Other Sites/Resources for Home Recording

[IanR]

Hi,

I'm sure that I have read a post on Songcrafters about LANDR - the mastering web site but I couldn't find it.

I just signed up to the site and did my two free mp3 mixes.

I thought that the mixes did sound more cohesive and balanced.

I'm interested to know if anyone has used the paid service and if the outcomes are good?

cheers,

Ian

[Johnny Robbo]

I use LANDR all the time as it just adds a certain professional quality to a mix. You get two free 192K mp3s per month, then it's $1.99 per track after that (about £1.40), which even I can afford. I wouldn't go any further than that, for higher bit-rates or different formats like WAV, as my ears can't tell the difference.

A couple of years ago I decided to go down the Hi-Res route for my music collection & bought an mp3 player with FLAC capability. I ripped a couple of CDs to FLAC format, which all the Hi-Fi buffs rave about (Alchemy by Dire Straits & The Planet Suite by Holst - just to try it across a couple of different genres), but even through a £150 pair of headphones I couldn't hear the difference between FLAC & 192K mp3. As soon as I go below 192K, I can detect a drop in sound quality, but nothing above 192K makes any difference at all to my ears. As the free mp3s from LANDR are at 192K, this is ideal for me & as long as I don't do more than two tracks per month (which is rare), then it's a free service.

[Balleo]

The really difficult thing is the mixing. treat each individual track, equalize and right position in the stereo panorama.

Landr that i knew, optimize, pump the volume but if the track aren't good, could be a lost time

[Pine]

I've tried LANDR on several songs.

First off, regarding Johnny's post about not being able to hear a big difference between 192kbps and WAV. Alot of folks bitch endlessly about how poor the sound is from MP3's compared to wav. I'm with John. I can't hear the difference, although i will admit i wear bilateral hearing aides in social situations. In quality headphones, i think i do pretty well mixing altho i get ear fatigue quickly. One thing about WAV tho, you need to be in that format to burn files to a CD that many players will accept, as well as cd makers.

Regarding LANDR. I record on a standalone Boss BR1200CD. I do ALL my production on them with no software whatsoever. The Boss has  (i think) great mastering presets (many to choose from, all of which add different amounts of compression, EQ, etc.) I use the same preset almost all the time. I recently noticed a song i did where i kept all the recording levels quite low and the LANDR process was very evident and impressive...and not just with a volume pump. I also did a song where i kept the levels at near peek, just below clip levels. LANDR did almost nothing that i could notice. Then i read this...which makes alot of sense and will , i believe, make a big difference in the results of songs you send to be "Landr'd"  :-))

http://blog.landr.com/prepare-music-landr-mastering/

I'm also a 2 song a month max guy like Johnny, so i will probably stay as a freebie. I can convert their MP3's to wav. via online software like switch sound file converter if need be. They say converting files also causes fidelity loss but i'll be darned if i can hear it. Maybe it would show up on a visual read out, i don't know.

cheers

[Farrell Jackson]

I've tried LANDR on about 50 songs of various recording/mix quality but just the 192kbps MP3 version. They offered an introductory fee of $9.99 for one year and you could master as many songs as you wanted. It has since expired and I didn't re-subscribed at the higher price. Some songs came out really good and others didn't. A lot depends on how much compression the song already has on it and if the  record level is low at about -6db. The song needs to be mixed at -6db or thereabouts for the best results, in my opinion, instead of just lowering an already mastered song's  level down by 6db.

One other thing I noticed is if you had a quiet intro, mid, or outro it would also bring that level up to the point where it changed the mix some.

Overall I like it but I would like to try the higher quality version but that means having a payed subscription which I haven't justified...yet.

Just my thoughts on it.

Farrell