Mastering: Ozone vs. LANDR

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kujaboy

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Hey,

I don't have education for sound engineering (mixing or mastering) and here are my problems when it comes to mastering.

When I'm mastering a track myself, e.g. using the Ozone 8 for the process. I happen to get a very thin overall sound, or as you might say a weak low-end.

When I'm using a mastering service, obviously everything is a lot better and powerful compared to my own mastering session but sometimes I get these distorted sounds, the mix seems to be good but the mid-high range is ear clashing on some instruments or distorted right after mastering the track.

I did find a blog post about preparing your mix for mastering though and it had a couple of tips that I need to have look at. First was to leave the master fader (channel) completely empty for the mastering process and I tend to put a lot of EQ (cutting and boosting) there.

Second notable tip was to keep headroom and I've been mixing my tracks to -6 dB (volume on the master channel) but it seems to be too much then and only the max peak should be hitting there if at all.

I'm going to try to lower my overall mix volume even more, drop all the master effects and try mastering it then.

I'll see what happens when I apply these tips to my next mixes.

Any tips related to preparing a mix for mastering are welcome and appreciated.
 
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That's pretty much it. Heardroom, headroom, and headroom.

Whether DIY, mastering service, or automated service, you will get a better product if you let the (moderate!) volume boost come at the mastering stage.

Also, make sure your mix and mastering sessions have reference tracks to A/B with.

GJ
 
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Yeah, you just need some help learning mastering, but you can get great results using Ozone. In My Audio Mastering Secrets video series, I use an older version of Ozone for all of the examples and live mastering sessions. With 3.5 hours of video and 90 PDF written pages, you would learn everything you need to know about audio mastering and will EASILY beat automated mastering the first day!

I wish you the very best with your music!
 
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Don't waste your time with LANDR.

Ozone is a legit plugin though, learn the basics and you can really improve your mix.

However it will only do so much...what you put into it is 95% of the battle. Got to use good quality sounds and set the mix volumes + effects just right first.
 
I have not used LANDR but I would recommend as stated above to learn and dive deeper into Ozone as it is a great mastering tool. Whenever I have free time I love watching YouTube videos about mixing with Ozone even if I feel I know a good amount I usually always come across a new technique or possibly a feature I did not know it had.
 
It would be great but it's very time-consuming which is why I tend to use something like LANDR and I think it's not that bad especially when I can't do a proper mastering by myself. I can't spend money for music production at the moment which is why I can't take a look into that guide you've mentioned JR. It's a shame, probably awesome stuff there.

I could use some guidelines working with Ozone, to pull out a stronger mastering, especially mastering the low-end correctly without messing up everything in the complete mix.

I dig the software itself and it's fairly easy to use with great features, but little do I know about the actual mastering process or audio engineering.

But what I can do is keep mixing and trying to figure out better ways to achieve a clean mix.
 
kujaboy said:
Hey,

I don't have education for sound engineering (mixing or mastering) and here are my problems when it comes to mastering.

When I'm mastering a track myself, e.g. using the Ozone 8 for the process. I happen to get a very thin overall sound, or as you might say a weak low-end.

When I'm using a mastering service, obviously everything is a lot better and powerful compared to my own mastering session but sometimes I get these distorted sounds, the mix seems to be good but the mid-high range is ear clashing on some instruments or distorted right after mastering the track.

I did find a blog post about preparing your mix for mastering though and it had a couple of tips that I need to have look at. First was to leave the master fader (channel) completely empty for the mastering process and I tend to put a lot of EQ (cutting and boosting) there.

Second notable tip was to keep headroom and I've been mixing my tracks to -6 dB (volume on the master channel) but it seems to be too much then and only the max peak should be hitting there if at all.

I'm going to try to lower my overall mix volume even more, drop all the master effects and try mastering it then.

I'll see what happens when I apply these tips to my next mixes.

Any tips related to preparing a mix for mastering are welcome and appreciated.
Click to expand...

Hello Kujaboy! Perhaps I could contribute to your's and other's thoughts here:

I see your thoughts about head-room, perhaps you should, or could, look into the various types of dynamic variation a particular signal can have---for example, true-peak vs RMS vs LUFS, etc. These different measurement-perspectives inform different understandings of what a signal (like master channel signal) is doing. Just a nudge here: having temporary true peaks measured at -6db vs relatively continuous (lets say steadystate) -6db measures of a signal leave two very different signal types for a master engineer or service to work with..

In regards to your worries of weak final product, undesirable low end etc---
-one can always consider at which stage of the work to apply mixbus or "mastering" treatment on the summed signal of the session (top down vs bottom up or mix of both..)
-over-investment in one particular signal processor causes compromised phase or dynamics' manipulation ,this esp so ITB vs analog (1000 mile journey takes several small steps, not a single lunge or series of lunges yes?)
-as others mentioned: A/B and use references most relevant to your goals/context/expectations etc
-Speakers physically capable of producing low end, or perhaps speakers with absence of freq/phase shift in low end ( minimal distortion in LFs) are very helpful when you can A/B others work. Imperfect speakers capable of producing broad range of freq spect can be suitable should your reference mixes be of high integrity (and should you accurate observe and correct your work in these conditions)
-and as you mentioned: its best to consider these actions at both the individual and contextual levels (individual, group, mixbus/master)

wishing nothing but the best
-MadHat
 
There's no need for headroom. As long as it's not clipping it's OK. Every Mastering engineer worth the name has the possibility to apply gain.
 
Mad Phonetics said:
There's no need for headroom. As long as it's not clipping it's OK. Every Mastering engineer worth the name has the possibility to apply gain.
Click to expand...

This makes no sense to me. I always leave headroom for later on and the point was all about arranging that space more efficiently to gain better mastering results when the mix is complete and ready to be processed further.

Clipping is something to never have and it belongs to beginner things when it comes to producing and the subject really wasn't related to this.

Also, greater the headroom, space and dynamics, better the mastered product will be and that's just a fact.

My worries are related to how to get the best outcome of a mix when it's mastered, to make it clean and strong.

I have no proper knowledge of mastering to do it myself and nobody works with me to do the mastering process manually.
 
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I've tried LANDR and honestly it just boosts the level without really doing anything else, maybe adding a bit of highs or bass. When you work with a real mastering engineer you actually get feedback on your mixes and in time you'll learn to mix and produce better which is something LANDR doesn't do at the moment.
 
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