Members Anderton Posted July 8, 2015 Members Share Posted July 8, 2015 At GearFest, I did a seminar on "How to Master in Your DAW" and solicited files from the audience. I picked two of them and did a quickie mastering job. This video plays the before and after versions of the two songs, and includes some commentary (textovers so as not to interfere with the audio) and screen shots of the processor settings used. Any and all comments welcome. [video=youtube;-VOl9bwKV_U] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Nijyo Posted July 8, 2015 Members Share Posted July 8, 2015 I am not a mixing/mastering expert by any means, so please excuse me if I use the incorrect terminology here. It looks like with both tracks you felt the need to make them "louder". Why? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted July 8, 2015 Members Share Posted July 8, 2015 I'm not Craig, but I can give you some general answers... When music has to 'compete' head to head with other music, because of the way we hear and respond to sound, most humans tend to get the impression that the louder of any two sounds (up to right around the pain threshold, believe it or not) sounds 'better' than the other. Many in the industry took to calling the ever-spiralling upward RMS levels the Loudness Wars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war So, whether it was jukeboxes, 45 rpm singles changers, and radio in the '50s and '60s or CD changers in the 90s, or mp3 portables in the 00's and into this decade, there is usually a push from labels, producers and artists for what I long ago took to calling competitive loudness. Along with the renewed interest in such competitive loudness came the 'rise' of the role of mastering engineer. ME's in the vinyl era had typically been highly trained cutting lathe operators. They would check for out-of-phase bass content or other problems with the stereo aspect of the mix that would send the disk-cutting head into a tizzy trying to follow it -- but their role in 'fixing' mixes was almost entirely technically oriented (although it was not uncommon to include a few last minute EQ or even compression tweaks in the notes submitted with the job). CD mastering tended to be very different skill sets and was mostly the province of bit-head types, who would use extremely expensive digital tape machines to create masters, ensuring big fees -- and also assuring that some smart 'mammal' somewhere would be scurrying between dinosaur feet to create alternate forms of CD master creation. By the mid-90s, it became increasingly common for both CD duplication (optical) and replication (stamped) production facilities to accept the master on a CD-R -- effectively cutting some very well paid people out of their jobs. At this point, either all those guys had to go out and get jobs at Pep Boys -- or they had to 'reinvent' the mastering process to be something 'regular folks' couldn't do. Where before they'd leaned on things like wildly expensive analog tape lookahead decks for feeding cutting lathes and even more expensive digital tape systems for feeding early CD mastering, now they essentially had to convince people that not only did they have the crazy, expensive gear you 'need' to do a good master, you also had to have all sorts of presumably esoteric understanding in order to do the job. (A little truth on both fronts -- but some folks lay on the 'need' for outside, 'professional' mastering so heavy, your socks turn brown. As the saying used to go. But, I have to say, when people can't even figure out how to mix their own tracks -- I see post after plaintive post about how 'hard' it is to mix -- that maybe it's not surprising. Our collective intelligence seems to be slipping rather drastically. I was just reviewing typical college board scores from the late 60s and early 70s with today's tests and... well... it doesn't fill you with optimism for the nation or our culture. I have to say.) Anyhow, if one is sending out for mastering, an oft-heard and quite reasonable bit of advice is to (crucially) do all production work in 24 bit format and then leave a fair amount of 'headroom' in the mix, typically foregoing any output bus compression (although, of course, compressing individual instruments/tracks as needed, since that obviously can't be done once the tracks are summed in the mix). So it's pretty expected to find more headroom in such a (24 bit format) mix than you would want in the finished, release format. This allows the ME to apply what magic he has with (hopefully) as much flexibility as needed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Anderton Posted July 9, 2015 Author Members Share Posted July 9, 2015 I am not a mixing/mastering expert by any means, so please excuse me if I use the incorrect terminology here. It looks like with both tracks you felt the need to make them "louder". Why? I was hoping someone would ask that question First, as mentioned for "Time Will Tell," I got the impression that they wanted it loud. I aim to please. A lot depends on the genre. Classical, no limiting. DJ mixes, lots of limiting so that the volume is maintained when transitioning from one track to the next. Pop - judgement call. But cuts need to be "competitive." If someone is clicking on things on the web, YouTube, iTunes store, etc. as Blue explains the softer one will seem less "good." For both songs, the peak levels are the same for the mastered and unmastered version. Fortunately with "Resolution," there were a lot of very short, sharp duration peaks. So I could limit those and keep most of the dynamics intact. If you compare the waveforms on "Resolution" to most pop music, you'll see that it has considerably more dynamics than average. Here's what a lot of songs look like today...I try to split the difference between what I want to hear, and what seems to be the "norm." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Nijyo Posted July 9, 2015 Members Share Posted July 9, 2015 That's what I was afraid the answer would be (re: the Loudness War), but I understand the thought process and rationale. Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members gubu Posted July 9, 2015 Members Share Posted July 9, 2015 The thing is, consumers these days don't want to waste time fiddling with volume and EQ to get one track in their playlist to gel with the next. And, for now at least, the technology seems to have reached its natural limit, in terms of how much RMS and perceived loudness can be squeezed out of a typical 2 track master. The thing about Craig's video is in HOW he achieves commercial 'loudness'. In both examples in the video, the limiter is only being used on extreme peaks, and the overall level of excitement and dynamics is being expertly controlled, and tailored to the gestalt of each track, mainly through the careful use of EQ and saturation. It's actually pretty unfair, in 2015, to bemoan the loudness wars, and the role of the mastering engineer in that process. Mastering is about so much more than making things 'louder', as Craig's video demonstrates. And while some of today's material doesn't stand up so well against that of the pre-digital age, there is a lot of music being produced right now that sounds INCREDIBLE in comparison to what came before. Digital mastering has come a long way in the past 10-15 years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members bwalraven Posted September 15, 2015 Members Share Posted September 15, 2015 Craig, Yes, it's been two months since the first post but I've finally a bit of time to comment on the discussion. This is BJ from View. I mixed the first song in the video above. First, I want to say: Thanks, Craig, for your efforts on our song. It was very gracious of you, and all of us in View were very pleased with the outcome! It was especially incredible to meet you after having read your articles for so many years, and to find that even with all of your exposure to the rest of us unwashed masses, you're still very personable and humble. To Nijyo's point, we had intended the dynamics in the song, and we were very pleased that you (Craig) recognized them and worked to preserve them while still making the volume "competitive". The Sweetwater session was very useful and informative. Did anyone ever happen to post the actual slides or the recording of the session? Particularly the discussions of plug-ins and bits, as well as the information about the EQs ins Sonar and how much EQ is really used during mastering, even more so than compression, was really interesting and eye-opening. Should be base learning for any recording engineer! As a side note to Craig, I'd be happy to share the original files if you'd like to give the mix a go. You could probably pull off the added wetness much better in the original mix. Again, it was our privilege to participate, and we thank you very much for the opportunity! Craig, you're a class act, and I hope we cross paths again. BJ Walraven - View (the band) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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