Auto Mastering?

[Blooby]

This is a bit freaky.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9htueuU07Y

[Farrell Jackson]

Blooby, a while back Alfredo posted up some info. on LANDR. Here's the link to his post.

https://songcrafters.org/community/index.php?topic=21484.0

After reading Alfredo's post I signed up for the free MP3 mastering service just to try it out. With the free service you can master as many MP3s as you want but it comes back at 192 kbps only. If you want better quality like wav files you have to pay a monthly fee. I've probably had LANDR master about 25 songs and I'm impressed with most of them. There are some that didn't benefit from the auto mastering but the majority did even at 192. I want to put another original cd together but when I get the songs recorded and mixed properly, I'm going to sign up for the paid subscription and let LANDR do the auto mastering for me.

Farrell

[Hook]

Me thinks a comparison thread might be in order.

[Ferryman]

Nothing freaky here IMO. Mastering is just applying a set of rules to "optimize" the final mix. Mastering engineers just have lots of experience doing this, AI will likely be able to do this far better than they ever could, and won't be limited by defective human ears. There are already programs that can identify the attributes that make a "hit" record, no reason why they can't do the same with reference tracks to come up with a good set of mastering attributes.

This is the way "smart machines" are going (I track this stuff in my day job FWIW). Jobs like mastering engineer will no longer be needed, in the same way that we don't need guys in lab coats to load spools of tape onto tape machines like the Beatles used to. I just bought Izotope Ozone 6 which is a standalone mastering suite with a load of presets. It's not much of a step from the presets in that software to what these guys are doing.  

[Flash Harry]

You're right Nigel, it's an attribute of the relative loudness across the audio spectrum, a simple job for a machine to analyse and then transform. I spend angst ridden hours pulling and tweaking and kidding myself that one setting sounds better than another, I leave it and come back to it a day later and find I was wrong, so start it all again.
A good tool doesn't compensate for a crap workman. Take the workman out of the process.

[kenny mac]

I'm interested in this,I'll do some research into it and maybe try the free version to try it 
Nice post.

[Farrell Jackson]

For those interested in hearing a comparison of an LANDR mastered version and original version of my song Cabo Wabo, I've uploaded both versions at soundclick. Both samples are at 192kbps converted by SC to 160kbps during the uploads. The original version is mastered by me and I didn't increase or decrease the volume of either sample. When I sent the sample to LANDR to be mastered I had to leave enough headroom (-3.5db) for it to be mastered properly. If you don't do that your sample will be sent back asking you to leave some headroom before they master it. I look forward to hearing your assessments of any differences of the two versions. Better or worse etc. The first is the original FJ mastering. The second is the LANDR mastering.

Farrell

[soundclick]13035484[/soundclick]
[soundclick]12967365[/soundclick]

[alfstone]

To my ears, the LANDR version sounds a little better (not dramatically better, I mean: your mix was rather good already).

I can confirm that leaving enough headroom before mastering is a rather common technique: I've tried various settings, and actually I leave the mix -6db before the final mastering process.

Ozone is a great tool for mastering, I confirm, even if Version 6 is better by some point of view (it runs standalone), while the previous version had more genre-specific presets (rock, jazz, country etc.). I use it in almost all my recordings, usually together with a couple of other Waves plug-ins (a compressor and a tape simulator)

Alfredo

[Greeny]

As a control freak, I wouldn't want to lose the personal input or choices - even if they're illusionary. I think it's satisfying to do it yourself, and the more you do it, the better you get at it. I really enjoy the mixing part too.

[64Guitars]

I'm with Greeny. I want control over my recordings. That's why I bought a BR. It lets me do everything myself. Whether or not someone else can do it better doesn't really matter to me. I'd just rather do it myself. I mean, how can I take pride in my work if I let someone else do it for me?

Also, I like a big dynamic range and mastering usually squashes the dynamics in order to make the average level higher. So I almost never apply mastering effects to my finished recordings. Instead, I try to make each track sound as good as possible, then mix them to get the right balance between tracks. When I'm happy with the mix, that's it. The recording is finished. If I think the EQ or dynamics are not what they should be, I'm more likely to go back and apply EQ or compression to certain individual tracks and remix than I am to apply mastering effects to the finished mix.