Mastering

[Random111223]

How do you guys master your tracks? I think the most obvious thing is to put a limiter on to the master bus, what kinda settings should i use? I have no clue when it comes to limiters and i don't want to ruin my track.. so, any advice?

[the4thImpulse]

The main goal of mastering as I know it is to bring the overall volume of the track up to a playable level over radio, ect, I use iZotope Ozone 5 for my mastering specificaly its limiter, EQ, and harmonic expander. When I make music I turn the master channel down 8-12 db to give lots of room for all the sounds to play cleanly. Once I finish a track I export it as one file and throw that through Ozone and export the final piece.

Dont put a limiter (or other mastering tools) on the master channel until you are ready to master the track. I cant give you specific setings as they vary track to track.

Have you heard of Computer Music Magazine? They recently realeased one about self mastering, I don't own it but I checked it out and it was quite useful looking, I think I might pick it up.

Edit: I found this article on mastering, its got some good tips in it.

[Lavender_Harmony]

How do you guys master your tracks? I think the most obvious thing is to put a limiter on to the master bus, what kinda settings should i use? I have no clue when it comes to limiters and i don't want to ruin my track.. so, any advice?

Mix*

Not Master. Mastering is completely different, and is often done by other people. Most times you will not need to master your tracks, only mix them. Mastering is something that even the huge names get other people to do for them.

Whats involved in the mastering process? Often its making small touches to a mixdown, not the mix. Very subtle shifts in EQ throughout a whole album to keep the overall tonality similar, and each track at the same volume level, making sure that the quieter song is audible, and when the listener turns up their volume on that track, they're not thrown across the room by the next massive, loud, bombastic track. Mastering is subjective, and takes dedication to get it right, so if you want this done, it is well worth the investment to have your tracks mastered if you're going to sell your music.

When you're finalising your track, you want to make sure all your levels are right, and the mix is sitting at 0dB and no higher, or else you'll get clipping. An even balance on EQ and well focused compression on the elements where it matters, either direct or parallel is essential.

Don't rely on tools like Ozone; You don't need them. All DAWs nowadays come with everything you need, compressors, limiters, EQs, stereo wideners and so forth.

[Versilaryan]

^ What they said.

If you're going to self-master, first make sure your mix is stellar. Mixing is where it all happens -- mastering is only fixing the mistakes you made in mixing. A good piece of advice I read is, if you want to improve your mixing ability, mix it to the best of your ability. Stick Ozone on it, make it sound awesome (without using the limiter to boost volume). Then, export the track, import it as reference. Remove Ozone and then make your track sound like that without any mastering at all.

Mastering-wise, I usually do some compression (making it as transparent as possible) to get rid of the larger peaks, EQ it slightly, stereo expand, and then put the limiter on it. What I hear a lot of people are doing is making their limiter peak at -.3 or so instead of at 0, so if you choose a more transparent limiter setting, nothing clips at all. There are other reasons for that, too, but I don't remember them.

[HMage]

Make sure there's saxophone in the song and you don't need to master your song anymore.

[MixMastaCopyCat]

Make sure there's saxophone in the song and you don't need to master your song anymore.

Listen to this guy. He does it for a living, for christ's sake.

[CaptainFluffatun]

>Limiter
>Sausage Fattener
>???
>Profit and enjoy a fat sausage

[Lavender_Harmony]

[soup2504]

http://howtomakeelectronicmusic.com/how ... -fl-studio

This website has got some damn good tutorials on it, might as well check out some more while you're there!

[the4thImpulse]

Don't rely on tools like Ozone; You don't need them. All DAWs nowadays come with everything you need, compressors, limiters, EQs, stereo wideners and so forth.

I both agree and disagree with this. Yes you have all the tools necessary but I find most vsts's that come with stock with a DAW fairly cheap compared to 3rd party vsts. I know a lot of mastering engineers use Ozone because it is very well built and designed, and preforms flawlessly. Computer Music Magizine voted it as the best VST to date! Imo once you experience Ozone you won't go back.

[CaptainFluffatun]

A+ 10/10 YES gOOD WOULD WATCH AGAIN

[Lavender_Harmony]

Don't rely on tools like Ozone; You don't need them. All DAWs nowadays come with everything you need, compressors, limiters, EQs, stereo wideners and so forth.

I both agree and disagree with this. Yes you have all the tools necessary but I find most vsts's that come with stock with a DAW fairly cheap compared to 3rd party vsts. I know a lot of mastering engineers use Ozone because it is very well built and designed, and preforms flawlessly. Computer Music Magizine voted it as the best VST to date! Imo once you experience Ozone you won't go back.

Yes. Mastering engineers. You are a producer, not a mastering engineer. Ozone is for mastering, not mixing. If you mix with Ozone you're doing it wrong, frankly, as it is a mastering suite.

If you're absolutely convinced that the plugins that you are using in your DAW aren't as good as third party ones (Nine times out of ten they are, most people are just not learning how they work) then by all means, use Ozone. Also look into the many, many, many other compressors, limiters, EQs and effects that are available. Do a plugin search on KVR, find some alternatives.

I would also like to point something out about Ozone. If you have the basic version, it incorporates everything into one single plugin, with each element within that plugin. This makes bussing and sidechaining a total pain. You would not want to use this for all your mixing, to have so many different instances of this on your tracks just to utilize the individual functions is monstrous on your CPU and ultimately pointless. And putting something like Ozone on your master channel ≠ a good mix. If your mix is good, all you might want to consider putting on your master channel is a spectral analyser, a limiter with no gain set at 0dB just to catch any rogue phasing or transients, and maybe an EQ for some overall mix shaping, but that's also something that can be achieved in your mix overall.

[the4thImpulse]

Yes. Mastering engineers. You are a producer, not a mastering engineer. Ozone is for mastering, not mixing. If you mix with Ozone you're doing it wrong, frankly, as it is a mastering suite.

If you're absolutely convinced that the plugins that you are using in your DAW aren't as good as third party ones (Nine times out of ten they are, most people are just not learning how they work) then by all means, use Ozone. Also look into the many, many, many other compressors, limiters, EQs and effects that are available. Do a plugin search on KVR, find some alternatives.

The op is talking about mastering, and so am I... and I have used ozone for some mixing applications and I worked wonders.

I also am convinced that Ozone sounds much better then a majority or the first party software Ableton has.

[Random111223]

oh god my sides

Oh, and i guess "mastering" was the wrong word. I'm just looking for some general advice how to balance the levels after mixing. In other words.. making it a sausage.

[Navron]

I guess I'll share my advice since I pretty much have been teaching myself to master.

First off, this tutorial series is great: http://audio.tutsplus.com/tutorials/mix ... ompressor/

I'll echo what others have said about having a good mixdown. Likely the most important part of the process, and in a perfect world, you should finish your mix and have absolutely no need to master. Obviously this isn't the case about 99% of the time.

So what do I do? I go through a chain, involving EQ, stereo widening, compression, limiting, and maximizing.

Regarding the EQ, you should not be making any changes to any particular frequency greater than 2dB at the very most. If you find you are, go back to the mix and figure out what track needs that cut, and adjust it there, otherwise you'll take certain frequencies along with it from your master track.

Stereo widening helps a lot with giving your song a more clean, structured sound, but don't overdo it, especially if it supports a delay. Too much delay and you'll make your track really muddy.

Compression is always a tricky thing to get down, and in the tutorial above, IIRC it states you want very long attack and release times. I don't necessarily agree with that.

Your compression should not have a very low threshold, as in, it should not be active all the time, and you should only see it activate to help squash certain peaks. Speaking of which, don't let your ratio be set very high. I set mine to 2-2.5. As for attack, I have mine set to as short as it goes (1). I do however, have my release set relatively high, as you don't want to have your compressor kick in and duck out fast, because it will give you a pumping effect.

Limiting should be used very lightly. You can overdue a limiter very easily, and while it gives your track some extra gain, too much limiting and your track will sound loud and flat, with a lot of dynamic sections lost.

Same goes with a Maximizer.

Actually, the same goes for everything. You are making very finely tuned tweaks to your songs, not major boosts in gain and/or cuts in EQ, or over-compressing things.

If you find yourself needing to overdo any of these stages, then it's best to go back to your mix and fix it up there, versus the master track.

[the4thImpulse]

I'm just looking for some general advice how to balance the levels after mixing. In other words.. making it a sausage.

What do you mean balance the levels after mixing? are you talking about once your track is all laid out in the arangement and you want mix everything right or what you do after you finish mixing (which would be mastering)?

I would also like to point something out about Ozone. If you have the basic version, it incorporates everything into one single plugin, with each element within that plugin. This makes bussing and sidechaining a total pain. You would not want to use this for all your mixing, to have so many different instances of this on your tracks just to utilize the individual functions is monstrous on your CPU and ultimately pointless. And putting something like Ozone on your master channel ≠ a good mix. If your mix is good, all you might want to consider putting on your master channel is a spectral analyser, a limiter with no gain set at 0dB just to catch any rogue phasing or transients, and maybe an EQ for some overall mix shaping, but that's also something that can be achieved in your mix overall.

I have the basic version and I certinly don't use it on every channel, when I do use if I often record it to audio once I have what I got the result I was looking for. I often use it only on leads and drums and no more then 2 instances at a time. I dont see how it would make bussing or sidechaining any sort of pain, its just one vst that audio goes through, it doesn't change anything. You dont even need a limiter on the master if you mix at low dbs, I said it already but audio peaks at -8db when I make music and I export it at that seting. After I take the whole song and run it through ozone to bring the levels up to normal levels and do a final mid/side eq.

[HMage]

I agree with everything that has been said on this thread.