Mastering Studios?

[guest4254]

I get the feeling you might've been expecting too much out of the mastering phase...to repair what should be refined in the mixing stage. So going back to fix the "ss's" in the mix is the better call. If you want to have a song mastered by a pro just to see how much it actually improves the sound then I understand (Sterling Sound in New York does a lot of pro releases), but for the fast moving sync world I'd stick with Ozone and improve your mixing skills until you're there.
[/quote]

Sage advice. So much of the problem for me is time, and the lack of it, but that's my problem I'm trying to deal with...

Any suggestions on this particular mix?

[guest4254]

I do have Ozone 9, and have tried using, but usually with similar results. Sounds great in the studio monitors, but sounds like crap in the car.
In regards to one of the songs I was looking to Master, I gave it another shot using Ozone 9 and it's manual function. Of course, it mostly sounded good in the studio (and I actually got the pre-master to sound good in the car stereo) but that caused a lot of sibilance from the vocals. A de-esser complicated matters, so I went ahead and treated each "ess" at a time. Got that to sound good, and here's what I came up with...(and I somehow feel like we may be in the wrong discussion group, but what the heck)

I get the feeling you might've been expecting too much out of the mastering phase...to repair what should be refined in the mixing stage. So going back to fix the "ss's" in the mix is the better call. If you want to have a song mastered by a pro just to see how much it actually improves the sound then I understand (Sterling Sound in New York does a lot of pro releases), but for the fast moving sync world I'd stick with Ozone and improve your mixing skills until you're there.

Sage advice. So much of the problem for me is time, and the lack of it, but that's my problem I'm trying to deal with...

Any suggestions on this particular mix?

[guest4254]

Sounds great in the studio monitors, but sounds like crap in the car.

Usually a symptom of an issue in your mixing room..i.e. it's not telling you the truth

Have you done any acoustic measurements and appropriate treatment to get the room as flat as you can ?

I think I'm ok with accoustics, my walls are covered with foam, and I can't imagine the room being much flatter than it is....maybe too flat? Was going to add a couple photos from my studio so you could see, but I'm not sure how to go about attaching files, as it took long enough to get the link to my song to work.

I'm also using JBL LSR 4623 studio monitors with their matching sub woofer. They also come with room correction gear, and I've gone over the "how to" with a tech at JBL, so I know they're set correctly. I also recently picked up a pair of Presonus Eris 3.5 monitors so I could do A/B checks. So that leaves my ears as the main culprit. I've been spending as much of the little time I get, listening, reading books on mixing, and just trying different things, and I think they help...

Assuming you've listened to the song, what is your take on the mix? Any input would be appreciated. As you could imagine, being October, I'm getting toward the end of Xmas season for TV/Movies, which is why I thought sending it to be Mastered professionally would be the best way to go. Of course, I doubt I'll ever make the money back that I'd be shelling out to be Mastered, so hopefully, you might be able to point me in the right direction...and hopefully, down the road, maybe I could do the same for you!

Harry

[cosmicdolphin]

Any suggestions on the mix/audio?

Yes I posted on your other thread, sounds like you've taken reasonable steps to ensure mix translation with the room mode correction built into the monitors too.

I don't take mixes to my car , I use an Avantone Mixcube ( mono ) and an old boombox that the kids used to use with their iPod so I can check playback on different styles of speakers at the flick of a switch as they all tell me different things about the mix.

The other thing I use is MagicAB so I can switch between reference tracks and my mix as I'm working to ensure I'm in the ballpark. Also the Tonal Balance control is very handy in Ozone , I put your track through it and it confirmed the lack of low end I was hearing ( I used the bass heavy setting as it's reggae )

It could be the use of the sub that's contributing to your undermixing of the low end. It's often recommended not to use subs in a typical home studio as they cause more problems than they fix because our brains substitute the sub frequencies ( that most speakers won't reproduce ) for the actual low bass that should be in the mix. Hence it sounds balanced until we play it on a system with no sub ( which is most of them domestically speaking )

Mark

[guest4254]

Any suggestions on the mix/audio?

Yes I posted on your other thread, sounds like you've taken reasonable steps to ensure mix translation with the room mode correction built into the monitors too.

I don't take mixes to my car , I use an Avantone Mixcube ( mono ) and an old boombox that the kids used to use with their iPod so I can check playback on different styles of speakers at the flick of a switch as they all tell me different things about the mix.

The other thing I use is MagicAB so I can switch between reference tracks and my mix as I'm working to ensure I'm in the ballpark. Also the Tonal Balance control is very handy in Ozone , I put your track through it and it confirmed the lack of low end I was hearing ( I used the bass heavy setting as it's reggae )

It could be the use of the sub that's contributing to your undermixing of the low end. It's often recommended not to use subs in a typical home studio as they cause more problems than they fix because our brains substitute the sub frequencies ( that most speakers won't reproduce ) for the actual low bass that should be in the mix. Hence it sounds balanced until we play it on a system with no sub ( which is most of them domestically speaking )

Mark

Ironic that I always have too much low end, and I suppose I over compensated by removing too much. I believe I also have Ozone Tonal Balance, but haven't had a chance to test it out yet...again, my time constraints.

Thanks for the suggestion, I will check out your suggestions!

Harry

[RPaul]

Thanks for the reply Cosmic. I do have Ozone 9, and have tried using, but usually with similar results. Sounds great in the studio monitors, but sounds like crap in the car.
In regards to one of the songs I was looking to Master, I gave it another shot using Ozone 9 and it's manual function. Of course, it mostly sounded good in the studio (and I actually got the pre-master to sound good in the car stereo) but that caused a lot of sibilance from the vocals. A de-esser complicated matters, so I went ahead and treated each "ess" at a time. Got that to sound good, and here's what I came up with...(and I somehow feel like we may be in the wrong discussion group, but what the heck)

The fixing in the mix on the sibilance is a key, and listening environment considerations also come into play in the car scenario, but, with respect to the suggestion of the Ozone 10 Master Assistant as a starting point versus unsatisfactory results with the Ozone 9 Master Assistant, I would say try the Ozone 10 version and you may be pleasantly surprised. I never got even in the ballpark results with the Ozone 9 Master Assistant and typically used mastering plugins other than Ozone for my mastering stage as a result. However, at least thus far, my experience with Ozone 10's Mastering Assistant has been very good, and I have actually ended up using Ozone 10 (usually tweaks after the Master Assistant's initial suggestions) in the recordings I've made since Ozone 10 came out. In fact, in one case, I even went back and remastered a track I'd done using another plugin but had not yet released after experimenting with Ozone 10 on an unmastered mix and finding I liked the result better.

There are a few things in Ozone 10 that, at least for my purposes, have made the Master Assistant more successful (for me):

First, it can use the Tonal Balance curves, and other aspects of the mixes they used as starting points, to tailor your mix to specific genres (and against commercially successful references in those genres. It can also guess the genre based on your mix, but it won't necessarily get it right. You can always tell it to use the right one.

Second, you can also use a reference mix of your own choosing. This was very helpful for me in one of the recordings I was producing that was targeting some specific references, one of which I ended up using in this context.

Third, there are various high-level sliders to adjust the various categories of settings it makes in matching your mix to a reference. This can make it quick and easy to make high-level adjustments without diving into the details of the individual modules or at least get you closer before you do dive into the modules. And, of course, you still can dive into the modules if needed (I especially ended up doing that on the EQ front, mostly to adjust high- and low-end settings).

Fourth, there are new modules in Ozone 10 that come into play in this, and they likely make a significant difference in how well Ozone 10 does versus Ozone 9 in approximating reference mixes (or the general genre-specific sets of mix characteristics).

In any event, the bottom line for me is Ozone 10 has been much more successful in this area than Ozone 9 was. I mostly only used the Ozone 9 Maximizer at the end of my chain while using other brand plugins (especially Waves AR TG Mastering) for my most of the processing. So far, though I've only had a few mixes to give me data on this, I've generally ended up using Ozone 10.

As for the listening environment considerations, one thing I've found to be a big help is the Waves Nx Series plugins (CLA Nx, Nx Ocean Way Nashville, and Nx Germano Studios New York), which claim to simulate professional control room environments in headphones. Whether they are successful at that or not, I really can't say. However, each of them provides multiple speaker choices from the environment of the source studio, and I find that trying all of these out on my mixes tends to minimize needs for changes after car listening tests compared to prior to having used these plugins.

[guest4254]

Thanks Rick Paul for the very comprehensive reply.
I swore to myself that I wasn't going to buy any more apps or add ons, as I have so many that I've never had the chance to see what they're capable of. I figured with Ozone 9 and all that came with it, it should be enough....but now you've talked me into upgrading to version 10. I don't know what, or how long the learning curve will be, but I figure for the price of getting 1 song mastered, I can spring for V10 and hope I can make it work without taking too much time...again, a Christmas song in mid-October is already pushing it as far as sending it out to libraries and music supes.
Any chance you listened enough to the song to let me know your feelings about the overall production?

Off to Sweetwater.com now to get my upgrade, and hopefully by this time tomorrow night I'll be able to see how it all works.

Thank you again for taking the time to explain your thoughts. If ever I could help you out in some fashion, I would do my best to give you a helping hand....same for you Cosmic!

Namaste,

Harry

[RPaul]

Thanks Rick Paul for the very comprehensive reply.
I swore to myself that I wasn't going to buy any more apps or add ons, as I have so many that I've never had the chance to see what they're capable of. I figured with Ozone 9 and all that came with it, it should be enough....but now you've talked me into upgrading to version 10. I don't know what, or how long the learning curve will be, but I figure for the price of getting 1 song mastered, I can spring for V10 and hope I can make it work without taking too much time...again, a Christmas song in mid-October is already pushing it as far as sending it out to libraries and music supes.
Any chance you listened enough to the song to let me know your feelings about the overall production?

I had only listened to a little bit of the reggae "Grandma..." earlier, and my quick thought was that it sounded pretty good, but I am only listening on my computer speakers (Logitech X-530 5.1 Surround Speakers) in my small bedroom studio, and I'm not very knowledgeable on reggae.

I just listened to the whole thing now (same speakers), and the only other comment I'd have is I felt that the glockenspiel-like arpeggios on the left side were overly loud and busy, to the point of being distracting. I guess they are there to "Christmas it up" a bit, but, to my ears, they distracted from the song and the rest of the mix, which felt more like my idea of reggae. That would be a mix/arrangement consideration, though, not a mastering issue.

As for the learning curve for Ozone 10 Master Assistant, check out the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIVob84xL4E for a quick overview. I found almost no learning curve, and it looks like they even have a Reggae reference curve built in. The key is to pick the right (loudest) 8 seconds of your song for it to listen to, let it learn your song, set the right genre if it doesn't pick it automatically, then play around with the controls in the Master Assistant window to get it as close as you can. Finally, you can dive into the individual modules if you have something that isn't close enough and know what you want to do (e.g. tweak an EQ curve). Most of the controls in the Master Assistant window tend to be percentage of matching the reference in any given category, where you can try for a closer or less close match, depending on what sounds best to your ears.

Also, if it doesn't get close enough with the built-in reggae curve (which is the same sort of curve you'd seen in Tonal Balance for the chosen genre -- basically you're trying to keep your song's curve within the boundaries of the curve's range unless you have a reason not to) -- you could try other genres to see if they give you better results, or you could import a track of your own from a WAV file (e.g. extracted from a CD or a high quality download) that you think would be a good reference for your mix. Just keep in mind that your track may be different than the reference, so it may not be right to match it too closely, especially with a single track as the reference.

You can also use the referencing feature in Ozone to A/B your track versus a reference, and can use their gain matched bypass to hear your unmastered mix versus the mastering settings you're trying out at any given point to get a picture of the improvement (or opposite) without the loudness factor's fooling your ears.

They do have a time-limited demo, too, if you want to try it out before you plop down the upgrade money. I have their Music Production Suite 5 Universal Edition, which I'd upgraded to from an earlier Music Production Suite back when they released the latest version of Neutron, so I got the RX and Ozone upgrades on day 1 when they came out as they were also included in the MPS5 upgrade price. I also have way too many plugins, though I do tend to use most of them at least once in a while.

[guest4254]

Thanks Rick Paul for the very comprehensive reply.
I swore to myself that I wasn't going to buy any more apps or add ons, as I have so many that I've never had the chance to see what they're capable of. I figured with Ozone 9 and all that came with it, it should be enough....but now you've talked me into upgrading to version 10. I don't know what, or how long the learning curve will be, but I figure for the price of getting 1 song mastered, I can spring for V10 and hope I can make it work without taking too much time...again, a Christmas song in mid-October is already pushing it as far as sending it out to libraries and music supes.
Any chance you listened enough to the song to let me know your feelings about the overall production?

I had only listened to a little bit of the reggae "Grandma..." earlier, and my quick thought was that it sounded pretty good, but I am only listening on my computer speakers (Logitech X-530 5.1 Surround Speakers) in my small bedroom studio, and I'm not very knowledgeable on reggae.

I just listened to the whole thing now (same speakers), and the only other comment I'd have is I felt that the glockenspiel-like arpeggios on the left side were overly loud and busy, to the point of being distracting. I guess they are there to "Christmas it up" a bit, but, to my ears, they distracted from the song and the rest of the mix, which felt more like my idea of reggae. That would be a mix/arrangement consideration, though, not a mastering issue.

As for the learning curve for Ozone 10 Master Assistant, check out the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIVob84xL4E for a quick overview. I found almost no learning curve, and it looks like they even have a Reggae reference curve built in. The key is to pick the right (loudest) 8 seconds of your song for it to listen to, let it learn your song, set the right genre if it doesn't pick it automatically, then play around with the controls in the Master Assistant window to get it as close as you can. Finally, you can dive into the individual modules if you have something that isn't close enough and know what you want to do (e.g. tweak an EQ curve). Most of the controls in the Master Assistant window tend to be percentage of matching the reference in any given category, where you can try for a closer or less close match, depending on what sounds best to your ears.

Also, if it doesn't get close enough with the built-in reggae curve (which is the same sort of curve you'd seen in Tonal Balance for the chosen genre -- basically you're trying to keep your song's curve within the boundaries of the curve's range unless you have a reason not to) -- you could try other genres to see if they give you better results, or you could import a track of your own from a WAV file (e.g. extracted from a CD or a high quality download) that you think would be a good reference for your mix. Just keep in mind that your track may be different than the reference, so it may not be right to match it too closely, especially with a single track as the reference.

You can also use the referencing feature in Ozone to A/B your track versus a reference, and can use their gain matched bypass to hear your unmastered mix versus the mastering settings you're trying out at any given point to get a picture of the improvement (or opposite) without the loudness factor's fooling your ears.

They do have a time-limited demo, too, if you want to try it out before you plop down the upgrade money. I have their Music Production Suite 5 Universal Edition, which I'd upgraded to from an earlier Music Production Suite back when they released the latest version of Neutron, so I got the RX and Ozone upgrades on day 1 when they came out as they were also included in the MPS5 upgrade price. I also have way too many plugins, though I do tend to use most of them at least once in a while.

Thanks for the suggestions, time, and the use of your ears! I will also heed your advice.
Just a side note. I'm not a reggae artist. Outside of this song, and a reggae cover of "Magic Carpet Ride" I'm much more of a rock kind of guy. I also do try to write for certain Taxi submissions, though I've always felt kind of self sabotaged by my mixes, and the lack of time to spend on that sort of thing. So, I've got a lot of music that needs to be finished, re-worked and/or re-mixed, and my plan is try and finish all my loose enz...