I agree with Danny's definition of mastering by dividing it into 2 different but similar categories. The big M.... Mastering is the kind done professionally. If I was planning a CD and trying to get a record deal or some such thing.... this would be the way to go. The little m mastering is what I do..... make it sound as good as possible in my humble studio and in the box with the polishing and sweeting tools at my disposal. This works well for my purposes as I do not need a professional big M Mastering job for the tunes I write.
Yeah and it's perfectly ok to do that Herb. I just want it to be known that I'm totally not knocking anyone that does it that way. But for some people, it's not really feasible. For myself, I can see doing it for quickie projects but here's another thing to keep in mind.
Let's say I have a project up that has maybe 75 tracks going on. Now the majority of those tracks are going to be vocal harmony layers and several different drum modules hybriding at once. So there may not be physical audio there, but the track count and plug count will be there.
By the time we get done with this project, we have quite a few plugs going on as well as track counts. When we try to master it, there's a chance of a crash because now we may want to bring in 6-8 mastering plugs in the master bus bin. If any of those are UAD, we may get an out of memory error. But there is a risk of a crash and to me, none of that is worth it because sometimes a hard enough crash can even corrupt a project as we know. But I do the same as you do all the time for my little projects. It's awesome that we have the tools we have in Sonar to just light things up in PC on the master bus. My favor for little m has been 4k channel comp, pc eq and the concrete limiter. They work so well together I probably could get away with mastering using just them. LOL! :)
bapuHere's what I once gleaned from Danny.
Say my master bus (in the mix stage) is showing ~-10db. But for some reason (on a large project) something is causing a -5db spike in a certain spot and for some reason I just cant seem to isolate what it is. I can fix that spike in Wavelab. IOW, I can get more surgical on a stereo WAV file than I can in a complex project. Just my workflow now. YMMV.
Yes, I can probably put an envelope on the master bus as an alternative.
Good points Ed. The good thing about doing it in the project though...is you can usually isolate what the spike is and fix it. 9 times out of ten it's a snare drum, bass pop, vocal thrust or maybe even hats. When you have this problem, just solo up individual tracks (especially those like drums that may be virtual tracks) and run wave form preview on them. You should then be able to add things in one at a time and find out where the spike is coming from and fix it on the track. Of course that's the best way to do it before we even get to the mastering stage.
But yeah, what you said is in my opinion, the best way to take care of a full mix situation. You just have so much more control in other ways that you wouldn't if you were working inside of the project. There are definitely pros and cons to using both ways.
Another good thing I like about the stereo track mastering is, it gets you totally out of mix mode. When you get a chance to listen to the song as an entity, you listen differently than you would when it was in the project. This is how we can tell what we actually need to do in the mastering stage. If you notice you need a bit more kick drum or your bass isn't loud enough at the mastering stage, we have to ask ourselves why you didn't hear that when you were in the project?
The answer to that is you're listening differently. At the mixing stage, though you are listening to the entire song, you're still concentrating on track at a time while making sure everything is audible and where it needs to be. Once you leave the project realm and sort of accept "it is what it is" for right now, it alters your listening habits and you begin to notice things that may need to be fixed. It's simple enough to just fire up the mix and re-export if need be and only takes a few mnutes, so it's not a bad alternative. But that's really the only down-side of working out of the project as opposed to working IN it.
There are also things we can fix in programs like Wave Lab, Rx Advanced and even Adobe Audition that we can't fix in Sonar. So it's good to have those other editors for the mastering stage as they can eliminate problems without having to export individual tracks into them. Whatever way works for someone is the way they should use. But it's nice to know the pros and cons as well as the uses for both methods. :)
-Danny