Breaking the rules... mastering on the master bus.

Hi ChuckC There has been discussion on this before and there are two views on it. Firstly you can master your own mixes as long as you are a good mastering engineer and also leave some time elapse between the mix and mastering stages.

I prefer to master a week later after doing a good mix. The reason that mastering on your mastering buss is not so good is several.

Firstly you will only have a print of that and if you don't like the mastering later then you have to go back and print another mix again. Having an un mastered mix is always a handy thing to have. It allows for mastering options later.

After mixing for a while your ears are tired and not making great mastering judgements and that is why if you leave it a few days or a week you will hear the music fresh again and approach mastering from a fresher perspective.

It sounds like you are on the right track anyway. The fact you had to go back and alter the mix means the mix was not perfect to start with and it is good that it was brought out during mastering and you heard it. Even famous mastering engineers have sent mixes back for re mixing. It is good that you can do it.

Just keep the monitoring levels of the unmastered mix higher or similiar to mastered levels and that way you won't be tempted to try and make your mix sound louder during mixing. Once the mix balance is great then mastering should be pretty painless.

Don't forget to have a great reference CD of very similar music that is well mixed and mastered available during both mixing and mastering. Many do not do this for some reason and they have nothing to compare to. Also choose the right song to master first, prefearbly one with everything in it and lots going on. Then once you have that make sure that is also available while you are mastering the rest and that way you will get the others to sound closer to it and then they will all feel as though they belong together.

I sat in on fantastic mastering session with one of Melbourne's best mastering engineers and I got a lot out of what processors they were using and all but the main thing I got was comparing to well produced CD's and also mastering one track first and comparing other songs to that.

Hi Chuck,

I always tend to stay away from threads Jeff answers because...well, the dude knows so much, there is nothing really to add. LOL! You rule Jeff!

However, I do have a few different ways I go about this that might help you. The first thing I do is totally mix out of Sonar as my final mix-down. From there, I actually let the mix sit for a day or so. If I wait a week like Jeff mentioned, it's too easy for me to want to alter the entire thing and then I'm taking more time to do things. I'm not knocking his way of doing things, I just find that the more I wait, the more I can change things drastically that sometimes aren't the best bet...but that's just *me* it doesn't mean it's like that for everyone. :)

Once I'm done with it in Sonar and listen for a day or so, I bring it in another editor for editing. checking for pops, click, other artifacts, spikes, stuff like that. When that's done, I save the track as name of song PM for pre-master. From there, I open Sonar again and load my mastering template and physically master the tune with eq, compression, limiting etc and whatever else it may need. I'll then save this project as a .cwp because if I find I need to tweak the mastering curve, all I have to do is open it up and it's right where I left it so I can tweak it if need be. From there, I export and I'm done with that song. Of course I'm comparing along the way to other pieces of music like Jeff mentioned as well as all the other stuff he included. 

Next, and this is what I really wanted to share. I'll open up that project again and delete the wave file and save it as a mastering template with the name of that album. This way, for the next song (assuming it was recorded around the same time using the same instrumentation and artist etc) I can bring the next song right into that template, tweak it and export. This allows for consistency. When we master an entire album worth of music, most of the time the band recorded at the same studio using the same instruments etc. So when we create the first mastering curve for a song, we can use that template on the rest of the album as long as the rest of the tunes are consistent and have that same sound....you know what I mean? Like if someone sent me 2 songs to master from 2 different times and 2 different studios using different musicians, that mastering curve I created for the first song will not work for the second. I'd have to create a curve for that song specifically, understand? But if things are consistent, you can get away with the first template you create and then just tweak it for each song on the album and you'll be in good shape. You'll just about never drop a song in the template and have it sound perfect though. You have to tweak for each song while not going too far astray or you lose consistency. Best of luck, hope this helps. :)

-Danny 

Jeff Evans


Hi ChuckC There has been discussion on this before and there are two views on it. Firstly you can master your own mixes as long as you are a good mastering engineer and also leave some time elapse between the mix and mastering stages.

I prefer to master a week later after doing a good mix. The reason that mastering on your mastering buss is not so good is several.

Firstly you will only have a print of that and if you don't like the mastering later then you have to go back and print another mix again. Having an un mastered mix is always a handy thing to have. It allows for mastering options later.

After mixing for a while your ears are tired and not making great mastering judgements and that is why if you leave it a few days or a week you will hear the music fresh again and approach mastering from a fresher perspective.

It sounds like you are on the right track anyway. The fact you had to go back and alter the mix means the mix was not perfect to start with and it is good that it was brought out during mastering and you heard it. Even famous mastering engineers have sent mixes back for re mixing. It is good that you can do it.

Just keep the monitoring levels of the unmastered mix higher or similiar to mastered levels and that way you won't be tempted to try and make your mix sound louder during mixing. Once the mix balance is great then mastering should be pretty painless.

Don't forget to have a great reference CD of very similar music that is well mixed and mastered available during both mixing and mastering. Many do not do this for some reason and they have nothing to compare to. Also choose the right song to master first, prefearbly one with everything in it and lots going on. Then once you have that make sure that is also available while you are mastering the rest and that way you will get the others to sound closer to it and then they will all feel as though they belong together.

I sat in on fantastic mastering session with one of Melbourne's best mastering engineers and I got a lot out of what processors they were using and all but the main thing I got was comparing to well produced CD's and also mastering one track first and comparing other songs to that.

Thanks for sharing such profound pearls, Jeff!  You help make techniques my fav forum.
 
Doubtless, I'll apply your excellent logic to mixing and mastering stems as well (... except I'll oft wait 2 weeks to lifetime, depending on the sensitivity of the song's material)

Thanks Danny for your kind words. I think it is you that might be the man around these parts. I agree you can perhaps leave too much time betwen mixing and mastering too. One of the main reasons I mention it is because it is the ears having a rest thing but also just hearing your mixes for a few days can be very revealing. If there is something glaring then it needs to be fixed I think.

I am about to master an album for a client and he just called me tonight to say that they are going to remix a few tracks here and there because they have been listening to it for a few days and want to change a few things! I am glad because it will sound better by the time I get it. This mix engineer is unhappy about a kick. I mixed this guys last album and I changed a kick at the last minute too after hearing it for a few days. If a mix has to survive years sounding good on a CD then isn't a few days or a week listening before mastering worth it.

I don't disagree with Herb's approach either. If I know a track is going to be loud at the end of the day I use a K -12 reference which is bloody loud to start with and I use some gentle two buss compression as well to start shaping things up for a louder master later on and they all want that. I choose a lower ratio eg 1.3:1 and aim for - 3db of GR and the attack setting is important here too. Slow it down a little and let some of the transients through. But a little master compression can soften things up a tiny bit which is good. I think there can be excessive transients too at times. I use a transparent digital compressor in that role as well. A tape sim is good for softening things down a little too.

This client is going to give me a great refernce CD as well so the first thing I have to do is find out how much above K-12 that is. Then aim for that, maybe. One thing  is that I am starting to find I like the idea of doing the third limiting stage editing off line in Adobe Audition rather than pass mixes through a limiter in real time. Sounds strange I know but I am finding the mix preserves a little better that way. (ie hard limit everything down to say -3 db and add 2 db after that raising the rms level by 2 db.)

I could be imagining that too. It is a bit like the argument about using 64 double precision in the mix stage. Can you hear it or not

I guess I kinda do a hybrid of people's practices here.

I complete my mix in Sonar and get it sounding best as I can.

Then, when I'm happy with the mix i will put the Sonitus multi-band compressor and T-Racks Limiter on the Master bus to make some minor overall tonal adjustments and kick up the level a bit.  Sometime I'll also a compressor so that each compressor is not working too hard.

At this point, I don't really think in terms of "albums" anymore so I don't address any issues regarding consistency between mixes.  It's pretty much a "singles" world these days.

The songs I have been discussing here ar now up here:
http://www.reverbnation.com/#!/wallowsound

"At the Seams" I am singing & it was done by mastering separately
"switcblade punk" and "wake" were done on the bus.  I like the overall sound of at the seams better but I go tired of fighting the other 2 songs.  I will post them in songs too.

I mentioned that I used the same "cookie cutter"  customized preset to start. That is also for a purpose beyond hearing the "final mix sound" . 

By using the same starting point every time, the sonic quality of the song will sound like the next song and the song before it.  Even if they are recorded months apart. 

In the first days of working with Ozone 4..... it was daunting just looking at all the presets that were in there and knowing that each one could easily be tweaked. Kinda like the kid in the candy store.  But as I worked on songs and used different preset starting points, I noticed the different overall sound of the songs was strikingly different. They sounded good, but when played back to back it was like 2 different studio sounds. 

To get a certain cohesiveness to my sound I eventually decided that the easiest way to accomplish that was to use the same starting point for them all. I went back and edited the preset in the other songs and waaa laaa, they now sounded like they were recorded in the same studio, just by using that same preset as the start point.