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mystic fred View Drop Down

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Topic: Mastering home recordings
Posted: September 12 2008 at 13:42

great - will look forward to that!

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MikeEnRegalia View Drop Down

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Posted: September 12 2008 at 02:53

^ It's really a work in progress ... I'm planning on working on every aspect of the track until I get them right myself. If you want to play drums to the song I'll gladly give you a mix without drums ... of course it will be interesting what you'll make of it. Smile

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Posted: September 12 2008 at 02:06

MikeEnRegalia wrote:

^ thanks! well, the drums are actually just one basic two bar loop throughout the song. Embarrassed

with your approval i could do something with those at the weekend, though the mix without drums would be better...?

Edited by mystic fred - September 12 2008 at 02:07

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MikeEnRegalia View Drop Down

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Posted: September 11 2008 at 07:49

^ thanks! I was basically using the good old "vintage amp + tube screamer" setup, the "fizzyness" is mostly because the strings were in a bad shape when I recorded the take. LOL

It's true that I was aiming for a Gilmour-like tone, but a neck-thru ESP with Humbuckers sets some hard limits. Wink

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Certif1ed

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Posted: September 11 2008 at 07:03

Superb guitar sound, Mike - perhaps a little "fizzy" in one or two places, if I was to nit-pick, but otherwise a really full Gilmour-like tone

Nice transparent mix too - good work!

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Posted: September 11 2008 at 05:50

^ thanks! well, the drums are actually just one basic two bar loop throughout the song. Embarrassed

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mystic fred View Drop Down

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Posted: September 11 2008 at 01:53

MikeEnRegalia wrote:

Another mix for you guys to check out (I think I already posted this elsewhere, but not in this thread).

http://progfreak.com/_ws/mediabase/mp3/MikeEnRegalia-Earth-and-Sky-1.5.mp3

excellent, Mike!

..though the drums could do with some livening up...?

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MikeEnRegalia View Drop Down

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Posted: September 07 2008 at 12:00

No - the address is correct and the download seems to be working (for me). Is anyone else having problems downloading the track?

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mr70s

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Posted: September 07 2008 at 10:08

Mike, I'm having problems connecting to this page - is there a slight error in the address ?

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Posted: September 07 2008 at 09:11

Another mix for you guys to check out (I think I already posted this elsewhere, but not in this thread).

http://progfreak.com/_ws/mediabase/mp3/MikeEnRegalia-Earth-and-Sky-1.5.mp3

Edited by MikeEnRegalia - September 07 2008 at 09:11

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Posted: September 07 2008 at 06:05

EQ should be used during mixing, well there's maybe no rules but if the mixing is nicely done, there's no need to EQ during mastering.

But actually, I tried some EQ to bring some "air" and brightness to my mixes and it really sounds better! But you have to be really, really light!

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Posted: August 16 2008 at 04:47

cobb2 wrote:

MikeEnRegalia- listened to this samples. That is really fantastic playing- reminded me of Jan Akkerman. Excellent sense of composition with your lead. If you are not in a band- get off your ass and go and join one. And the mixing is par excellence- you shame my dabblings.

Thank you very much! It's really just improvising - but I admit that I've grown to like the track, except for that wrong note (c#) near the end. Wink

I'm still thinking about expanding the track ... add more sections, maybe a tempo change. Stay tuned for surprises ... Big%20smile

As promised, here's another mix:

http://progfreak.com/_ws/mediabase/mp3/MikeEnRegalia-Earth-and-Sky-Mix-6.mp3

In this one I also upped the tempo a little bit. It's easy to do in Ableton - the recorded audio is automatically adjusted, which works remarkably well, although in a real production you would probably re-record it. As far as the mix is concerned: I removed most eq boosting of the previous mix. I also removed compression from the master and instead added it to the instruments themselves: bass drum, snare drum, bass, lead guitar. That way the pumping effects of the compression are avoided. I also upped the massive reverb on the rhythm guitar, which creates a nice ambient layer, and the lead guitar now has a nice rhythmic delay.

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cobb2

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Posted: August 15 2008 at 20:51

Dean wrote:

Most studio engineers separate the two processes, that may be a historical thing because they've always done it that way, or that's how they were taught, but often is it because the mastering equipment is different to the mix-down equipment, even professional engineers who are using PC software for mixing prefer to use hardware EQ and compression for the mastering.

Yes, I agree on the hardware EQ and compression. There is no way possible to get the volumes without distortion that the professionals get onto a CD out of a Home studio. Notice I don't say DAW or Digital Audio Workstation because the true meaning of this is Software integrated with Hardware, though over time this has been watered down to just mean software.

Edited by cobb2 - August 15 2008 at 20:55

cobb2

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Posted: August 15 2008 at 20:24

MikeEnRegalia- listened to this samples. That is really fantastic playing- reminded me of Jan Akkerman. Excellent sense of composition with your lead. If you are not in a band- get off your ass and go and join one. And the mixing is par excellence- you shame my dabblings.

jimidom

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Posted: August 15 2008 at 16:34

MikeEnRegalia wrote:

My DAW software creates the stereo mix all the time. Please explain to me why exporting it to WAV and then mastering it should produce better results than applying the mastering effects in the DAW and then exporting it to WAV ... I don't see there should be any difference.

One way it can make a difference is to export to a high quality wav file after mixing, for example 24 bit 96 khz, and then master it . The higher bit depth and higher sampling frequency will yield better sonic results than simply mixing or mastering at the standard 16 bit 44.1 khz. In order to burn to a CD, you would of course then downsample to 44.1 khz and reset bit depth to 16 bit (with dither).

Edited by jimidom - August 15 2008 at 17:17

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Dean

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Posted: August 15 2008 at 14:01

There are no rules or restrictions of where and when you do the mastering and certainly with modern DAW systems it is far easier to do at the mixing stage than it was on older analogue systems. It is purely a mater of personal preference. Most studio engineers separate the two processes, that may be a historical thing because they've always done it that way, or that's how they were taught, but often is it because the mastering equipment is different to the mix-down equipment, even professional engineers who are using PC software for mixing prefer to use hardware EQ and compression for the mastering.

Myself, I prefer to do the mixing with flat EQ on the output so I can concentrate on EQ-ing individual channels, positioning instruments in the stereo image and getting the right level of separation between them. Of course with a modern DAW setup, once I've I'm happy with that I could go back and set the o/p EQ and apply any compression, but if I'm making a complete album with cross-fades between tracks then it is far easier to do that with stereo mixed-downs of the individual tracks and then master the whole thing. Another difference between the two processes for me is that I generally do the mixing using headphones and the mastering with headphones then listen again through speakers - no logical reason for this either, just my preference.

It may be an obvious comment, but it is essential that the tone controls on any play-back amps are also set flat when doing any EQ-ing.

What?

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Posted: August 15 2008 at 10:58

cobb2 wrote:

Well, because any effects or filters you apply at the mixing stage effect that particular track's waveform. Let's say you apply reverb to a vocal. This can be removed while you are working in that session, if you decide you don't like it. But what happens after you exit the session and come back to it a few days later and decide what you thought sounded just beautiful actually turns out to sound like crap. I don't know about Ableton, but Sonar has no way to get your wave back to the state before the reverb. The only way this can be done is to search through all the saved waves until you find the one that you think was it, dump out the track and import this wav back into the track. Not a simple undo by any means

I see. I don't work like that in Ableton ... there is a way to "render" the effects to the track, but it only needs to be done when your computer can't cope with all the effects. So far I didn't have any problems with that ... all the effects on track and/or master level can easily be switched on/off or replaced at any time.

cobb2 wrote:

addition: I know you that you know all this and that you can mix very well (after hearing that track you posted). I am just saying that there is no way you should be applying filters to the mix as a whole, at the mixing stage, only at individual track levels. The mastering stage is for playing with all the sounds in one hit.

Thanks! Here are some more mixing experiments for you to check out:

http://progfreak.com/_ws/mediabase/mp3/MikeEnRegalia-Earth-and-Sky.mp3
http://progfreak.com/_ws/mediabase/mp3/MikeEnRegalia-Earth-and-Sky-Mix-3.mp3

It's not a real song ... just a basic loop, cool riff and some soloing. But I'm using it to test the Ableton features. The first one was done with Ableton Lite, the "Mix 3" version with the full Ableton Suite (Session Drums, multisampled bass and organ and no limitations of the number of simultaneous effects).

As I said above: I can simply open the project, strip all effects and begin mixing/mastering from scratch. I can also group the effects that I applied to the master channel and save them as presets. The downside is that in order to work that effectively, I'm somewhat limited to the effects which Ableton provides, but they're really great and so far I found everything I needed. Of course you can also use external (software) effects, but they're usually not as seamlessly integrated into Ableton.

BTW: Stay tuned for the next, even more improved version. Big%20smile

Edited by MikeEnRegalia - August 15 2008 at 11:10

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cobb2

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Posted: August 15 2008 at 10:20

Edited by cobb2 - August 15 2008 at 10:30

MikeEnRegalia View Drop Down

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Posted: August 15 2008 at 10:10

My DAW software creates the stereo mix all the time. Please explain to me why exporting it to WAV and then mastering it should produce better results than applying the mastering effects in the DAW and then exporting it to WAV ... I don't see there should be any difference.

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cobb2

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Posted: August 15 2008 at 10:07

Mastering in no way harms the mixed tracks- they are still intact in their own separate file. You are mastering a stereo export of the this mix. So, at any time you can go back to the mix, tweek it, dump it out to a stereo wav and re-master.

Like I said earlier, 6 months ago I would have argued the same points you are.

I am not that good at mastering, but I know it makes a huge difference to the music.