Mastering Tips/Info?

sven laux · Post by **sven laux** » Thu Dec 13, 2007 9:42 pm

sorgenkind wrote:give up on mastering, it is for us (almost) impossible

I mean mastering is NOT putting a limiter in the masterbux and browsing a couple of presets, really.

go back to your track, see that you can get every sound at its best and spend enough time with the mixdown

+10

sauce · Post by **sauce** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 1:21 am

steevio wrote:i've had many years of experience in recording studios

What studios? What have you personally mastered?

If you think that the major studios master on the same shitty equipment most of us have at home, you're nuts.

steevio · Post by **steevio** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 10:38 am

sauce wrote:
steevio wrote:i've had many years of experience in recording studios
What studios? What have you personally mastered?

If you think that the major studios master on the same shitty equipment most of us have at home, you're nuts.

sorry mate, i dont need to justify myself to you, i ran my own recording studio for 8 years, i've personally mastered over 50 records, and i know exactly what equipment is used in mastering suites, and you know something, the worst mastering i've had done was at EMI's Abbey Road Studios on the best equipment in the world, it's all down to the engineer.

steevio · Post by **steevio** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 1:12 pm

sauce wrote:
If you think that the major studios master on the same shitty equipment most of us have at home, you're nuts.

maybe you're not getting my point mate, why are we talking about major studios ??
mastering is a logical process like everything else, if you say 'why try to master yourself ?' you might as well say 'why bother learning how to use a synth ?, get someone else to do it for you.'
ok most of us dont have access to top of the range hardware mastering EQ's, but as i said there are software equivalents.
if you can afford it, send your tunes to be mastered, i'm not going to argue against that, but if you cant afford it, what are you going to do ?, put out your material un-mastered because you've got a mental block that mastering is some esoteric process that you have no chance of ever understanding ?
now thats nuts !

btw no disrepect, but not everybody has the same shitty equipment you've got at home.

ArhiteK · Post by **ArhiteK** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 8:21 pm

steevio wrote: mastering is a logical process like everything else, if you say 'why try to master yourself ?' you might as well say 'why bother learning how to use a synth ?, get someone else to do it for you.'

+100

Cross referencing on many speakers, testing it at live acts, experimenting, doing as much as u can on mixdown, and finaly sculpting it in mastering process... Everything COULD be done, with enough will...

ano.phi · Post by **ano.phi** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 3:54 pm

Well thanks for all the input guys. A few of you make mastering seem like some mythical creature. The only things between me finishing my tracks and releasing them or not are the few sounds and tones i can't get just right and cause me to spend so much time working on them that i get tired and annoyed with my song.

I know i can do pretty much everything by myself with the right plugins and whatnot. I'm such a perfectionist that the last 8 years writing electronic music has been spent perfecting the sounds i want and not finishing tracks that i don't think are perfect. I really liked this comment:

Cross referencing on many speakers, testing it at live acts, experimenting, doing as much as u can on mixdown, and finaly sculpting it in mastering process... Everything COULD be done, with enough will...

I'll look into the books that were recommended.

Anyone have some EQ or compressor plugin recommendations? Right now i can run as many as 8 EQs on a single sample and still want more. :p

livecollective · Post by **livecollective** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 8:57 pm

Waves SSL EQ is pretty nice

thomasjaldemark · Post by **thomasjaldemark** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 9:09 pm

livecollective wrote:Waves SSL EQ is pretty nice

and cheap...