A Public Service Video about Mastering with SONAR

Good reminder. 

Thanks for sharing Craig. Made me a little less overwhelmed when it comes to mastering
All the best.

I had a client that went "Wow! Yes, like that!" when all I did was apply some Concrete Limiter.
 
This video demonstrates aesthetically driven mastering, more than what would make
GoPro, Church sermon and Wedding videographers happy.
 
...I did benefit from this video, I hasten to add...

I like to think of mastering as of magnifying glass, that reveals the naked truth of the record. It just makes apparent how good the song/arrangement/performance really is.

Great comparison and I appreciated all the notes and settings screenshots in the video.  Thanks Craig!
 
Also, a note regarding presets. They are a great starting point, especially for attack and release settings in a compressor. But they don't know the level of your track, so threshold / input / gain reduction need to be set manually - ALWAYS.
 
I actually really like the presets in the Sonitus Multi-band compressor, but always tweak the thresholds and the makeup gain of each band to suit the song. I usually leave attacks, releases, and ratios as the presets have them.

This brought up some question and ideas in my mind. 
 
Craig had some specifics in his video, that he needed a cut around 200hz, add in some high end from around 1.26Khz and a bit more around 1.46K to the end and put in a cut around 2.7khz. How did he know all this? Well he was probably looking at the graphs in channel view and using his knowledge and experience.
 
What if you don't have the ears, experience, and vast knowledge of Craig? Or what if you're getting a bit older and maybe don't hear as well as you used to and aren't as skilled at looking at the graphs? Maybe Landr is a good way to go. 
 
Then there's the dreaded har-bal! I have used har-bal for a while and wanted to see what it could do. So I took the first song off Craig's video and pulled in the unedited version to see what I could find. Here's har-bal's graph of it.

edit: for some reason I can't get the inline images to show up, so here's a link to the 1st graph
https://drive.google.com/...view?usp=sharing 
 
As you can see from har-bal's analysis. There is indeed a big peak around 200 hz, it looks like it might be centered a bit before 200hz. It also clearly shows a low point that starts around 800hz and extends to about 2khz but with a peak in there around 1.2khz and again around 2.4khz with the high freq tailing off from around 4khz to the end. 
 
In my view, it clearly points out that Craig's analysis was exactly right, but also gives more detail as to exactly where things need work. 
 
It took me about 2 minutes in har-bal to modify it to look like this on the graph.
 

edit: for some reason I can't get the inline images to show up, so here's a link to the 2nd graph
https://drive.google.com/...VneGc/view?usp=sharing
 
Also, If you also notice in the upper right hand corner of the first pic. The "processed loudness" is at -20.67db. In the 2nd pic I corrected this to -14.14db. This was quickly and easily done in har-bal's histogram view raising the level to just before compressing.
 
This was all just an experiment on my part to compare Craig's findings in the video with what I could discover using har-bal. Is it going to replace a Craig or someone like a Bob Ludwig? NO! Is it an easy way to quickly make big improvements to a song and possibly understand what needs work? YES!
 
Here's a link to the file processed by har-bal if you want to compare to the ones on Craig's video. You'll notice there isn't the added reverb from Craig's job as that's not something har-bal does.
 
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3mQDhLlz1HnZlM4TWtFdXU1b0E/view?usp=sharing
 
gabo

Wow. Stunning improvement, particularly the 1st demo.  And thanks for the details of what you did. It's not many master chef's that share their cooking secrets as you do. 'much appreciated.
 
Rick
 

So much good stuff out there about mastering.  It's really helps to know what you're doing (I've been doing my own mastering for 4-5 years now and consider myself a certifiable hack).  Cough Cough.
 
1st things first - it all starts with a good mix.  A bad mix can be healed only partially.  Conversely, a good mix need not be thrashed in the Mastering Process. 
 
It's quite the education process when you encounter musicians who want stuff mastered (for free, .....always!) and when they give you their mix they are unable to tell you what mixdown processing was performed, and more importantly (overall), why it sounds gawk awful.  I am helping a classical guitarist with his mixes....recorded all over the place, no continuity of sound, etc.  Musicians!!! (ha)
 
Many hats of to Anderton for his efforts here.  Learned a lot from you Craig!
 
BTW: I'm an Ozone 7 / Insight user....remarkable product with good presets to then help you dial in, if need be.
 

Anderton
For what it's worth, when I was doing the actual mastering all the choices regarding frequencies to boost or cut was done by ear, not by looking at graphs. After all these years I can "get in the ballpark" for where the EQ should be, but also have a technique that helps greatly in identifying those frequencies very precisely. But, do note that just because there's a bump or dip doesn't necessarily mean there's a problem. There are some situations where that is natural and desirable in a piece of music.

That's pretty impressive! I can usually hear a ballpark of what frequencies need work, but usually not close enough to start tweaking EQ settings without some visual feedback. My ears hear "something in the low end" needs some work and from experience I would generally guess that it might be in that "mud range" around 200hz. Then I might tweak around on the EQ till I find what I like.
 
Would be interesting to hear more about your technique for identifying the frequencies.
 
I'll also agree that a bump or a dip doesn't necessarily mean it needs "fixed."
 
But the analysis part of har-bal does help me in determining things that need work and generally does a better job of it than any other tool I have. It can also be a great "learning tool" especially for people who haven't got as much experience. As I said, it's not a replacement for a Craig Anderton or a Bob Ludwig but it can help you learn things faster than trial and error.
 
Cheers
gabo

The Before and After mastering results were an amazing transformation, especially on the second entry. Just curious if Craig prefers certain genres over others. I would love to hear one of his masters on a smooth modern jazz tune.

You lucky guy you!  I have always wished I had a more diverse appreciation for multiple genres as it seems to open up more opportunities to succeed, and be happy, in the music business.
 
I sincerely appreciate your reply, contributions, and generous offer.
 
Kind regards,
Rick Tucker

The transformation of the second track is remarkable. Unmastered it's obviously intended to sound powerful from start to finish, but has everything happening at once through the audio spectrum all the time so it doesn't sound powerful. Instead it's muddy and muffled.

The mastered version puts back a lot of energy that what was probably in the performer's and mix engineer's mind(s) but they didn't manage to capture at the mix stage. What I find particularly interesting is the mastered version adds quite a bit of top end presence and brightness but is much less tiring to listen to than the mix version. It also has more perceived dynamics than the mix version despite having a touch higher overall rms.

A good job on both tracks. The second in particular sounds pretty release-ready to me, I've paid good money for far worse music.

Out of interest Craig, have you any thoughts on linear phase eq vs "ordinary"? And any particular reason for using L3 rather than e.g. Concrete Limiter or a single-band limiter like L2?