Tracks You Don't Want Mastered ...

In his book, "Mastering Audio", IIRC, the author (Bob Katz) stated something like "a good mix doesn't need mastering".  I (think I) agree to the point that many tracks are damaged by further processing ... but would like your vital ideas (great or small); as my ideas vacillate greatly by yours.
 
Some distortions may be hiss, white noise, crackle, harmonic distortion, and other/or ear-damaging noises.
 
I've postulated that the following tracks may distort a song if mastering fx's are *heartily* applied (like those modules in Ozone or Waves LL Maximizers:
 
-- Reverb busses
-- Ambience busses
-- Delay busses
-- PreCompression busses (busses that add 'upward compression')
-- MP3 tracks and hyper-compressed samples by others.
-- Producer loops and beatz (like those in beatscape)
-- Ultra compressed low-end tracks (synth bass-lines and kick)
-- tape/tube 'Saturated' tracks per se.
 
These are some of the tracks that I've deliberately steared 'around' the mastering buss to "Final Buss" (for printing).  Most of my tracks that make it to the mastering buss are basically vocs and instruments, fwiw at this time.
 
Note: This is yet another reason I'd prefer not to let another (mastering house or friend) directly master my complex mixes.  Mastering has become its own seperate buss.

The perfect mix should sound better unmastered. Mastering a perfect mix should ONLY involve raising the levels - ie compressing. Thus, degrading quality. When you are talking about masting an ALBUM though, things change a little. Individually, the mixes may be perfect, but together, maybe not. Mastering may be required to ensure they all sound like they are from the same album and that the music flows from one song to the next.

I think of mastering as primarily in terms of an album. Almost everything else should be done in the mix, and can be done better in the mix, with the right knowledge and gear (the crux). But masting an album is all about eq and volumes, I feel. Dynamics in mastering and album are SOOO important, as are balanced frequency spectrums.

I think mastering should typically be a simple process. It should really only get complicated if the mix is terrible and a chance of a remix or a better mix is not possible.

Just the thoughts of an untrained dude... FYI, I have the book and have read. Great book.

Thanks for chiming and validating Matt and Hook.  I highly value your thoughts.

Master buss, mastering on the final buss, and final buss ... they're all interchangeable for me ... not real misnomers.  Most 'mixes' I hear, pro and amateur, are distorted to my ears, some in a smearing sweet way, with tube harmonics and volume maximization.  But even in commercial mixes, I hear different 'colorations' on different instruments and vocs with unusual differences ... then the loudness race and harmonic exciters jumble and distort what could have been a sweet mix.

Its so smeared and crackly to my crony ears!

For me, its great to have a friend 'help' master (crit) a mix, but for art's and ear's sakes, I'm increasingly leery of mastering being referred to as a separate process.  (I do agree with normalization as a last step)

Hi Philip, it's me again! :)

Well, here's my take for what it's worth. Having been a Bob Katz fan for a long time, the more I read his books, the less I agree with him on certain things. In my opinion, every song should be mastered. The reason being, there are things in the mix realm that we can totally miss that need to be corrected.

9 times out of 10, we're going to have to remove sub lows and top highs in a master for clarity and maybe some low mids or even mid mids if we mixed too warm or have picked up a little mid range congestion. It's rare that ANYONE gets ALL OF THIS right in a mix to where it doesn't need any mastering polish. It's nice to use a mild compressor or a slight limiter just to keep things tight no matter what style of music. Keep in mind, for the stuff you do, anything remotely close to the loudness war stuff would not be in the best interest of your material. You simply don't need that type of finalization in your stuff.

The key is to believe in the mastering engineer you choose or you don't go with him. Not to toot my own horn here, but one of the things I'm happy about with my mastering services is what I help you do before we even get to the mastering stage. This way, it's nearly foolproof. You know how I've critiqued your stuff in the past? That's how I'd do it if I was your ME...but I'd go even more in depth and we'd fix all issues before we mastered things. This way, when we go to master, we both have that happy medium and the master will NOT come back to you sounding like something you didn't mix. And, we take care of all offending issues first. From there, the mastering will be subtle yet effective and there's no way you'd be unhappy with it unless of course there were things I did that weren't to your liking...which we could change easy enough.

But most of the problems in the mastering realm are, the guys doing it include too much of themselves within a master. The key is to preserve the mix that was sent to you while removing problem areas, removing clicks and pops, removing sub lows, curbing mids, removing harsh highs and replacing them with good highs, tightening the mix with a light compressor or limiter if need be...a little multiband limiting to keep the thrusts of certain frequencies in check...some volume automation, DC offset removal...all this stuff is important in my opinion no matter how great a mix may sound. There is just no way that someone will present something that has all that stuff already taken care of. This is why it's good to invest in that second set of ears that knows what they are talking about. But it can't be any set of ears.

You have a vision as the artist/engineer/producer. It needs to be seen/heard and remain on track. However, you can get so close to things, it's way too easy to miss the obvious. When I give my advice to my clients, none of them have to use what I say. I never make a mention of things because I want to get my name on something or give them my take. I say what I say because it's what I hear and what *I* feel will make a difference in the project. If I didn't say a word and just took projects on without voicing an opinion, I'd be like every other guy out there taking people's hard earned cash and not making an incredible difference. When you work with me, WE work as a team...and if I can't make a difference in your project, I will not take it on. Thank God I'm in a position to where I can turn work down that I know in my heart will not be improved on. There are certain projects that just need more of a mixing touch than a mastering touch. It would be all too easy for me to take on these projects, polish the turd and take the money. I have to sleep at night and am in this also because I truly love music and want to make a difference. If I don't work hard and get the best out of the mix before we master it, I just turned into one of those guys that just says "yes, nice job, I'll have it done for you tomorrow" and I just couldn't live with that. So if you ever decide to have something mastered, make sure you keep me in mind or go with someone like me. You'll not only learn a boatload of stuff, you'll definitely get the best master money can buy that will make a difference over what you'll be capable of doing on your own. :)

I agree with most of the comments so far.  In an ideal world, a perfect mix wouldn't have to be mastered.  But it sounds like you're mastering a single track.  I expect that to be a rarity. 

The perfect mix may be sandwiched between two non-perfect tracks or even two other perfect mixes that differ from the first track.  The real job of mastering is to get the sound of the entire CD to be consistent so that the listeners doesn't have to adjust anything while they're listening to the CD.  You could even have two or three "perfect mixes" but if their levels or eq aren't reasonably close, the mastering engineer with make the adjustment.  A lot of the other stuff is just mechanical, putting the tracks in the right order for the CD and making sure that the tracks have proper silence and fades between them.

For better or for worse--and usually for the better, the EM is the last guy to touch the music.  A lot of the time he does have to fix an imperfect mix.  If he misses something, it will be on hundreds--if not thousands of CDs.  That's why you want to have a ME that you can trust. 

I've had a few tracks that I felt no need to touch or push. Depended though on how focused and dialed in on the sound I was after. I would say I can acheive that now more consistantly than I could in the past. If I spend the time and really focus on sculpting the sound I'm after before I actually start recording, everything becomes a lot simpler... plus I'm not laying 48 tracks. I only like compression on drums, vox and maybe bass if I think it needs it. I never compress guitar tracks, synths or piano tracks. I love rich harmonics and dynamics and compression can destroy that easily if you're not careful. I have never used compression on the entire mix as a whole. That's my own personal preference though.

Well, I guess I should edit my own musings. I have in the past used compression on the entire mix but I no longer do it. I just don't care for it unless it's real subtle.

OK Danny, thanks for elaborating for my conscience; your "novels" are exceeding precious (all of us know) and I/we are thoroughly blessed to have such ruthless heart-on-your-sleave honesty on every minute-but-vital level.

A man (person) lives and dies by words, despite the fact that most presidents don't appease my conscience (since Jimmy Carter, ha ha!)

An emotive artist does not want to be non-Pop as he reaches intermediate levels of emotion, IMHO.  His/her gift is for the world that he/she loves and strives to communicate with.

I'm approaching the intermediate levels of song-expression where most artists quit or have *better stuff to worry about*.  This is why I've worked with so many collab partners these last 3 years (about 20 artists). 

It appears I'm hopelessly stuck with composing and producing (and a lot of instrument hacking and outlandish singing (myself and others)).

So, I will have pm'd you (today) to see what we can do to polish this that and/or the other ... if you feel its do-able.

At any rate, please ramble and stick with us regardless, as everyone thoroughly weighs all your thoughts and words in this sensitive area of life.

Good post, Danny. I agree whole heartedly. Sometimes we can get trapped into trying to go too far too fast. I have HD's littered with projects that testify to that. The inevitable loop for me was to be ecstatic and then depressed. I flushed all that crap in the last year. I do nothing but chase beauty now with full knowlege it can't be held onto. It needs to be let go. And I don't try to get too complicated anymore because I can't, and I no longer care to. I go for ultimate simplicity and beauty played to it's fullest potential... and the only thing I care about is if it moves me. If it does, it's all good and destined to be a keeper... it all starts to fall into place when you get out of your own way.

rob.pulman


It was explained to me that you can't really master a song on it's own. That's because the definition of mastering is

'Mastering, a form of audio post-production, is the process of preparing and transferring recorded audio from a source containing the final mix to a data storage device (the master)'

So really speaking something can only be mastered, in relation to other songs on an album. If you do a stereo mix and export it, then import it to another project to add Ozone for example, then it's still mixing. However if you've imported other songs into the same project, altered the levels, and then use Ozone (for example), that would be mastering.

That's my understanding anyway, people probably got different views on it.

I don't quite understand, Rob. The only difference I see in your example is a group of songs as opposed to one song. What's the difference in using a program or in this case, Ozone for 1 song or 10 songs? You're still altering the original mix for one song the way you'd be doing it for 10 songs....altering levels, removing artifacts etc. With all due respect, I feel your understanding of it may be a bit incorrect. I'd also ask....do you really know what goes on in the mastering process? It goes way beyond what you do in Ozone. When I master something for someone, it doesn't matter how many songs go through my 1 hour process of mastering. The material IS being mastered. The difference with several songs is....there isn't a difference other than making sure the levels of the songs compliment one another and the album on the whole sounds like all the songs belong on that album. That's the only difference between doing one song and 10 songs. When a mastering engineer does an entire album, the first song he does creates the actual sound of the album. That same template is applied on all the other songs with little tweaks here and there to compliment the song. You can't just run that same template as is for an entire album....each song needs it's own personal touch and to me, it's 100% mastering and not mixing at all.
 
In actuality, as soon as you bring a 2-track stereo mix into a DAW to be manipulated, that is mastering whether it be one song or 10 songs. When you listen to a song on your stereo in your car and mess with the eq, you are literally post mastering that material. You're not dealing with individual instruments, which would be mixing...you're mastering because everything you do at this point, affects the entire song.
 
As far as your definition of "mastering" that's partially correct. It seems to be a bit of an old definition though, especially the back half. If we were using tape or something and then going to DAT or a 2 inch reel down to a 1/4 reel, then the whole "data storage" thing is credible. In todays times, we DO use data storage, but not in the way that definition explains it. Just about everyone works with wave files and there is no data storage device other than a hard drive...meaning, now it's all in one. You mix in your DAW, you export a mix wave out of your DAW, you bring that same wave into another DAW or the one you exported out of, you make alterations and you save it as "name of song master.wav".
 
I'm not saying your definition is wrong, it's just not worded right for today's times totally. There is no mandatory "storage device" needed other than if you decide to back up the master you have created to a flash drive, external hard drive, DVD or CDR. In the old days we went from 1 inch or 2 inch, down to 1/4 inch and then you sent that 1/4 to be made into vinyl. Then we did away with most of the 1/4 inch machines and sent our reel to reel mixes to a DAT master which was sent out to be made into CD's. This is what they are referring to as far as "data storage". When I master something for a client, I use 2 forms of back-up to be safe. However, the original stuff I create is what gets used and it's all on one hard drive in wave format. I'm not taking the source from somewhere else and bringing it into a new format....that's also what your data storage reference is talking about.
 
I asked you above if you really knew what goes on in mastering. You don't have to answer that question, but I'll tell you what it is from my end and I'll explain the process I use. The first thing I do when something comes to me is I listen to the material on a good set of monitors and take notes. From there the material is brought into a DAW where I do an "editing session listen" using headphones. I remove hiss, pops, clicks, artifacts, 60 cycle hums, DC offsets etc. From there I manually automate the level of the mix so that it has dynamics in the right spots. When this is complete, I save this as a pre-master file. I then bring it into another editor where the actual mastering procedure takes place where several tools may be used. Graphic eq, parametric eq, compression, multi-band limiting, limiting, spacial enhancement, sometimes subtle reverb etc. When that is complete, the material is dithered and the sample rate is converted if need be. DC offsets are checked once more in the event they have risen slightly, fade ins and outs are applied (you don't want to do this before you compress or limit because it can cause those tools to over-react) and another listen through my main monitors and one more listen through head phones tells me how I did.
 
The exact procedure happens whether I'm working with one song or ten songs. The difference for me using 10 songs would be, if the client is happy with how this first song turned out, I create a template of the exact stuff I used to make the song sound that way and will import the others one by one into this template. From there each song will be tweaked so that the song works with the template. One song may need a bit more bass than another...one may need more high end, less mids...you work it until it sounds like the song that was OK'd by the client. When all songs are done, you bring them into a suite where they become an album. You check for consistency and may have to create an "album curve" now that everything will be treated as an entity. You could also start this way and bring all songs in and automate your processors using your original template, but I prefer to work with each song one at a time and then bring them into the suite for the final adjustments. It's a bit more work but I've had better success with it.
 
As you can see, the procedure remains the same no matter how many or how little amount of songs. The only difference is one will have a suite of songs, the other will not...but it is exactly the same. There are other ME's that have a different approach to doing this than I do. But they will do a lot of the same things and it will not make a difference on how many songs they are working with. You have to do the same mastering procedure no matter what....and it IS mastering, we're not mixing here. There are elements of mixing, but because this is the finalizing procedure, it is the Master of the final stage of the game before it gets touched by the duplication house. :) So if *I* was responsible for a newer definition of the word "Mastering" I would explain it like this.
 
"Mastering": The art of editing, finalizing and post processing a finished 2-track stereo mix while maintaining dynamics and consistency. It is the final stage before duplication to where the Mastering Engineer is repsonsible for any last minute edits, enhancements and will be the last person to manipulate the audio. Additional tasks within mastering are PQ sheets, ISRC codes and UPC/EAN codes.
 
"Mastering 2000 to present": The art of using a brick wall limiter to the extreme to where the material looks and sounds like a square box of muck. The material will have 0 dynamics and will be so loud that a level of 1 on your volume knob will be equal to 8. You will hear pumping, breathing, artifacts, clipping and incredibly bad audio. These engineers pride themselves on being "volume warriors" and are well paid in the skill of doing absolutely nothing for music today besides ruining it.
 
:)
 
-Danny

Howdy, Rob. I'd be willing to bet the engineer you talked to didn't mean what you thought he did. He was more than likely refering to the master bus processing prior to export as not being mastered. To him that would be the final step in the mixing stage prior to export and mastering. But as a few have pointed out, some people do in fact prefer to master within the same project, then export and be done with it.

Thanks Danny. I'm the first to admit that I may have taken this guy's comments the wrong way - he was taking an introduction lecture at a local college, and to say I was already swamped with information on the whole mixing/mastering process, is an understatement. Live and learn as they say.