Recording 101/7 - Mastering... sorcery for home use

May 24, 2010 by Neps

Mastering... An evil word, that as of late hasn't been covered in glory. From the debut album of Arctic Monkeys to Metallica's latest release, people have been divided about the loudness war taking place. And within the industry engineers have been shouting for the heads of the people who push music even louder. Mastering has always been the mystical area where good mixes get polished and made great. And that is how it's supposed to be. But what is meant by polishing..?

Well.. The mastering process is where an engineer is situated in a acoustically well designed room, with the best monitoring system and surrounded with the best EQ's and compressors known to man.
The reason for these extremes is that the job of the man behind THAT desk is to get take the final stereo mix, and get the EQ of the track in order, make the dynamics more radio and hi-fi friendly and make it sound 'polished' (for the lack of a better term). But as of late people at home are trying this, and still ask the question 'why wont my mixes be as loud..?'
To know the answer just go onto the websites of some of the major mastering engineers in the world, and have a look at their rates!! And even then, the A&R guys from record companies will try to get the mix sounding louder.. Idiots in my honest opinion. 

But, what can you do at home, to give your mixes a better 'sound?' Well there are a few things you can look at. The following is my way of mixing, and yes, it's not the same as the next guys, and I'm open to criticism for my way. 

It all starts at the mixing stage. I mix to a certain reference level. My meters wont ever actually go over -8 dB's. I try and mix within that level to give the guy who is going to master a lot more headroom to do his/her magic. What most guys do, and what I really dont like doing is putting a compressor/limiter onto the Master output. What happens is that, yeah sure, your mixes sound louder, but you end up not allowing any headroom in your mix, and most of the time it gets congested. If you can get a good balance by EQ'ing and applying the correct compression to individual instruments, the battle is almost won. And yes, your mix will sound softer after you played it out to a 2 track mix, but this is where you want to be. Because now at home you can try a few things. First of all, is to take that stereo mix and play it back on as many systems as you possibly can. Don't worry if you have to turn up the volume knob, this is just for you to hear the bass and mid range, and to get a good idea of how the mix is sounding.

Next up, if you have programs like Wavelab or Bias PEAK, you can actually master in there. If not, your current DAW (like Sonor or Cubase, etc.) will also do the job. Cause now you are able to get the level of you mix up, EQ the completed track and apply the right amount of compression to your mix. Remember though, there are 2 things that can happen with mixes mastered at home. You can be either bass HEAVY or bass LIGHT. Most of the times however one tends to get a bass heavy mix due to room acoustics that hamper your judgement in the mixing process. The reason I said that you should work from a stereo track is that it gets you focused on the job at hand. If you tried to apply the compression and EQ during the mixing process, you tend to change settings in certain parts, but then that ALSO affects the mix earlier and later on on your timeline. When working with the stereo mix, you actually now can focus on getting the WHOLE finished mix to sound good.

And if need be, you can always go remix a piece to sit better in the bigger context of things.

There are a few things to remember about compressing your mixes.
1. Normal compressors work on the principle that the loudest sound will trigger the comp.. and in most cases that will be the bass side of things (heavy guits, bass and kick drums)
2. At the mastering stage slight compression is mostly used, Ratios of 1.5:1 with a gain reduction of about -4 dB's. This is just to get 'control' of the track.
3. EQ's before the comp will affect the compressor. Mostly comps are placed before the EQ, but in certain situations EQ's before can help you get control of the compressor.
4. If you have access to a MultiBand compressor, play around with it. It offers a lot more control, and you might be pleasantly surprised with the results.

One thing to keep in mind though.. Keep your highest output below -1dB!! Yes, it is elementary, but the amount of times I've received mixes which clip is astonishing, and Digital 0 is 0, not like analog where you can go over 0..

As I know run away, and try and evade the tomatoes thrown at me due to my ranting remember 'When in doubt, play it louder!'