Mastering is an artform -remixed and remastered "The Bottom" using T-Racks

[guitarron]

https://songcrafters.org/forum/index.php?topic=31847.msg379596#msg379596

I'm seriously beginning to appreciate just how much of an art mastering truly is.

working on a acquiring better ear for it.

Lets discuss

 

[Zoltan]

Mastering is the black arts. I think we're talking here more about mastering as in mastering a mixed track to sound its best in various playback devices? Rather than mastering various tracks for a release? Both are of course mastering, but most of the time when i see people talking about mixing / mastering here it's mostly to get a song to sound its best.

The first thing would be to know what one wants to achieve. I think i've just only once arrived to a place where it's been a case "do i want this to sound more like this - or that" rather than "i want this to sound less bad, and more pro".

The better the mix the easier it is to master. Mastering should be the final icing of the cake rather than the last ditch attempt to save something. I'm sure everybody knows this, but i'm just writing it down so i'd remember it myself

Are you doing mixing separately and then mastering the stereo .wav file in a different session, and with a fresh pair of ears? Nowadays it's possible to do both at the sametime which has it pro's and con's. Sometimes i save time by "mastering" the mix i'm working on by putting stuff on master buss. Othertimes i just start working on the stereo track on a separate session.

Some people mix with stuff on master buss and it's also something that seems to divide peoples opinions. One thing i've yet to try, but supposedly yields great results would be to put a really clean master EQ on the master buss. Something taken from a classic album that has a really clean and desirable mix profile. I've heard stuff about metal mixes being done with Dire Straits EQ profile. The main reason i've yet to try it is because i haven't bothered to check how it's done... Just putting this out here for some food for thought.

As for mastering personally i'd start with a clean not heavily compressed mix (stereo .wav) that has enough headroom and isn't yet done to death with any excessive dynamic processing / Eq'ing, but a one that has the sound in place. Then the mastering part of the job can take care of the things like overall minor adjustments, how the song translates in various playback systems etc. Some master EQ might be needed and compression.

I might have gone on a tangent here, but hopefully this gives some ideas. Good, or bad, or at least acts as an discussion starter.

As an aside. I don't profess to know anything about mastering, and my mixes are hardly groundbreaking The stuff i'm doing is mostly done on the spot and i seem to gravitate towards changing my ways of working every time rather than learning and building a skill set. It's kinda going into every direction all at once, and seeing where it takes me.

[guitarron]

My " The Bottom" file was originally "mastered" by rendering the the file with mastering plugs on the master track.
I understand now the importance of mixing without any effects on the master track (except for metering plugs)
This allows you to keep all the dynamics in place and gives headroom for the mastering process.

I've been trying different mid/side eq'ing to clean up the mud from frequencies fighting each other for space in the mix. EQing has been a something I didn't really know how to use properly to create space. Still learning.
Also, Im starting to like the whole stand alone approach to mastering with T-Racks.
Now I'm tempted to go back to some of my songs and do them "right".

Mastering is the black arts. I think we're talking here more about mastering as in mastering a mixed track to sound its best in various playback devices? Rather than mastering various tracks for a release? Both are of course mastering, but most of the time when i see people talking about mixing / mastering here it's mostly to get a song to sound its best.


The better the mix the easier it is to master. Mastering should be the final icing of the cake rather than the last ditch attempt to save something. I'm sure everybody knows this, but i'm just writing it down so i'd remember it myself

Yes get why people in the industry scoff at us do-it- yourselfers

The better the track quality, the better the mix
The better the mix, the better the master

Some crappy sounding acoustic guitar tracks should have been retracked in this last attempt.  Garbage in garbage out. Just learn from it and move on.

[Zoltan]

My " The Bottom" file was originally "mastered" by rendering the the file with mastering plugs on the master track.
I understand now the importance of mixing without any effects on the master track (except for metering plugs)
This allows you to keep all the dynamics in place and gives headroom for the mastering process.

There's nothing especially wrong with that approach either. Especially if you've got a computer that doesn't get hang up on the lack of CPU. It's kinda useful to be able hear how things might sound at a later stage even while doing the mix. It's easy to bypass the plugins in the master, and what you'd put in the master buss otherwise?

I haven't used mid/sid EQ's that much as i haven't really got my head around with the  topic yet. I've been vary careful with these kinds of movements that affect a whole lot of things.

Re: Bottoms. It's a great song and the mix accomplishes many things. There are some things i'm hearing, and as you're mostly talking about mastering (and figuratively speaking "saving" something that might not necessarily even need any drastic changes) i'm trying to comment those. Do keep in mind that i don't have proper/great monitors, or ears for that matter either! So perhaps there's some idea you might get / use in this, or future mixes, or maybe not. It's often small tidbits that might creep into ones processes and hopefully help some rather than drastic "in the future i'll be doing everything like this" type of total changes in approach. One has to learn at ones own pace, and use the tools / things that works best for them.

Anyhow as for the song. It sounds fine, but sounds static. This probably applies to great many songwriter mixes i'd think. It certainly applies to too many of my own. If you're using things like Micro BR it's very understandable, but if you're in a DAW it would be a great thing to take in mind.

What i'm talking here is that when the mixing is done. The balancing and EQuing of things. Getting the panning to sit nicely etc. The mix is at a static stage. There's not movement. In the best case scenario the song was arranged properly before recording so there's at least some "light & shade" and space for different instrumentation to breath. Also hopefully the performances were done with the same idea in mind. Played in a way that adds some slight variation and dynamics into the brew.

Now we're getting into the dynamic part. Often there's a mix "issue" at some point of the song that could have been easily resolved by dynamic panning. Moving things around with automated panning (recorded, or hand drawn in daw). And i'm not really thinking this about as a mix solver either, but rather as something that makes things more interesting for the listener. If there's gentle movement that most of the part can be almost unnoticeable it can make the song a lot more interesting for the listener.

I think and analogy of Hollywood movie, or a small budget (or a rushed out production) fits here. At least that's the way i'm thinking about it. If a song / recording is a simple one. For example man & a guitar -type of performance. Then not much is needed. If the song has potential for more then the "Hollywood" approach ie taking all the aspect as far as possible can be a good thing. Most of us are happy to get the static mix done properly, and there's nothing wrong with that. But if in a DAW and thinking of bigger picture this is also something to keep in mind. It can really make the mix cleaner, the song more interesting and the end results can be the "next level" stuff. It's a way to keep the most important elements / elements in the focus while putting  extraneous stuff in the background.

Getting back to the song. If this was a new production where you'd still be doing the mix, i'd recommend doing some automated panning etc. to keep things going.

Using different EQ at different stages of the song. I'm not doing this really, but i'm trying to remember to do so the next time. A lot of this rambling here is also for me to keep these things in mind while doing stuff In daw you can easily chop a certain part of a say bassline and add a minor EQ change to only that part. Maybe it's a part where there's a badly recorded note that needs different treatment (of course it could be re-recorded also). I'm mentioning this because you seemed to struggle with certain problem areas in the song / certain note. There's also dynamic EQ that can be used if one has such a thing.

There's depth to the mix and everything seems to have it's own place in the mix. The lead guitar that appears at around the 30 secs mark sounds warm and the melodies are strong. If this was my mix i'd see this as having too much bottom end / low mids (can't say for sure without "sweeping" the eq). It's great that it takes the attention and center stage, but i think the mix might have more AIR and the drums would be cleaner if some minor cuts were done to this guitar track. The same most likely applies to the distorted guitar sound later on the song also. The bassline cuts thru quite nicely even behind the guitar so it's likely not a huge change that's "needed".

Overall this song is in a such a good shape performing, arrangement etc. wise that it's those slight "flubs" in the playing like the small hickup in the rhythm guitar that are more noticeable than anything else. It's the curse of doing songs properly. In a more slapdash mix those kinds of things would be more buried

There's some masking happening at the end of the song also (guitar wise), but at that point it feels more cohesive and intentional than in the beginning of the song where things are more sparse and the focal point is cleaner (whereas at the end it's mostly outro stuff, filling things out in a musical manner).

You've get dynamics in check compression wise so i'm not hearing anything particularly weird, or distorted (digital clipping). You could always master this with a more heavy handed compression (alongside the EQ tricks) and see whether the added "glue" would fix things. It's probably not worth it, but if it's a sound you're after it might be doable.

This sounds like it would work in MONO too and overall i don't hear any really wide panning either. Stuff mostly happens in layers. Speaking of mono. It's very usable to check things in mono (for masking and things cancelling out) while mixing. This sounds like there wouldn't be any problems with that, but just as an overall approach to mixing. I'm not even thinking it as a MONO thing, but rather on how things stack together.

I'm not sure how deep down you're hoping to get with the mixes, but if you're not editing the separate tracks (for example vocal track) it might be worth trying to play around with GATE plugin. It really adds more space to track when there isn't too much extraneous stuff happening. Sometimes when things are not crowded it's cool to keep some "bleed" going on, but often it's good to either edit the tracks (for silence), or use a GATE.

Oh, almost forgot. Those T-tracks plugins are great, but i don't remember if there's a setting in any of those that would help to sum certain frequencies into mono. Here's a simple and free plugin that might help: https://a1audio.alexhilton.net/a1stereocontrol

A blanket statement rules are a bad thing, but might be worth trying a setting that sums stuff below 70-80hz into mono. Sometimes there's stuff (frequencies from tracks) floating around that would be best kept at the center stage.

End ramble:
There are lots of "mixers EQ cheat sheets" and things available. Some people swear by them, and some swear at them. I used to try following such guides, but they didn't work for me. Also "hi and lo pass everything" is a bad advice as a _rule_.

[Zoltan]

The better the track quality, the better the mix
The better the mix, the better the master

This is very much true. Lately i've been thinking this more in the way of "you get more of the good stuff". For some reason thinking things in analogies makes these sometimes abstract things more easy to understand. When one starts mixing with a bad recording it usually has lots of bad frequencies and very little of the "good stuff". With a proper recording where you have just the right frequencies in abundance you have a lot more to play with even at the mixing stage. At that point all kinds of EQ cuts make more sense as the results are really more musical and better.

[guitarron]

Revisiting songs that you considered finished inevitably open up cans of worms. So many things I would have done different.
For example, my original "finished" file was weak in the bass guitar. The cheap 5 string bass pickups simply lack in my opinion. So I converted the track to midi and rerecorded the bass of my Yamaha piano in its place.
Another thing did in hindsight was unnecessary. Having purchased a DI box at that time, was I double tracked EVERYTHING. Bass, several guitar tracks. Which I blended the doubles together. Which simply wasn't necessary for everything. It made the mix extra thick. This is where mid/side eqing really polished  the turd.
So I'm taking a more pragmatic approach these days from the start of the project, giving myself more flexibility later in the process correct things as needed.

Digging into old files really can open a Pandora's box of extra work. ;-). Pick you battles wisely I guess