Guest Norb-E Posted April 8, 2002 Share Posted April 8, 2002 There are tons of good mastering plugins out there. But they are really worthless unless you know how to use them right. Where did the pro's learn about mastering techniques (besides music school) ? There's not a lot of stuff about this on the net. Most psytrance producers dont have the money to take their tracks to pro mastering studios and pay 200-2000 dollars an hour for the engineers... Can anyone (who has had good results) tell me about software mastering methods... and where to research on this topic on the net? Whats the right order the plugins should be used in? Also, I wonder how those guys (with the better quality tracks) who participated in the contest mastered their song... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest purple passion Posted April 8, 2002 Share Posted April 8, 2002 u dont need to take your traxx to engineers, if u want a good sound ;- 1. Invest in good studio monitors with a FLAT sound, i reccomend u Event 20/20 Bass, Behringer Truth, Tannoy Reveal - depends on your budget of course. 2. Invest in a good souncard. MOTU, Echo products, Nuendo, Creamware, Delta - again depends on budget 3. The most important is to have a good pair of ears! Cheers mate. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest zenar Posted April 8, 2002 Share Posted April 8, 2002 http://www.tcelectronic.com/static.asp?page=bob_katz there you go, the secrets of Bob Katz, and yes it is important to have nice monitors + soundcard and a good set of ears but for doing that sort of übermenchen-mastering it probably won't cut it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest lifeform Posted April 9, 2002 Share Posted April 9, 2002 'Waves' Software rocks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Norb-E Posted April 9, 2002 Share Posted April 9, 2002 I'm using Mackie HR 824 monitors and and Echo Layla 24 sound card... And I guess I can say that I have a good ear... I have no problem with the mixdown... I'd like to get these good quality finished tracks on a CD. Mastering is an important process to make them sound nice and punchy on any sound systems... I just don't know how to do this correctly and with good results... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Tim Posted April 9, 2002 Share Posted April 9, 2002 hire an engineer. for 20-50 bucks an hour, they can master your CD much better than the average person (i.e. YOU) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest coriolis Posted April 10, 2002 Share Posted April 10, 2002 first of all: mastering should not be the fix for poor production. don't count on a lung transplant to continue your smoking habit. the key, i think, is not mastering but building tracks from the ground up that are hi-fi and well produced. your music should sound full and professional by itself and not need mastering. more specifically, this means understanding how each sound fits in the mix and the frequency spectrum and how they work together as such. it is something that you must develop in your ears, not in your plugins. however, professional quality FX (especially the basics: filters, EQ, compression/limiting/gating/expanding, and reverb/chorus etc) are essential to realizing the changes your ear wants to hear. furthermore, listen to your track on as many different systems as you can: car stereos, various headphones, boom boxes, hi-fi stereo systems - not just your monitors. it should sound good on all of them. in general, beginner producers tend to ignore the loudness and clarity of the highs and upper mids, and this is the biggest difference between what sounds pro and what sounds amateur. just look at a pro-sounding track in the winamp spectrum vs. an amateur track - the amateur track will almost always have poor response in the majority of the spectrum range, whereas a pro track will thoroughly excite the full dynamic range. hope this helps. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Norb-E Posted April 10, 2002 Share Posted April 10, 2002 that last comment makes a lot of sense.... thanks... when i listen to my mixes... the sound quality is pretty clear (thanks to the good monitors and sound card), and all the instruments are on the right volume level... nothing is too loud, nothing is too quiet... thats the whole point... my problem is... the parts are there.. but they are not "THERE", if you know what i mean... not punchy enough for me... each instrument sounds like as if they were all connected in a way... like they together make up the full sound .. but individually they are not strong... the synthbass is not pumping, for example... even though u can hear it clearly... the parts just dont stand out individually (like on infected mushroom tracks) so you are saying, I need to kind of "master" each part as i'm adding them to the mix ... and make them stand out during the whole recording / mixing process? then later with the mastering i just basicly need to make everything a bit louder to cd level? you are right about the spectrum thing on winamp... its pretty useful... so how do i exactly make a part stand out? eq and compress it right after recording? any specific suggestions? plugins? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest coriolis Posted April 10, 2002 Share Posted April 10, 2002 norb-e: do you have some tracks i can listen to? this will help me to understand where you're at. a while ago i was where you are - i felt like all my levels were good in relation to eachother but the total mix lacked power and energy, it seemed like the combined elements were gelling together but each one lacked pizzaz. from what i've gathered so far, it seems to me that there really are different psychological states of listening to sound, and these different states will produce different mixing and production characteristics. you need to develop the kind of listening state that a good producer has, which is a different kind of listening than the average person. it means being sensitive to the entire dynamic (loudness) and frequency range of audible sound, and hearing how the different ranges impact eachother. the average listener doesn't think about that: he/she just senses "punchiness" or "clarity" but doesn't understand that these things are a result of frequencies and levels. so, some basic tips: let each sound in your tracks occupy its own range of the frequency spectrum. often this **demands** some serious EQ. don't let sounds run together in the same frequencies, this will cause them to compete and reduce the overal punch of your mix. this requires paying close attention to how you track is using the lows, mids, and highs: the bass: if you have a kick and bass line already going, put a moderate higpass filter on your synth lines to keep them from dipping into the bass. don't let the kick and bassline interfere with eachother in this way either. use a parametric EQ to boost specific frequencies in the kick and the bassline, and to cut those frequencies out of your other parts if they are present there. developing a clear and punchy kick/bass combo is hard work and expect to spend some time experimenting with lots of different kicks, basses, and EQs. mids: mids are tricky too and will take time for you learn. the most important thing is not rely on them for the main body of your mix, which most amateur producers tend to do, because human hearing is most sensitive to the mids. you want you main sounds to hit those midranges but you really need the lows and highs to be clear and present, otherwise its like a torso with no legs or head. too much mids and not enough highs is a recipe for muddiness/weakness. highs: clear and loud. pick synths that go up there into those high reqisters. pick hihats and snares that excite them. the highs are crucial to developing presence and clarity, which is crucial in developing punchiness. EQ your cymbals so they don't mask your synths but still remain clear and loud in their own response range. as for plugins and effects: -compression is used to maximize the ammount of punch you can pack into a mix. sometimes there are transients (short, impulsive loud bursts) in the kick, snare, cymbals, or synths that need to be controlled. otherwise they just cause your signal to overload and force you to reduce the total volume of the mix. you need to compress something unless it is to impulsively loud at points or too quiet in other points. spend some time examining your different parts in a waveform editor to understand how compression works. -EQ. know it. love it. it is your best weapon. -chorus, flange, phaser, and distortion all have effects on the sounds dynamic and spectral properties. distortion adds crazy higher harmonics, for example, which is a quick way to bring a sound higher in the spectral range, to make it more complex... then you EQ it into shape. chorus can thicken up a thin sound, phaser/flanger modulates the higher frequencies in a sound which can add presence. also, spend some time listening to the production on your favorite trance. don't listen to the trance, listen to the production. my favorite producers to listen to are atmos (check "klein aber doctor"!) and ticon ("we are the mammoth hunters"). for example, hallucinogen, as good as his trance is, doesn't always have the best production, especially in his earlier stuff like on twisted (the sphongle stuff is better produced). if you can hear this and how it happens then your getting somewhere. another main thing to keep in mind: always try to root your production in getting as close as possible to a good sound as early as possible. that is, always *start* as strong as possible, rather than starting weak and trying to correct it after the fact with EQ or fx. Pick good samples and synth patches to begin with. This is how you end up with tracks that don't need final mastering. as for finalizing the track, the most important thing is get your final mixdown (which should already be clear and punchy on its own) louder. i personally use waves ultramaximizer plugin for this. sometimes i will even cut the bass frequencies up to 3db before "maximizing" the track. this is basically a way of boosting the apparent loudnes of the signal without clipping it above the "digital ceiling". whew... okay time to take a break from writing this post. you see, the reason i go to these lengths to try to explain this stuff is because i understand how frustrating it is to hear pro produced music and see it towering over your own. i've been there and only recently have i begun to climb out of that ditch. i want to do whatever i can to help others to learn this stuff because it shouldn't be secret and the more everyone knows how to produce their music, the more awesome music the world will have to listen to... 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Guest Norb-E Posted April 10, 2002 Share Posted April 10, 2002 wow.. i never expected to get such a helpful respond... i just thought : whatever... i'll ask about mastering techniques here... its worth a shot.. hehe i sent in a song for the contest, but its in the last 50 tracks that are still waiting to be uploaded and judged... i'll let you know when the track is up... 96kbit is not brilliant quality though... i always analyze music when i listen to it... i think i have that sensitive ear to dynamics and frequency range... etc... but this is exactly what makes me feel so frustrated... i know what i wanna hear, and whats wrong with the song, but i dont have the knowledge and experience to fix it... great tip... making the sounds occupy different frequency ranges... see? these are the things they never talk about on those pro audio websites... i'll definitely try building up the song like that the next time from scratch... but now i gotta go back to my current songs and redo some recording and parts... with the kick-drum combo... i dont know how i expected the mastering process to fix all that lack of punchyness... i like the production on atmos and ticon... and i really like the sick beats on the cydonia album, and koxbox's "the great unknown" sounds excellent... i agree... the musical content and the production has to be equally important in tracks... there're lots of artists who are so talented... but hearing the bad production keeps me from enjoying and getting into their work... i cant let go and get into a trance when all i think about is "that sound is so cheap"... hehe i also think "twisted" is not the best production, this is the perfect example though... my mixdowns overal sound (quality) is kind of the same... no banging bass... and its just all plane ... everything blends.... especially when too many things are going on at the same time... i want my songs to sound as good as freaking blue planet corporation... i dont know how the hell they do that kinda production!!!! thanks for the helpful information again.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest phlux0r Posted April 10, 2002 Share Posted April 10, 2002 Great writing coriolis, thanks a bunch for sharing your knowledge and experience! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest coriolis Posted April 12, 2002 Share Posted April 12, 2002 norb-e: which track is yours in the contest? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Norb-E Posted April 12, 2002 Share Posted April 12, 2002 coriolis: the melodic one... android melodia - pretty did you send in any of your songs? did you get my email? do you use AIM, ICQ, IRC or any chat program we could communicate on? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest coriolis Posted April 13, 2002 Share Posted April 13, 2002 i'll check it out. i don't have a track in the contest, i didn't finish my latest and best one in time. i'm on icq # 157133806 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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