This has been mixed...does it NEED mastered?

[blackrabbit]

HI everyone,This song has been mixed to the best of my abilities. Honestly, please tell me if this needs mastered. I am new at producing music and have never had a track professionally mastered.Leading The CrowdThanks!-Ryan LaiolaBlack Rabbit Recordswww.blackrabbitrecords.com

[gitarrero]

hi,each and every track you hear on a commercial cd is mastered. mastering is the process where the whole stereo file gets processed, so it's not the same as mixing where all the single tracks are available.your track sounds like there already was some compression on the master bus. I'd rather recommend to do this in the mastering.here's an article about mastering: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masteringhth,martin

[dabresk]

I don;t know about anyone else, but the vocals came across very distorted on my end.You may want to re-post.Bresky

[normbowler]

Short answer: Yes. Your song needs to be mastered because every song should be. There's nothing particularly wrong with your mix, and if there is the place to fix it is in the mix if you can. Mastering is that extra bit of goodness where you make sure the overall bass/treble mix is good, and the overall punchiness/loudness is what you want.If you are putting together a CD, the songs should be mastered together as a unit to make sure their EQ and loudness fit together nicely as you play the disc. This should probably be done by the pros to keep your CD from suffering from the bass/treble balance of your ears + studio monitoring system. But even single songs can benefit from mastering. I always master my mixes before sending them out into the world.Martin makes a good point -- if you are going to master your mix, don't put compression on the stereo buss at mixdown. Compress individual tracks, sure, but don't compress the whole mix. That is typically reserved for the mastering stage. Get a good hot mix with no overall comression and peak levels close to 0dbYou can do simple mastering in a digital audio editor -- it doesn't need to be a multi-track DAW. For quick mastering I use Sony Sound Forge Audio Studio, about $69. My general workflow in Sound Forge --Normalize track to 0dbTrim all silence from the front of the track, then add standard 2-second silence at beginning.Listen to overall EQ. is it muddy, need more bass, more highs?Pull up the graphic EQ and set all sliders to 0. play with EQ, using cut only, no boost. Since you have already normalized to 0 db, any boosting may cause clipping. if you want to boost the highs, cut everything else instead. Highest value of any slider should be 0. Apply EQ.Re-normalize to get back any lost gain.For simple compression, use the dynamics effect in SF. Try 2:1 compression starting at -8db with 0ms attack and 200ms release, with gain compensation checked. You will be amazed how this simple single-band compression makes your mix punchier and adds overall volume.Do the final fade. Typically my mixes are unfaded and I do the fade after the compression.Trim silence from the endIf song length is near a magic number like 3:14 or 4:20, mess with fade or silence at the end to make it *exactly* 4:20 If you want to play with multi-band comression, ImageLine (the fruityloops people) have a VST plugin pack for $99 with includes a three-band compressor. I'm just now learning how to do that bit.

[andreh]

Norm-You make some good points, but I would approach a few of these areas differently myself.- Re: which songs should be mastered: If a mix is "perfect," then there may be no need for mastering a song that's not part of a compilation (in which case it needs to be mastered to match the other tracks). For example, if you're planning to submit a single song for a Taxi listing, you want it to sound as good as possible...but that can be achieved at the mix stage if you're diligent.More often than not, however, even great mixes can benefit from a touch of EQ or compression for overall tone shaping. - Re: mixbus compression: In some genres, particularly pop/rock, it's common to mix with a compressor on the main bus, since volume/automation decisions can be drastically affected by the compressor's involvement. Don't put a compressor on the mixbus for a "louder" mix, however; that should be left for mastering.Good advice about fading after compression, since a lower volume level will affect the way the compressor reacts. If you're using volume automation for the fade (as you should) and a real-time compressor, be sure the compressor is set to "pre-fader" so it sees the pre-faded signal even when the fade occurs.As for your suggested starting settings, they may work on some program material, but you really have to play this by ear. Also, an attack of 0ms will chop off your kick, snare, and other transients, actually reducing a mix's punchiness in some ways. I'd recommend letting some of the peaks through; perhaps 20-100ms as a starting point.- Re: 2-track normalization: This step is completely unnecessary at (or before) the mastering stage, and is in fact undesired. As you point out, it makes EQ boosts impossible since they would introduce clipping. In fact, even EQ cuts could introduce clipping to a normalized signal since [with some EQ's, both analog and digital] surrounding frequencies are often boosted by design when certain frequencies are cut.More to the point, there is no purpose for normalizing the 2-track. A mastering limiter will raise levels to an acceptable degree at the end of the processing chain (right before dithering/noise shaping), so normalizing at any stage only serves to add noise, albeit small amounts at high resolutions, to the signal.Kindly,André Quote:Short answer: Yes. Your song needs to be mastered because every song should be. There's nothing particularly wrong with your mix, and if there is the place to fix it is in the mix if you can. Mastering is that extra bit of goodness where you make sure the overall bass/treble mix is good, and the overall punchiness/loudness is what you want.If you are putting together a CD, the songs should be mastered together as a unit to make sure their EQ and loudness fit together nicely as you play the disc. This should probably be done by the pros to keep your CD from suffering from the bass/treble balance of your ears + studio monitoring system. But even single songs can benefit from mastering. I always master my mixes before sending them out into the world.Martin makes a good point -- if you are going to master your mix, don't put compression on the stereo buss at mixdown. Compress individual tracks, sure, but don't compress the whole mix. That is typically reserved for the mastering stage. Get a good hot mix with no overall comression and peak levels close to 0dbYou can do simple mastering in a digital audio editor -- it doesn't need to be a multi-track DAW. For quick mastering I use Sony Sound Forge Audio Studio, about $69. My general workflow in Sound Forge --Normalize track to 0dbTrim all silence from the front of the track, then add standard 2-second silence at beginning.Listen to overall EQ. is it muddy, need more bass, more highs?Pull up the graphic EQ and set all sliders to 0. play with EQ, using cut only, no boost. Since you have already normalized to 0 db, any boosting may cause clipping. if you want to boost the highs, cut everything else instead. Highest value of any slider should be 0. Apply EQ.Re-normalize to get back any lost gain.For simple compression, use the dynamics effect in SF. Try 2:1 compression starting at -8db with 0ms attack and 200ms release, with gain compensation checked. You will be amazed how this simple single-band compression makes your mix punchier and adds overall volume.Do the final fade. Typically my mixes are unfaded and I do the fade after the compression.Trim silence from the endIf song length is near a magic number like 3:14 or 4:20, mess with fade or silence at the end to make it *exactly* 4:20 If you want to play with multi-band comression, ImageLine (the fruityloops people) have a VST plugin pack for $99 with includes a three-band compressor. I'm just now learning how to do that bit.

[normbowler]

Thanks for the feedback on my comments. I agree in general, with the added comment that whenever someone gives you settings to try, the final judge should always be your ears! Single band compression is pretty limited anyway, because it's going to be so highly driven by the kick drum. But if you look at my settings, I think you'll see it';s not a typical compression approach. with low ration (2:1) faily low threshhold (-6 or -8db) very quick attack and fairly slow release, what ends up happening is that the tracks is almost always under some level of compression. So instead of going back and forth between squashed and unsquashed, with the resultant bad effects on transients, it acts more like fader riding. But again, the final result should always be your ears.

[andreh]

Quote:Thanks for the feedback on my comments. I agree in general, with the added comment that whenever someone gives you settings to try, the final judge should always be your ears! Single band compression is pretty limited anyway, because it's going to be so highly driven by the kick drum. But if you look at my settings, I think you'll see it';s not a typical compression approach. with low ration (2:1) faily low threshhold (-6 or -8db) very quick attack and fairly slow release, what ends up happening is that the tracks is almost always under some level of compression. So instead of going back and forth between squashed and unsquashed, with the resultant bad effects on transients, it acts more like fader riding. But again, the final result should always be your ears.Norm-I see what you're getting at; that scenario could yield the results you're describing. However, since we're no longer working with a normalized signal, the threshold setting becomes totally arbitrary and we're back to relying on our ears...but we agree on that point! As for the kick drum driving your compressor too much, that can be overcome by using a compressor with a built-in high pass filter on its key input, or by setting up a side-chain compressor and feeding it a high-passed signal from your main bus. I do this fairly often, especially on bass-heavy music such as hip hop or electronic.I don't consider 2-to-1 to be a low ratio for compressing the mixbus (perhaps for single tracks it is), and 6-9dB of gain reduction on the master bus seems excessive to me...but everyone uses a different approach. Like they say, if it sounds good, it is good!Kindly,André

[blackrabbit]

Thanks guys,That is a lot more information than I expected. I guess I have a lot to learn still regarding the finalization of tracks (i.e. the mastering process). By the way, this song is a solo piece, meant for placement alone, not on an album, even though the style of the song is more of an "album cut"; it is not gonna be placed on any album. I didn't use any compression on any master bus, but I have spent countless hours with mixing and sound enhancements. There is probably compression on nearly every track. Off the top of my head, there is probably close to 40 tracks. It was produced with Logic express and recorded in home studio. I used the LA610 tube preamp on most tracks as well. Thanks again for your input. I was also just wondering if anyone found anything particularly "wrong" with the overall mix. This is one of my best pieces of work this far and I am not technically trained. I just went by my own ears. -Ryan LaiolaBlack Rabbit RecordsThanks again for your help and input.

[andreh]

Quote:I was also just wondering if anyone found anything particularly "wrong" with the overall mix.Not necessarily "wrong," but I would change a few things around:- The lead vocal doesn't have a strong center image, and seems unfocused compared to the strumming acoustic guitar (which is stealing its thunder). Perhaps pan the acoustic guitar off to the side, roll off a bit of its highs to give it some distance, and add a slap or short delay to give it some width. Then bring back some of the mid frequencies in the vocal and reduce some of its verb send (or whatever affect is "stereo-izing" it).- The piano notes could really use a huge, warm, panning delay to fill in their sparse lines and make it more interesting. You could push more mids out of the piano, perhaps with a MB comp, to keep it "in your face" without hurting your ears.- Since you're using a DAW, clean up some of the slop in a few places. It drags a bit here and there, too.You've done a good making this a lively, exciting mix, and that's more important than any technical issues in my book.HTH,André

[blackrabbit]

Thanks. I'll be working on it some more. -Ryan