maybe Ozone's Maximiser if needed, and finally a Limiter in the form of Maximus. It usually happens in that order on my effects chain/rack thing.
The thing is, with all these plugins combined, I get a lovely loud sound from the mids up. Any frequencies below that just sound like a pregnant whale. It's not distorted fully, but it's tipping distortion at parts. That doesn't mean the rest sounds fine, it still sounds shit down in the low end.
So, before you laugh at my lack of musical knowledge, I'll say that I'm extremely amateur at this and still haven't much of an idea about anything. I'm 15 like.
So, is the problem occuring in the mix? Is it overcompression or something? I'm confused and I'm losing motivation with the track
Thanks

Instead of looking at the mastering process as required and essential for a great sound, focus on establishing that great sound in the recording. The rough mix is your final master, so if you are not happy about your mix at that point, you are not mixing the kinds of frequencies you need to be mixing in order to end up with the kinds of frequencies you want to end up with. What that means is basically that as early as possible in the mixing process, you need to study what content you have available and what you can do with it. In the rough mix you should be able to demonstrate how great this content can sound, when you cannot do so you should not do it like the amateurs and resume to mixing and mastering, you should do it like a pro and start narrowing down the various issues you have and fix them. So that's one thing.

The mastering process is not dependent on headroom primarily, it is dependent on signal access. I need to be able to correct the gain structure and be able to create good dynamic profiles of the content to make it alive. Else it will sound like a pregnant whale as you say. The mastering process is to a great deal a process of optimizing the dynamics throughout the song, so that it works when playing the song from start to finish on any playback system.

 

[steffeeh]

"So I have a track. It's EDM because that's what most people are doing these days"
*sad face*

Anyway, to answer your question, I must ask - is your lowend constantly distorting badly, or is it more like you easily get bad distortion as soon as the bass gets a little louder for a short while?

 

[bandcoach]

too many processors and too little knowledge


as everyone (almost) has noted, it sounds like you are trying to apply mix level processing at the mastering stage, i.e.

- exciters are about about adding higher order harmonic distortion to the whole signal (usually 2nd harmonic phase inverted - that is the basis of most physical circuit implementations of the aural exciter) so even more distortion added to everything
- saturation and soft-clipping, whilst it maybe used in mastering, is better applied to individual tracks/channels at the mix-phase of your project
- reverberation on your master channel should be accompanied by post reverb eq to limit the upper and lower limits of the reverb applied- it will remove the mud from the low end and stop the high end from being over-saturated and 'verby
- maximisers are about raising rms levels in comparison to the peaks; having two different processors doing the same task is overkill

DarkRed, whilst presenting a somewhat circular argument, has the right of it.

No amount of post-processing will improve a bad mix.​

I would also note that we have all made pronouncements without hearing any audio - the best advice that we can offer will be found in comparing your "pre-mastered" vs your "mastered" versions of the same track; any audio you provide should be in a lossless format such as flacc or wav not mp3 or aac

 

[SingleCell]

"So I have a track. It's EDM because that's what most people are doing these days"
*sad face*

Anyway, to answer your question, I must ask - is your lowend constantly distorting badly, or is it more like you easily get bad distortion as soon as the bass gets a little louder for a short while?

I'm not the op but yes the lowend distorts a lot on my tracks and I don't know why.

 

[mitchiemasha]

Wow that's a lot of plugins you're using on the master... and exactly your problem???