mastering

[GeneralAldo]

  What are your favorite MBR settings  when  mastering and why? I prefer hardcomp and dancecomp because they sound the warmest to my ears,especially the hardcomp.I find the rest a little too trebly to my ears.

[FuzzFace]

I find the rest a little too trebly to my ears.

I am by no means the master of mastering.

But one thing I find is often when things sound too trebly to me in the headphones, it's actually just right on speakers out loud.

[GeneralAldo]

  I will try to do that.   

 I also am concerned about mastering with  my Pioneer SE-M390 headphones as they have such great bass response that they accentuate the low end frequencies so well..... that when heard on laptop speaker the bass tracks are hardly audible in comparison.

 A tip I read somewhere was that as a  general rule , most guitar players who master their own material want their playing highlighted and dominant in the mix.  As a result they tend to neglect the bass and drum tracks to the detriment of the song as a whole and end up sacrificing the overall meshing of vocals,rhythm instruments, drum kits and bass guitars as a unit.

 I personally like to highlight my  bass playing (following root notes mostly) over my guitars(I am primarily a guitar player) to give my tracks a fullness that I believe serves the song and makes it more listenable to others.

[FuzzFace]

Makes sense.  It's like when we draw a map of the world and make our own country bigger with more detail than the others.

It all depends on the effect you are trying to create.

Sometimes the guitar should be the star, and other times no instrument should be more obvious than another because it's the overall soundscape that is important.

Personally I would never judge or gauge sound quality on laptop speakers.

A tip I read on this site from another user was to always mix while playing the sound out loud on a good stereo.

[Greeny]

99% of the time I'll use 'Mixdown' - it sounds well-balanced to my ears (on my songs at least...). I'll sometimes opt for 'PreMaster' if I want a slightly more subtle sound. I don't use the rest - I find them offensive, lol.

[Saijinn Maas]

I tend to use "Live". It sound the best for most stuff to my ears. Each instrument stands out more. The br-800 has "Rock Band" that is a bit less "harsh" than "Live" or "Acoustic" which is pretty nice for.. uh... acoustic stuff...  

[AndyR]

I'm close to Greeny on this.

I haven't used the MBR's mastering tools for ages, but the BR1600 has the same or similar preset names.

After a lot experimenting, I've ended up using this strategy:

I go for the Mixdown preset first, and if that doesn't do an acceptable job immediately, I'll then listen with the other presets. If one seems to do the job, or I like an aspect of it, I'll investigate what its settings are, the differences it has from Mixdown. I'll then tweak Mixdown gently in that direction instead of using the full-on differences.

For an easy life though, I prefer to use Mixdown as "untouched" as possible. My reasoning is that different recordings, created months apart, have a better chance of sounding like the same idiot produced them!

[Geir]

Like Saijinn I mostly use "Live" (on both MBR and BR800) and "Acoustic" for the acoustic stuff on the 800. Sometimes I tweek them a bit, but like Andy I like to at least think that there will be a more consistant sound over all the songs if I stick to the same presets. It also makes the recording process easier, because I know how the master effect will effect the mix I know where to put things in the mix when extensive bouncing is required.

[Flash Harry]

Geir has a a pair of cool monitor speakers, these are the business for mixing down. Cans are tricky and I am never satisfied with the result.

I need some monitors.

[Oldrottenhead]

mastering with headphones can be quite deceiving, i get my best results from a pair of cheap powered pc speakers.