Talk to me about mastering

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Talk to me about mastering

Postby Feedback » 20 Aug 2014 11:22

Short and sweet, I don't feel like I have a very good understanding of the mastering process. I'd like to fix that. So, I have two questions:

1. What is involved in it beyond using an EQ and a multipressor to balance the track? My audio production class focused on mixing over mastering, and I didn't get a chance to ask the professor much about mastering before he got canned. Is there anything additional?
2. What purpose does bouncing the song down to a single file serve? It's still the exact same sounds, what benefit does bouncing the whole thing down to a single WAV file for mastering serve? It doesn't make sense to me.

Any advice or tips or anything you guys can provide would be good too.
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Re: Talk to me about mastering

Postby CitricAcid » 20 Aug 2014 11:44

I'll take this opportunity to say what little I think I know about the subject and let others correct me as need be. Other processes involved in mastering are compressing/limiting, dither, and sample rate conversion. In reality the whole gamut of effects are available to the mastering engineer, it's just that more drastic effects are less commonly used. Usually mastering is done in the context of a whole album, and dynamic ranges, etc. are adjusted to make the tracks flow together. Then all the tracks are laid out onto the master disc which is sent off to the replicators.

In certain circumstances stems would be mastered rather than the whole track, particularly if the stems are what will actually be delivered to the client. This would be applicable in music for television I believe. Otherwise the whole file is bounced for mastering, because the mastering engineer is making final adjustments for the listener. He shouldn't be changing the mix at all.

And the general rule of thumb is if you produced or mixed the track yourself, you aren't qualified to master it yourself. You can always try, but you will be too used to hearing all the subtle elements of the track to really have an unbiased opinion of what changes need to be made to finalize the track for the listener.
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Re: Talk to me about mastering

Postby Feedback » 20 Aug 2014 17:56

Appreciate the input :grin: Question though: Isn't mastering with compressors in addition to multipressors what caused the loudness wars that made everything brickwall for a few years?
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Re: Talk to me about mastering

Postby CitricAcid » 20 Aug 2014 18:34

Feedback wrote:Appreciate the input :grin: Question though: Isn't mastering with compressors in addition to multipressors what caused the loudness wars that made everything brickwall for a few years?

If the artist or record company pays you to master an album, and they tell you they want it loud, you make it loud. That's what you have your compressors for. Your role in the loudness wars is going to be dictated by what your clients want.
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Re: Talk to me about mastering

Postby Fimbulin » 21 Aug 2014 13:51

Also, most people like having music that sounds as loud as the other music they are listening to. Usually that's another place where compressors become useful besides brickwalling everything. There are more subtle compressor options available that don't boost everything to 100% that you can raise the volume sound without boosting every timbre. Those are very useful for orchestral composers such as myself who value dynamics as super important. Most of the time, what you should do is adjust your most intense part of the track to be as loud as audio files can handle without clipping (hooray limiters!), and then leave the rest of the track mostly alone with that adjustment.

Another thing that mastering technicians do is look for bad overtones that low quality reverbs and sometimes how instruments interact with eachother can produce. Things like subtle tings and unwanted humms are removable. The reason that mastering technicians want as high quality files they can get is because those slight errors are more easily fixed if there is more room to identify them - hence the reason you never heard of a mastering technician for 8bit music.

Also, there is a cool point in being able to master your own music, but you should always send it to someone else to have a listen-over afterwards. The bias that CitricAcid mentioned depends on how objectively (or not) you listen to your own music.
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Re: Talk to me about mastering

Postby Feedback » 21 Aug 2014 16:10

CitricAcid wrote:
Feedback wrote:Appreciate the input :grin: Question though: Isn't mastering with compressors in addition to multipressors what caused the loudness wars that made everything brickwall for a few years?

If the artist or record company pays you to master an album, and they tell you they want it loud, you make it loud. That's what you have your compressors for. Your role in the loudness wars is going to be dictated by what your clients want.


Fair enough, though if I am ever paid to make a loud, brickwalled recording, I might have to opt out of the work; melodramatic as it sounds, I can't listen to a record as extremely loud and flat as some of them get nowadays on a studio monitor or decent headphones without getting a headache.

Fimbulin wrote:Also, most people like having music that sounds as loud as the other music they are listening to. Usually that's another place where compressors become useful besides brickwalling everything. There are more subtle compressor options available that don't boost everything to 100% that you can raise the volume sound without boosting every timbre. Those are very useful for orchestral composers such as myself who value dynamics as super important. Most of the time, what you should do is adjust your most intense part of the track to be as loud as audio files can handle without clipping (hooray limiters!), and then leave the rest of the track mostly alone with that adjustment.


On the subject of the bold: I assume once you set that, you use compressors and whatnot to get everything else up around the same area?

Another thing that mastering technicians do is look for bad overtones that low quality reverbs and sometimes how instruments interact with eachother can produce. Things like subtle tings and unwanted humms are removable. The reason that mastering technicians want as high quality files they can get is because those slight errors are more easily fixed if there is more room to identify them - hence the reason you never heard of a mastering technician for 8bit music.


How exactly do you remove things like that once you get into the mastering stage? At that point it seems like something that, if not eliminated in the mixing stage, is stuck there. Are there processors for it, some weird form of intentional phase cancellation, or something much more mundane and practical?

Also, there is a cool point in being able to master your own music, but you should always send it to someone else to have a listen-over afterwards. The bias that CitricAcid mentioned depends on how objectively (or not) you listen to your own music.


I usually try to spend at least a week away from a song after finishing recording/rough mixing to go over it and fine-tune the mix/rerecord any parts that need it. Usually after that I take a day from it and then do attempt to master it, or what I've interpreted mastering as to this point. I'm a broke, jobless college student, so I can't exactly afford to hire a mastering engineer unless I have a big enough fanbase that I know I'll cover the cost, which as of right now, I most definitely don't. :lol:
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Re: Talk to me about mastering

Postby CitricAcid » 21 Aug 2014 16:25

Feedback wrote:I'm a broke, jobless college student, so I can't exactly afford to hire a mastering engineer unless I have a big enough fanbase that I know I'll cover the cost, which as of right now, I most definitely don't. :lol:

For the record, getting a track mastered professionally is relatively cheap. You can expect to pay as low as $50 per track.
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Re: Talk to me about mastering

Postby Feedback » 21 Aug 2014 17:09

CitricAcid wrote:
Feedback wrote:I'm a broke, jobless college student, so I can't exactly afford to hire a mastering engineer unless I have a big enough fanbase that I know I'll cover the cost, which as of right now, I most definitely don't. :lol:

For the record, getting a track mastered professionally is relatively cheap. You can expect to pay as low as $50 per track.


That $50 adds up though; $400 for an album that's only eight tracks, which would be all of the money I have in my bank account right now, and then some. :razz:
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Re: Talk to me about mastering

Postby Fimbulin » 10 Oct 2014 17:38

Most of the time it's charged per minute. $40/minute seems to be a reasonable cost, but is too expensive for most people at $120 a three minute track.

Really complex mastering stuffs can be fixed in the mixing, but is tedious no matter what stage you fix it.:) There's videos you can see online of people mastering stuff. I dont have any links on hand
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