ORIGINAL: doncolga

When I look at my stuff compared to a commercial mix through the Ozone analyzer, I can get my tone to match pretty close and my graph follows the basic slope. The difference is that, even following the basic shape, my peaks and dips are longer than on the commercial mix. It's like the commercial mix has "short teeth", and my mix has "long teeth"...if that makes any sense. Would that be a compression issue?

Harbal is great for the "teeth" thing. I also had this issue, and due to the ease of use and pretty much infinite amount of nodes you can create in Harbal, you can just grab the bottom (or point) of one of those teeth and make it much smaller. I did this to a small extent on a few songs to avoid over-compressing and it really seemed to even out the sound nicely

A great OP Bit! A fun read and lots to think about.

best regards,
mike

In this case you have three strong female voices. That's going to dominate the top end, even if you don't EQ instruments to accommodate them - which they probably did. I'm suggesting that much of that subjective brightness is from the vocals. When you listen to backing instruments during the vocals they don't sound particularly trebly.

But you may be right about the multiband compression. I wonder how common multiband compression is in the Country genre. Perhaps someone has some insight on that.

The ME has to work with a multi-band compressor because he doesn't have access to anything but the final two track mix. So there's no other real option. I doubt he'd use it if he had access to individual stems or tracks as the mixer does. It's more a necessary evil I think, than an enthusiastic choice.

It's like the commercial mix has "short teeth", and my mix has "long teeth"...if that makes any sense. Would that be a compression issue?

The "tooth" size changes dramatically in Har-Bal depending on what resolution you are viewing at.

Does anyone know if there is a "standard" resolution for this?

Also an adendum;

I think harbal is a great product , however it is to bad they gave into the pressure to add the Curve Matching feature ( ironic because thats what all the naysayers blasted them for when it did'nt have it back then !!) It's a nice mastering eq with volume matching. But It is very much dependant on the nut operating it , so it's not any kind of automatic proposal at all , you get out of it what you put into it.

I was refreshing my brain with some mastering tips and remembered this post - I thought it was worthy of a bump.  (Bit, when are you writing that book??? )

Fair use!!!

guitartrek


 Another band I like to compare is Toto - they've always had great recordings. 

 
Firstly, +1 on the use of Toto as a reference. I've always admired the clean sounding and well defined mixes of their albums.
 
Secondly, fantastic thread - nice one Bitflipper! If I could buy a nice big colourful coffee table book of frequency comparisons I would be over the moon

I wonder how much your mastering is going to improve once you have that great big book of colourful photos of frequency responses. Not one little bit I think. Dave you might be getting a bit too technical in an area that is very musical and just requires lots and lots of practice (and your ears remember not your eyes) and there is no other way to learn the skill. You can derive these graphs and even apply them to other mixes but is that the way to do it? Maybe some of you are just looking for shortcuts instead of the long hard process of just mastering and more mastering and using only your ears to do it! And really learning how to use those processors such as EQ, compression and limiting.

We need to think about Bob Katz again. He basically says that every, and I mean every single mastering (and mix) project is unique and you really cannot apply something from one to the other. That is why presets in mastering plugins are obsurd! You really need to set every stage carefully and manually. One important thing is the top end roll off characteristic and your ears can tell you that too.

By the way, using reference CD's is great for people who dont do heaps of mastering and also it overcomes the shortcomings in your monitor system to a certain extent. But you must use a reference that is similar to the music you are mastering. Toto is really only good for Toto music. Not a quiet Irish folk music CD. The idea is to get so good you dont need any reference CD at all.

And think of Bob again. Do you think he uses a reference CD when he masters. Not on your life. Do you think he has a book of frequency curves in front of him. Not on your life.

Look the frequency curve research is interesting and I have done it all myself and been there, but in reality when I am mastering someone's CD, I just dont think of it at all. I spend most of the time just listening and adjusting things until they just sound great and that is it.

Actually Dave you have got me hooked in now! Just looking at those curves and the fact they are both quite similar suggests to me that any good mix will follow a certain shape. But isn't it interesting that even though you can have two curves that are very similar they can sound different and that is what I was trying to say above really and why you cant read too much into it or rely on it too much.

Jeff, the purpose of the thread was not to say "make your song look like THIS and it will sound like a hit record". If only it were that easy!

As for putting too much stock in what you see over what you hear, I concur and addressed that in another post, using the example of the center channel for dialog in a movie theater. You see two actors speaking from opposite sides of the screen, and your brain makes you think the dialog is coming from opposite sides of the screen -- even though both actors' voices are actually emanating from the center channel speaker. Your eyes will actually override your ears and color what you hear!

This is why I always suggest closing your eyes while EQing, precisely to avoid that phenomenon. I'll use the display to zero in on a particular frequency, then make a point to avoid looking at it while I adjust the cut/boost/Q.

However, it is remarkable how a wide sampling of musical styles conforms to a general spectral shape. It's not anything Bob Katz or anybody else came up with, it's based on the physical characteristics of our ears, in particular the cochlea. A fascinating field of study that I highly recommend for all because it explains WHY we like some kinds of distortion and not others, WHY adjacent frequencies mask one another, and WHY micro- and macro-dynamics work the way they do.

The classical orchestra follows the same general spectral shape as the Dixie Chicks. Obviously, those guys who originally established the classic setup and instrumentation didn't have spectral analyzers, just ears. But the curve they established by balancing and arranging instruments on the stage is amazingly similar to that of a well-made Country, Rock, Metal or Reggae tune. (At least up until recent years, when MP3 lowered the expectations of listeners, but that's another rant.)

white line or pink line from 1kHz to 10kHz

 
What are these lines you are refering to?  Is this in Ozone or something?