wbiphoto
Wannabe
Joined: Jun 19, 2008
Posts: 3
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My Miami friend, I feel your pain! I am all too familiar with what you're going through. So much so that I've worn a path on the floor leading from my studio to my garage, where my two cars are parked.
But there's hope! 
I will prefix my mastering techniques by giving you my general impression and feelings about mastering:
Mastering is indeed an art form. There is no denying that. To shrug it off as something that anyone and everyone can do with minimal equipment, minimal experience and with minimal effort is foolish.
But, I, like you and MANY other musician/producer types, don't have the funds to pay for top shelf mastering. I know for a fact that to get a good mastering job on your music(assuming it's a full CD) will cost you plenty; several thousand dollars is not out of the question. To have an amateur or someone starting out do the mastering on your project, you might as well give it a go yourself. I am a FIRM believer that it's worth the pain(more on that below).
Mastering CAN be done in the home studio. I am 100% sure of that because I am currently mastering my own project and having good results. How do I know the results are good? Because my mastered songs actually sound as good, and in some cases better than a lot of the so-called "professionally" mastered stuff(many, many A/B tests have helped me determine that). Of course, "better" is subjective, but I'm typically overly critical of my own work.
There's ONE caveat to DIY mastering: TIME. Get ready to spend LOTS of time bouncing your CDR/Ws back and forth between your studio and your car(s) and your hi-fi system(s) and your mp3 player and your boom box and your friends' car and hi-fi and boom box...etc. You get the picture?
Does my experience confirm what the "mastering masters" have been saying all along: "don't try mastering at home..."? Well, I've read where a professional mastering engineer will turn out two projects per day. LOL! I'm lucky to do two songs in one week! And that's putting in a few hours per song!
So, should I give up and throw my hope down the tubes? Absolutely NOT!
Why? Because these "masters" had to learn somehow and we can be sure that they made some mistakes along the way and all of those mistakes made them that much better.
Now for the details of how I master:
My monitoring and mastering equipment consists of:
- Izotope Ozone and Sony Sound Forge mastering software
- Sonar - DAW
- Pair of Event Project Studio 6 Bi-Amped near-field speakers
- One Event S100 subwoofer
- Some room treatment in the form of Auralex foam on back walls and behind the Event SP6s. But nothing esoteric or profoundly "tuned".
1. The FIRST step in my mastering chain is to burn a CDRW of the song(i work one song at a time) WITHOUT any mastering at all; just as it came out of DAW(Sonar). I then play this song in my Subaru Outback. Why there? Because that is THE BOOMIEST listening space I have access to. I've come to the realization that if I can make it sound good there(by good I mean clear, balanced and loud enough) then it should translate well to every other place I have access to(to include my wife's honda civic and our hi-fi stereo with audiophile speakers). I guess you could say my Outback is the equivalent of someone else's NS10ms. LOL
Once in the Subaru I listen carefully and adjust the THREE bands of EQ to the point where the sound is where I need it to be. By however much I lower or raise the three bands is how much I need to adjust my EQ and Multiband Dynamics in Ozone.
For example, if song X in the subaru sounds good by lowering the low end by -1 and the mid by -2 and raising the high end by +2, then I know that I have to emulate this "curve" in Ozone. I then go to my studio and in Ozone I choose a preset that has three bands of multiband dynamics(a typical three band would be: 20hz-----313hz-----3khz-----20khz). I then set the band gain on each one to the same as on the subaru: -1, -2 and +2. Of course, to fine tune the bands you need to play around with each individual ratio, theshold etc, if it warrants it. But that is the fine tuning aspect of the dynamics.
That gives me a VERY reasonable place to start.
2. I then move to my EQ section of Ozone and tweak the frequencies(usually lowering, not raising them) in order to further fine tune the frequency spectrum to emulate the "EQed Subaru sound".
3. From here, I can add a LITTLE BIT of the exciter, but not too much, in order to bring out some hidden harmonics in each of the three bands.
4.Next is the all so important and often misunderstood volume raising excercise.
The part about raising the overall volume(or pressure, if you prefer) of a song is THE SIMPLEST part of mastering. It's a matter of simple experimentation with your limiter's settings/options. After you use the limiter on a file move it over to any editor, such as Sound Forge, and you can see the overall statistics of the file. The avg RMS power should reflect that of music in your genre(for instance, my music is typically around -12db; I record progish rock). The general rule of thumb is that the lower the threshold of your limiter, the louder the song will be, but you will lose more dynamic range. It's as easy as that.
IMO, the single-most important skill one needs to develop in order to properly master in a home studio is frequency analysis. I'll capitalize it: FREQUENCY ANALYSIS. And by that I don't mean that we need to be able to read oscilloscopes and spectrum plots. No! I mean that we need to HEAR what frequencies are defficient and which are overly prominent and learn how to make the proper adjustments.
The technique of using my untouched sound file in the Subaru FIRST before doing any serious adjustments works real well for me. BUT, as I've pointed/pounded out before, it does take time. You will most likely NOT get it right on the first try and have to walk back and forth between your studio and your Subaru(or Ferrari!) with your new changes. But this technique has worked for me and I will keep using it.
Obviously you wouldn't see this technique being used at a major masterig house because they'd drive away top clients. Imagine a top act watching the mastering engineer run back and forth from the studio to the parking lot ten times in an hour in order to get it "right"! They'd be out of business.
The top studios have listening areas and monitoring systems that are ULTRA precise and they don't need the "subaru test". But, for the rest of us who cannot spend $$$$ to get the very best mastering can use the "subaru mastering technique" and make it work with very good results.
Please contact me and I can send you a few short mp3 samples of before and after files of some of the stuff I'm working on.
-wbiphoto
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