Stalker Posted February 6, 2006 Share Posted February 6, 2006 So i got a soundforge demo to test around and i am still learning a few things on it. What i want to know, is how do i use the multi-band compressor. Should i put the Thereshold at -5db, and the gain at 0db? What about the channels by pass. Should i enable then?. Or should i disable the by pass and do the same setting on the others channel? Is there any guidelines or recomendable setting for a psytrance tune? What is the RMS level. and how should i put the medium level? and last but not least...is there any basics steps (or rules) i should do in order to properly master a track in SoundForge? Off corse that this aplyes to the interface of sound forge, but any form of mastering tips will be welcome too If anybody could share me a light here, i would be very greatfull Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Icarus Posted February 6, 2006 Share Posted February 6, 2006 Unless you have a perfect acoustic room and fresh ears i dont think you should master your tracks. Everything that you got wrong with the mix will just get a lot worst. Just my 2 cents.. Otherwise, mastering in soundforge is just like in any other software.. You put the plugins in chain and do your best so it sounds better than it did before the mastering. You have to put emphasis in the sounds that matter in your track during mastering, whatever it is. Hopefully you got what i meant, im kinda drunk right now hehe.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike A Posted February 6, 2006 Share Posted February 6, 2006 Put your time into better mixing. Mastering is not something you need to worry about. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Philter Posted February 6, 2006 Share Posted February 6, 2006 o.k. a few things before i talk about mastering: i agree with mike, before you even think of mastering, your mix will have to be good. concentrate on getting a good mix. group mixing is a good way to get your mixes clean and upfront. so group your percussion tracks and bass tracks, compress, eq and maximize them. do the same thing with spheres and synths. on your master bus also have a compressor, maximizer etc... it is very important to have a lot of presence in the mids and lower mids, this will insure that your production sounds good on a large sound system as well as on a cheap radio. back on topic: sound forge and othe programmes can be used for mastering, i.e. with the plug in chainer, i personaly prefere cubase. in cubase i can load a track that i think sounds good and also load my track, then i compare them in terms of frequencies. the good thing is that i can constantly switch between my track and the one that i think sounds good. to your questions: rms = route mean square (peak/square route of 2) i.e. peak signal devided by 1.4 often refered to as avarege. multiband compression is a a very tricky thing, if you have used a compressor then you will know that there are four parameters that are very important: threshold, ratio, attack and release. threshold: this is the sound level where the compressor kiks in. ratio: the ratio of compression. attack/release: envelope of the compressor. having understood the above, we can now concentrate on "frequency" the added parameter in multi band compressors: the compressor is split up into 2 often 4 frequencies. the same parameters apply but the compressor is now split in to 2 or 4 devices with independant frequency ranges being compressed simultaniously..... hope that helps you... EDIT: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colin OOOD Posted February 7, 2006 Share Posted February 7, 2006 on your master bus also have a compressor, maximizer etc... 434350[/snapback] Please do not do this. It makes the mastering engineer's job much much harder than it needs to be. Have you ever tried to un-compress a mix that has gone through a limiter? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Icarus Posted February 7, 2006 Share Posted February 7, 2006 on your master bus also have a compressor, maximizer etc... 434350[/snapback] Do you know that compressing the master bus is mastering right? Let them mastering engineers do their job. Its what they do best. And you dont need a mastered track to send to the label, if the mix is good and the music is good they'll hire a mastering engineer to master your track. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Philter Posted February 7, 2006 Share Posted February 7, 2006 Please do not do this. It makes the mastering engineer's job much much harder than it needs to be. Have you ever tried to un-compress a mix that has gone through a limiter? 434354[/snapback] thanks for pointing this out colin: i should have pointed out the dangers of doing this. using a compressor/ maximizer just for the sake of it can lead to unwanted results. so yes DONT OVER DO IT... and ill claim that to uncomress an entire mix is virtually impossible, even with a good expander. so again caution! maybe you could give some tips to avoid making a mess of things, dont want to ruin your buisness though ...... Do you know that compressing the master bus is mastering right? Let them mastering engineers do their job. Its what they do best. And you dont need a mastered track to send to the label, if the mix is good and the music is good they'll hire a mastering engineer to master your track. 434359[/snapback] compressing the masterbus is not necessarily mastering. there are different forms of mastering i.e. vinyl mastering is completley different to cd mastering. if i recieved two tracks by two artists of equal quality one sounding upfont and clean with a lot of punch, and the other sounding muffled. i know which i would choose. i would not hire a mastering engineer just to try the track on the dance floor. if the track were to apear on a compilation, then all tracks on it would be masterd to get one homogenic sound. i will paste a large caution sign in my original post..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Icarus Posted February 7, 2006 Share Posted February 7, 2006 if i recieved two tracks by two artists of equal quality one sounding upfont and clean with a lot of punch, and the other sounding muffled. i know which i would choose. 434553[/snapback] Its nto the mastering that will make one track clean or punchy. Its the mixing. If a track sounds muddy it wont be because of lack of mastering again its the mixing. Mastering is an art, its supposed to highlight the nuances of a track and not make it punchy or whatever. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Philter Posted February 7, 2006 Share Posted February 7, 2006 o.k. a few things before i talk about mastering: i agree with mike, before you even think of mastering, your mix will have to be good. concentrate on getting a good mix. group mixing is a good way to get your mixes clean and upfront. so group your percussion tracks and bass tracks, compress, eq and maximize them. do the same thing with spheres and synths. on your master bus also have a compressor, maximizer etc... it is very important to have a lot of presence in the mids and lower mids, this will insure that your production sounds good on a large sound system as well as on a cheap radio. 434350[/snapback] Its nto the mastering that will make one track clean or punchy. Its the mixing. If a track sounds muddy it wont be because of lack of mastering again its the mixing. Mastering is an art, its supposed to highlight the nuances of a track and not make it punchy or whatever. 434606[/snapback] i dont disagree with fact that the mix itself is more important than the mastering, that is why i gave some tips about mixing first... have a read here: http://www.tweakheadz.com/mastering_your_audio.htm its written by a musician not a mastering engineer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Icarus Posted February 7, 2006 Share Posted February 7, 2006 Im just saying: Dont mess with something you aint supposed to. Let them engineers do their jobs. Its hard to learn to master something, and you aint going to learn it in a crappy acoustic room or anywhere outside a studio with a mentor (learn it good). So, just concentrate on the mix. You dont need to worry about mastering. Unless you're doing it for fun and not for releasing your music. In which case it could just get the tune worse. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colin OOOD Posted February 7, 2006 Share Posted February 7, 2006 Sending a mastering engineer a pre-compressed mix greatly limits the options available in the mastering process. It says "I know you won't want to EQ, or add reverb, or stereo-enhance, or do anything to the track before the compression (which, by the way, I got EXACTLY right with my CPU-enhanced plugin)..." When I get sent a track for mastering that has been through any kind of compression whatsoever, the first thing I do is ask the producer to send me an uncompressed mix. I'll also ask them if they wanted to acheive a particular effect with the compression they added (eg, 'pumping'), and work with the raw mix to get the very best from the track that I can, in line with the original wishes of the producer. Sending me a compressed mix to master is like sitting me in a F1 race-car and telling me I can only use the first three gears. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Taika-Kim Posted February 8, 2006 Share Posted February 8, 2006 I've been through this on 100 other forums, but I'll say it again: I don't care for most "pro" mastered modern releases so much these days... The loudness race is ridiculous, I think that the adjustment on volume should be left to the listeners end. Also over exciting the highs seems to be rather common these days. The same with graphic media. 95% of the pictures I see every day are very very very saturated, contrasty & sharpened. Nothing wrong with that, except when that becomes a norm that is followed regardless of the situation. I'm not a sound engineer myself, and I just release my tracks for fun on the net, but my advise would be to make the track sound as good as possible in the mix, and use the maximizers/whatever only to reclaim the unused dynamics so any bits aren't wasted... So maximize with good taste, but try to avoid compression. I like to work visually, so learn to read those oscilloscopes, stereo field indicators & spectrums! Compression is good in fixing unwanted volume spikes (resonance, feedback, aligning phase waves...), and as an occasional cool effect. But usually when a sound lacks punch, I find it better to turn up the volume of the sound I want (or turn all other volumes DOWN! this way you'll end up using the available dynamic range better... you can always reclaim any unused headspace back in the masterinh phase), and then EQ any extra frequencies away. This way the sound will have dynamics, and listening to it will be much more relaxing on the ears. Anther good trick is to widen the stereo field and of course layering of sounds... It's much easier to control sounds if they're divided into several parts than try to create one patch that does every frequency right. A/B:ing with tracks you like is a good trick for getting a good basic sound if you have to master your own tracks... Yeah, it would be cool to have somebody else master my tracks. But, yeah, not going to happen unless somebody wants to do it for free :/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stalker Posted February 8, 2006 Author Share Posted February 8, 2006 This topic has been great help Thanks everybody I must say that i dont mean to professionaly master my tracks. If i want that, i would seek a professional to do that. I was asking cause i am very interested on the subject, and one day, i hope i could at least do a basic mastering by my own. So, what i eventually tried out was: I opened up the arrange windown of my last track, wich was already properly mixed.. then i went to the master chanell and opened up a (i am using Logic) EQ, an Expander, and a compressor. I dint change any settinngs on the expander. And i changed the ratio of the compressor to 3.4. Now, it doesnt sound like the next Son Kite track, but it does sound better, and the compression effects hardly changes the "natural" feeling of the track. Then i record, and that is it! In order to test, i put the audio file (of the recorded tarck), on a new arrange window. Now i go again for the master channell open up an expander and an compressor, both with default settings...and i record again I test the both three versions..the one with no compression at all, the one with one compression, and that one that was compressed two times.... Then, after i listened i found out that The one with nothing, was missing power and was too lown and for my surprise the one compressed two times was the best one. Even thou the second one also sound good. So, is this process...wrong or dead wrong!? Remenber this is just for me to record for fun and distribute to my friends, and i understood that if i want to see really released, i send the original version, with no compression at all, clean and pure...to the sound enginner.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Taika-Kim Posted February 8, 2006 Share Posted February 8, 2006 If you are doing comparisons like that you must LOWER the volume of the compressed tracks so that they have perceivably the same volume to the ears. Then turn up the volume from your speakers pretty much, and listen which version sounds better. This is because if that's everything you're doing, you're probably only taking away dynamics from the sound... Try to watch the peak volume indicator and set the compression according to that. If the volume already peaks near 0db most of the time, compression will in most cases only damage the track. The reason the track you compressed two times sounds "better" is because it is louder. But remember, again, that you can make the uncompressed file as loud too, by turning up the volume from your speakers... Also because your hearing isn't linear frequency-wise, the louder version might also sound clearer or more punchy, even though if it had the same frequency content than the uncompressed one. By "not linear" I mean that the volume of different frequencies will be perceived differently even if they have the same volume... We are much more sensitive to high frequencies than the lows, for example. So when you increase the overall loudness of the track with 2db for example, the highs will have the largest subjective increase in loudness, thus making the track "brighter" Here's a quick snap from "The Science of Sound": This picture also makes clear, why we have subwoofers and other bass boosters instead of treble-boosters This also shows, why you must very very SUPER careful when EQin for bass... You might boost the area around 70hz many DB, and the bass still might often sound too weak. What happens with a big PA is, that you have way too much energy in the lows, and if the PA is set to play "pro" releases (with a homogenous sound!) sharply, your tracks will probably sound muddy and unfocused. Most probably a better idea is to reprogram the bass sounds to also have some uppper-low presence and maybe more transient attack phases. Also notice how that threshold of hearing resembles the spectrum content of a nicely produced track (except for the extreme highs...)? The image is not of course only about that threshold but about sensitivities to different frequencies in general... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.