kennywtelejazz
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RE: mastering tips
2006/03/30 18:12:36
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ORIGINAL: ohhey
ORIGINAL: kennywtelejazz
I agree biggestmuff this thread deserved to be bumped. Awesome info
Holy **** yep your posts are better than buying magazines . I would buy a book of your knowledge if one is available .
Copy a paste works great off this forum ! I save a bunch of stuff. Start a collection and you can develop your own customized book, that's what I do. I try to organize it by headings but I can also just search the document and print off what I want to study. Books often cover a bunch of stuff you already know or try to entertain the reader and fill up a bunch of pages. By saving tips I find on the various forms I go to I get just the stuff I need.
One good way to learn is to pretend you have to explain the concept to a total nub and re-write the information in your own words. If you can't explain it you need to go back and study some more or ask questions on the forum. By the time you finish your document you will never forget the material.
I hear you loud and clear on that. Started saving a few posts in notepad and your sugestion of making a custom book is right on. I think it's time for me to get serious about organizing them into some kind of topics. The wealth of knowledge around here is truly awesome. I feel like the newb and I'm OK with it . I'm here to learn from you guys. BTW ( a little off topic ) did you ever live in Westcheser County in NY State ? I met a guy in the 70's with your same name and he was a truly great guitar player.
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yep
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RE: mastering tips
2006/03/30 19:07:52
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ORIGINAL: ohhey
...One good way to learn is to pretend you have to explain the concept to a total nub and re-write the information in your own words. If you can't explain it you need to go back and study some more or ask questions on the forum. By the time you finish your document you will never forget the material.
What's amazing to me is not just how much I learn from the information other people post, but how much I learn by actually answering questions that I never really thought about that way before. Stuff that I just kind of did and understood on autopilot, without questioning, and just learned sort of intuitively, from trial-and-error. Having to explain it to someone else forces me to sort of think it through and put my ideas in order, and to give it more pointed consideration than I ever did. It's like learning it all over again for the first time. I suddenly start to think about WHY I'm doing things a certain way, why some approaches work better than others. It's pretty cool. Cheers.
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fejede
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RE: mastering tips
2006/04/01 22:34:30
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I've been saving yep and chaz and others for a while now...
This forum is more valuable than the software...........
Regards,
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Brett
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RE: mastering tips
2006/04/02 00:08:04
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I used Yep's suggestion of putting my mixes into one project when I had to produce a demo. I put markers at key spots and jumped between them and was amazed at the difference of the 3 songs I had only just mixed. That is the single best advice I have ever received, well maybe. I am sure professionals don't do that but for us hackers it's an excellent idea.
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kennywtelejazz
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RE: mastering tips
2006/04/02 18:28:17
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ORIGINAL: fejede
I've been saving yep and chaz and others for a while now...
This forum is more valuable than the software...........
Regards,
fejede I would have to agree with you on that . The first 6 months I had the software I was stuck in the mud . I lurked around for that time . Once I decided to ask a few questions things started to fall into place and the learning curve started to be less of a problem to me. yep, chaz , sinc , botten, daveney 5, and a host of others have been so helpfull in their posts, and information . It is a true Joy to have people like these to learn from. Thank Guys for taking the time to help and post your knowledge with us . Kenny
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Jonny M
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RE: mastering tips
2006/07/28 22:21:55
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yep, Firstly, fantastic post. Secondly (and this is where I turn stoopid...) You advise in your post at times to ignore the volume meter and concentrate on the RMS volume, or vice-versa. Can I ask, due to my current lack of knowledge (and assuming you’re only using Sonar for the whole project right up until exporting to put on CD like me), what is the difference in these two and how do I find out the RMS in Sonar? Also, does your philosophy on the limiting apply similarly if you are only going to put one song on a CD or somewhere, or is it only relevant when burning several tracks to ensure consistency?
post edited by Jonny M - 2006/07/28 22:41:37
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Jonny M
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RE: mastering tips
2006/07/30 10:03:52
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(this post was accidental, the one above wasn't though)
post edited by Jonny M - 2006/07/30 10:23:25
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jacktheexcynic
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RE: mastering tips
2006/07/30 16:20:03
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ORIGINAL: Jonny M
You advise in your post at times to ignore the volume meter and concentrate on the RMS volume, or vice-versa. Can I ask, due to my current lack of knowledge (and assuming you’re only using Sonar for the whole project right up until exporting to put on CD like me), what is the difference in these two and how do I find out the RMS in Sonar?
i'll give your first question a shot (the second i'll let yep handle if he so chooses). when you look at a volume meter you are looking for peaks, although the only one that counts in the digital realm is the soundcard's output volume. you do not want digital overs at the hardware level as the sound essentially gets its head chopped off. inside sonar you've got tons of headroom (although i've hit it once or twice putting too many loud tracks on a single bus). you can think of RMS as a very slow meter - instead of showing you every peak and valley it takes the average over a certain amount of time. what most people look for here is the average volume of the mix. this can tell you (particularly if the RMS meter is spiking around too much) whether there are too many peaks in the mix which are robbing you of headroom in the great arms race that is modern cd mastering (as loud as possible). a lot of labels are going for -6dB RMS, which basically means the average volume of the track (not the peaks!) is 6dB under the limit. so (unless i misunderstand) there would be at most 12dB between the lowest valleys and the highest peaks in the song. that's why many modern albums sound squashed even on primitive speakers. audioslave's audioslave is a great example - i love that album but it's flatter than kansas. from what i understand saner folk tend to go for -14-10dB RMS, depending on the content.
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holderofthehorns
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RE: mastering tips
2006/07/30 19:40:48
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Eric Anderson HolderOfTheHorns - It's a Viking thing.
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yep
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RE: mastering tips
2006/07/31 11:43:32
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ORIGINAL: Jonny M
yep,
Firstly, fantastic post. Secondly (and this is where I turn stoopid...)
You advise in your post at times to ignore the volume meter and concentrate on the RMS volume, or vice-versa. Can I ask, due to my current lack of knowledge (and assuming you’re only using Sonar for the whole project right up until exporting to put on CD like me), what is the difference in these two and how do I find out the RMS in Sonar?
thanks for the kind words. jacktheexcynic basically answered the first part. To recap: "Peak" metering simply measures the loudest instantaneous level of any sample, including sharp transients that are too fast to even hear. This metering is most useful to prevent digital overs. "RMS" metering measures average level, and is a good indicator of how "loud" something sounds. F'rinstance: you hit a drum head, there is a sharp transient peak from the impact of the stick on the head, plus the longer "note" sounded by the vibrating column of air inside the drum, plus the resonance of the drum shell and sympathetic vibrations of the heads, plus reverberant sound that continues bouncing around the room, and so on. These different elements and their ratios are constantly changing as the sound decays to silence and a peak meter that measured changes in level instantaneously would not give us very much useful information about how "loud" the drum actually sounds to a listener. In Sonar, you can click on the metering drop-down box to pick a variety of metering options, either peak, RMS, or peak+RMS. You basically use peak to check for digital overs, and RMS to get a feel for how "loud" your record is going to sound compared with full-scale. Each matters in relation to the other in different ways dependign on what you are looking to achieve. In most popular music recordings, the engineers use a variety of techniques to increase the percieved "loudness" of the record, ideally without killing the musical dynamics. Where to draw the line between "unneccesarily quiet" and "compressed to death" is a matter of taste, approach, and circumstances. The people who do it best have a very sophisticated understanding of a variety of complex requirements and capabilities, and can often squeeze quite a bit of level out of a record in very transparent ways, or even ways that can seem to INCREASE the dynamic impact, through a variety of sonic "optical illusions."
Also, does your philosophy on the limiting apply similarly if you are only going to put one song on a CD or somewhere, or is it only relevant when burning several tracks to ensure consistency?
My "mastering advice," is, as I said above, not really mastering advice at all, and certainly nothing so grandiose as a philosophy. It's really just a checklist of stopgap measures that are fairly harmless if you follow the steps closely, and that may help some recordings sound a little more "mastered" (whatever that means). I meant it as an alternative to blindly applying hard limiters and BBE for the benefit of people who are hell-bent on not leaving well enough alone. With that in mind, you could certainly use the same method to do a one-off single, just using other music that your audience will likely be listening to as a comparison in place of other album tracks. Just make sure to lower the commercial recordings from the get-go so that they are similar in RMS level to your mix, so that you're comparing apples and apples. Cheers.
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Jesse G
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RE: mastering tips
2006/08/01 19:20:39
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These are some awesome tips  Peace 
Peace,Jesse G. A fisher of men <>< ==============================Cakewalk and I are going places together!
Cakewalk By Bandlab, Windows 10 Pro- 64 bit, Gigabyte GA-Z97X-SLI, Intel Core i5-4460 Haswell Processor, Crucial Ballistix 32 GB Ram, PNY GeForce GTX 750, Roland Octa-Capture, Mackie Big Knob, Mackie Universal Controller (MCU), KRK V4's, KRK Rockit 6, Korg TR-61 Workstation, M-Audio Code 49 MIDI keyboard controller.[/
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Thomas Campitelli
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RE: mastering tips
2006/08/02 21:32:35
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I never knew about the peak/RMS meters. I had to dig around a bit in order to find them. I kept right-clicking on my meters looking for a pulldown menu, until I realized I needed to look northward. This thread, by the way, is excellent.
I have a question regarding mixing levels. How lound should my mix peaks and RMS levels be when I hand the songs off to a mastering engineer? Right now my peaks are at -5.5 dB and my RMS levels hang out around 24 to 22 dB. Is that too quiet? I don't want to encounter problems with noise when the levels get boosted. My projects are 16-bit/44.1kHz. Many thanks.
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jacktheexcynic
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RE: mastering tips
2006/08/02 22:08:19
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ORIGINAL: Thomas Campitelli
I have a question regarding mixing levels. How lound should my mix peaks and RMS levels be when I hand the songs off to a mastering engineer? Right now my peaks are at -5.5 dB and my RMS levels hang out around 24 to 22 dB. Is that too quiet? I don't want to encounter problems with noise when the levels get boosted. My projects are 16-bit/44.1kHz. Many thanks.
sometimes the mastering engineer will give you limits on what they will take (peaks no more than -4db, RMS no more than -14db, etc.). what you have sounds ok - it really depends on the type of song. you may want to work on your rms (while keeping your peaks where they are at) if the song is in a heavier genre, maybe shoot for -20db RMS with your peaks still at -5db or whatever. there's no magic number really but you need to give the mastering engineer some room to work. naturally it's best to get the best mix possible before sending it off to the mastering guy. what i would do is slap a compressor on the main bus and try to get the level of your mix up (by turning up bus volume). the compressor will alert you to problems you may be having (typically low frequencies robbing you of headroom) when you hear the kick or bass guitar (or electric guitars!) "ducking" the mix. once those issues are fixed turn up the busses some more. then you might hear the mix start sounding "boxy" or hollow. this may indicate trouble with resonant frequencies in your instruments which you also can fix. turning up the mix again you might start to hear problems in the high end... and so on. the basic idea is to listen to what happens when you turn up the mix. does anything get boomy or clangy or boxy or shrill? does the compressor seriously affect the overal tone of the mix, or cause noticeable squashing? these observations should then lead you to individual tracks which may need help. they may need eq, or compression, or reverb/delay to be set back further in the mix, or whatever. when you've got a nice hot signal that sounds good, take away the compressor. the mix should sound more or less the same, only louder (since the peaks aren't being limited anymore). turn down the busses until you're back to -5db or whatever at your peaks. your RMS should be higher now but you don't want to compress the final product, that would be the mastering engineer's job. having said that, don't waste your money until you actually want to sell something. if your target format is an mp3 on soundclick and you don't suck at mixing you can get far enough on your own. most of the time, the song and talent speak for themselves. when it's cd time have it done by a professional.
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yep
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RE: mastering tips
2006/08/03 10:27:05
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ORIGINAL: Thomas Campitelli
...I have a question regarding mixing levels. How lound should my mix peaks and RMS levels be when I hand the songs off to a mastering engineer? Right now my peaks are at -5.5 dB and my RMS levels hang out around 24 to 22 dB. Is that too quiet? I don't want to encounter problems with noise when the levels get boosted. My projects are 16-bit/44.1kHz. Many thanks.
Those levels are awful quiet if you're working at 16bit. My advice is to record and mix at 24 bit and then let the mastering engineer worry about the levels. If you're stuck working at 16 bit because of hardware or other limitations, then you want to try and keep your levels as close to full scale as is reasonable throughout the process. This usually means applying some peak limiting and/or compression at the tracking stage, as people did for decades with tape to keep their levels above the noise floor. Digital has no inherent noise, and with 24 bit digital there is practically no need to worry about levels at all. Even if you record with your peaks coming in at like -50dB, you're still getting CD-quality resolution. With 16-bit, on the other hand, -50dB sounds actually have only 8 bits of resolution (since 8 bits are taken up by silence). If you were to record a whole project this way and then limit and normalize it up to full scale, the resulting sound quality would be noticably inferior. Cheers.
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Thomas Campitelli
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RE: mastering tips
2006/08/04 21:38:31
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Those levels are awful quiet if you're working at 16bit. My advice is to record and mix at 24 bit and then let the mastering engineer worry about the levels. Yeah, these songs were started some time ago and 24-bit wasn't an option. When I do my next album I'm going to go for 24-bit. I haven't decided on the sampling rate issue yet, nor do I want to derail this thread with talk about that issue. My problem is this, mastering engineers tend to want some room to play and ask that nothing comes in above -3dB. That's cool. However, thanks to this board, I recently discovered how to monitor the RMS levels in Sonar. My RMS levels are low, even though my peak faders dance around between -3 and -6. I'm not sure how big a problem it is. I can easily push everything into massive digital clipping territory because I recorded all the instruments at good volumes. As I mix, I am trying to be mindful of the keeping things a bit quieter, but I don't want to make my mixes too soft. I am definitely not going to put a compressor on my master bus, although I have compressors on a lot of individual tracks. I'll keep working and see where I get.
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yep
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RE: mastering tips
2006/08/05 11:40:54
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If you're sending it to be mastered, leave setting the final levels and peak to average ratios for the mastering engineer.
Cheers.
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jacktheexcynic
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RE: mastering tips
2006/08/05 13:48:50
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ORIGINAL: Thomas Campitelli
I am definitely not going to put a compressor on my master bus, although I have compressors on a lot of individual tracks. I'll keep working and see where I get.
that's good. as yep said, you want to leave the final output stuff to the mastering engineer. however you want the mix you send to the mastering engineer to be "mastering friendly", so the mix better sound good on it's own without a compressor/multi-band on the final track. that means you've still got to watch the RMS on your tracks and try to keep the dynamics balanced with good sound. the main things to watch for per-track are the fundamental and resonant frequencies of the instrument, and across the mix watch for buildup at any frequency (lows are most common but high-end buildup isn't uncommon).
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...wicked
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RE: mastering tips
2006/08/08 12:58:56
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I've actually printed out Yep's original post and have it taped in my studio notebook for reference. I had lost this thread until someone pointed out to me it was in "techniques" and not "Sonar", thanks!!!
=========== The Fog People =========== Intel i7-4790 16GB RAM ASUS Z97 Roland OctaCapture Win10/64 SONAR Platinum 64-bit billions VSTs, some of which work
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airwreck
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RE: mastering tips
2006/08/20 00:20:08
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Digital clipping sounds awful, and there is no way to fix it once it's there. WITHIN a program like Sonar, which uses 32-bit floating point audio calculations, it is almost impossible to achieve digital clipping, and you can safely run individual tracks pretty far "in the red." BUT, if your main outs (or whatever the output channel is to your soundcard) goes above 0dB, you're up the creek without a paddle. So individual tracks can show up in the red, but your main outs have to be "green" or you'll have digital overs in the output. excuse the noob questions here, but i'm a little confused. ok, i have my meters set to "rms". i have occasional "in the red" spikes on the tracks. but what you are saying is... on my "master out" on the console view, i should have it to where there is no "in the red" at all?? thanks!!
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jacktheexcynic
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RE: mastering tips
2006/08/20 14:45:18
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ORIGINAL: airwreck
excuse the noob questions here, but i'm a little confused. ok, i have my meters set to "rms". i have occasional "in the red" spikes on the tracks. but what you are saying is...
on my "master out" on the console view, i should have it to where there is no "in the red" at all??
thanks!!
i always look at the soundcard's output bus (usually the last in the list and typically has the name of your souncard in it). this will tell you when you are likely to get digital overs. the "master" bus naturally should be the same as the soundcard output but this is not necessarily the case - you can route all your tracks or busses directly to your soundcard and skip the busses altogether (this is the default "new track" behavior). so like i said i watch the soundcard output as it can tell me if i've misrouted a track or bus. finally, you should probably set your soundcard meters to RMS+Peak. RMS is used for judging apparent loudness, how loud the track will sound (and was explained in detail somewhere around here...). peak on the other hand is the actual amount of signal that is passing through at any given instant. you may not get audible digital clipping in the red - it depends on a lot of things, but it's there. unlike analog clipping, the waveforms are chopped flat at the top and any modern sound system will faithfully reproduce them as very irritating clicks (or extremely harsh static if it's really bad) which are impossible to remove from the track.
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jacktheexcynic
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RE: mastering tips
2006/08/20 20:49:09
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i found something i thought was appropriate for this thread: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war. it's a good read for anybody who doesn't already know the backstory and specifically deals with the issue of digital overs and how mastering engineers have the 'golden standard' of not quite enough digital distortion to be annoying to the average listener. at the end of the article is a list of albums which many feel have gone beyond that standard. my ever-present example for this subject, audioslave's "audioslave" album, was on the list as well as the red hot chili pepper's "californication", foo fighter's "one by one", queens of the stone age's "songs for the deaf" ( ) and kelly clarkson's "breakaway." i feel much better now comparing my mix volume to "cochise" and "light my way"... =)
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Jamz0r
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RE: mastering tips
2006/08/20 21:34:36
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Sorry to get OT here, but...  Yep, What's with the Sox?!  Francona sure knows how to mismanage series' against NY, eh? I'm waiting for the rain to stop, wondering if Schill will still be out there...and able to pitch.  Go Sox!
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Jamz0r
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RE: mastering tips
2006/08/21 01:54:04
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Brett
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RE: mastering tips
2006/08/21 04:38:02
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Hey Jack that was an interesting read. I've got Audioslaves album and never realised what was wrong with it. Haven't listened to Californication for a while, I'll dig that up.
I don't listen to much western music, but Japanese pop is shocking for over compression. The engineers are very good, I don't notice much in the way of distortion but the music sure is fatiguing as they ring every last db out of the music. One of my favourite albums is by Yuki, previously of Judy and Mary who were known internationally; but this album is so "thin" that it's really disappointing. Great songs that have a great airy gloss to them but no substance. You can hear the arrangements but the mixing/mastering just pulls all the punch out of the music.
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jacktheexcynic
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RE: mastering tips
2006/08/21 21:14:55
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ORIGINAL: Brett
You can hear the arrangements but the mixing/mastering just pulls all the punch out of the music.
i think the over-compression destroys whatever subtlety the artist originally puts into the song, although from what i've read it's mainly the artists wanting the record "louder" and not so much the labels pushing it (although i think that's part of it as well). to me it's become more like a t.v. commerical business - the loudest, crudest one wins.
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airwreck
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RE: mastering tips
2006/08/21 21:27:20
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thanks for the response, but i'm still a bit confused with all the terms and the correct use of these meters.
i don't use busses (haven't gone there yet) all my tracks are routed to master and master to firewire mixer.
now when i check the master meter in console view... is it all right to have the input set to where there are a few jumps in the red?
gracias!
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jacktheexcynic
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RE: mastering tips
2006/08/22 18:33:04
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ORIGINAL: airwreck
thanks for the response, but i'm still a bit confused with all the terms and the correct use of these meters.
i don't use busses (haven't gone there yet) all my tracks are routed to master and master to firewire mixer.
now when i check the master meter in console view... is it all right to have the input set to where there are a few jumps in the red?
gracias!
technically you don't want your peak meters hitting red, and you especially want your RMS to stay out of the red. the reality is that if you peak into the red that sound will get chopped off when you export to wave (or mp3, or whatever). i don't know what kind of tolerances various equipment has in regards to digital clipping, so you may be able to get away with it as many mastering engineers do. so the short answer is unless you know what you're doing, keep the master peaks out of the red.
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airwreck
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RE: mastering tips
2006/08/23 15:59:14
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ok, thanks!
what about the track meters? is it ok for them to occasionally hit in the red?
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jacktheexcynic
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RE: mastering tips
2006/08/23 18:54:43
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ORIGINAL: airwreck
what about the track meters? is it ok for them to occasionally hit in the red?
it's fine if they go into the red. sonar's audio engine is 32-bit, so it's really really hard (but possible) to get clipping on the tracks and busses except for your soundcard output bus(ses) of course. i'm not sure at what dB level clipping occurs in 32-bit land but it has to be pretty high.
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yep
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RE: mastering tips
2006/08/27 19:15:18
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To recap what jack said: ideally, your main input and output meters should never hit the "clip" light (0dB), which is slightly different from "in the red," since sonar's meters turn red at -6, if I'm not mistaken, as a kind of early warning. At the inputs and outputs, any information above 0dB will be simply chopped off (clipped) and will sound nasty.
WITHIN Sonar (or almost any other professional audio application) you can basically safely run individual tracks as far into the red as you want, although it's not necessarily the best practice. With 32 or 64 bit floating point audio, you need to be hundreds of decibels above silence to achive clipping, which is virtually impossible to achieve under any kind of real-world circumstances. The places where you have to be careful are on the incoming and outgoing audio, where you make the switch between the worlds of digital and analog.
A lot of the information out there on metering and watching levels is somewhat outdated if you record at 24-bit. As long as you stay in the realm of 24-bit digital files, the only thing you really need to know is to keep your recording levels below clipping, and make sure your final output before you burn to disc doesn't contain any clipping. There is essentially zero advantage to pushing your levels close to zero in 24-bit. If the inputs are clipping, just turn it down 6 or 12 or even 18 dB and don't sweat it (turn up your playback speakers if you want it louder).
Cheers.
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