rtucker55
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.

A lot of people say they like all kinds of music, but I really do...well, aside from Finnish Death Metal Whaling Songs in 6/8. Although maybe I just haven't found the best examples of the genre.
 
Anyway I don't get much call to master smooth modern jazz. I can't remember if I did anything particularly notable, although of course if I had, I couldn't post anything without the permission of the artist anyway.
 
Tell you what...if you work in that genre, I'll do a "mastering with a small 'm'" on it as long as you give me permission to post the before and after. Just bear in mind it could take weeks to get to it, given my workload. If that's okay, PM me with a hightail.com download link or whatever. 

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

Bump....

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?