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Post by drbill on Mar 16, 2023 13:34:57 GMT -6
I'm not getting the "Tone = Translation" thing. If 'ya go back a wee bit & listen to the examples donr put up it'll either hit you in 90 seconds... or it won't. To me its really obvious even on the tiny Sony office rig. YMMV? Links are not working for me. But I totally get your points. I just don't conclude that Tone = Translation. Weird concept. |
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Post by viciousbliss on Mar 16, 2023 17:57:02 GMT -6
Anyone else think Tom's mix sounds way better than the finished master? It has huge peaks that extend and are not clipped. The Jensen master clips all the peaks as is the norm with most commercial music. To my ears, the mix could use a little more clarity, but that could also just be because it's an mp3. A touch more compression, just to blend the backing vocals more with the rest of the song. It doesn't need radical changes. It's already got a ton of character, sounds very forward. I've always heard that it's impossible to get things to the standard level of loudness without compromising the sound and I'd tend to agree. Ted's master sounds too aggressive for my tastes. Pushes the cymbals forward in a way I'm not a huge fan of. I've tried converting it to wav and playing around with it in Pro Tools. Just thought it'd be educational to see what happens since it's so rare to hear an unmastered mix from someone like Tom, even if it's a lossy version. At times I'll take a commercial cd and run it through my stuff to try and make it easier for me to listen to as a fan. With this song, the character Tom imparted gives me a lot less flexibility than stuff I mix myself. I don't use any master bus processing on my mixes at all.
The third version with the L2 still has a lot more dynamics than the master. It would be great if the labels offered masters with the dynamics intact, I'm not sure why we're stuck with only one version when it shouldn't be that hard to bounce a second one without all the extra compression and/or limiting. Earache Records seems to be the only place that does this and it's only with a handful of classic albums.
As a fan/listener, I've spent a lot of time on forums like stevehoffman.tv discussing different masterings, pressings, etc. Recently, I noticed some of the 2015 Bowie remasters had a lot more dynamics than usual. Life on Mars was much clearer than the European RCA cd, but the compression they added compromised the song even though there are no clipped peaks in the waveform. The RCA's peaks extend louder and keep the breathing room that the song needs. The prevailing thinking amongst a lot of mastering people these days seems to be about how they can make stuff as loud as possible while minimizing the damage. That seems to be the best we can hope for. The information we got about Chinese Democracy and Death Magnetic in 2008 was very helpful. Two very opposite approaches there.
Some MEs also overdo the EQ. It's easy to go overboard. I've started to use less processing on masters and my stuff sounds better and better as a result. With plugins, it's so easy to just start chaining stuff together and creating all sorts of chaos.
Mastering your own stuff makes a lot of sense...or at least attempting to. Just to understand what's possible. As a client, I quickly understood that a lot of supposed pros don't know some basic things. I'd read that a lot of mixing guys would start creeping into mastering territory so that the mastering person had little to work with and couldn't make any real changes. That way they would not get the blame if the mastering engineer ended up doing something that the label or whoever didn't like. Mastering my own stuff has shown me a lot of when to back off on a mix. There have been times where I've heard of mastering guys going back and asking for someone to send them the mix with no bus processing because the mix had such strong character that they had a lot of trouble working with it.
The more you know, the better you can communicate what it is you're looking for and the better you can understand the other person's job. It's also easier to work with your own stuff at times.
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Post by theshea on Mar 17, 2023 1:07:51 GMT -6
anyone upsampling their own stuff when mastering? from 44/48kHz to 88/96kHz? is it worth it if you later have to bounce and downsample again for CD?
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Post by thehightenor on Mar 17, 2023 1:34:28 GMT -6
Won't add much more because to me it's a pretty obvious benefit to have someone else finish your mixes/record. But got our first-pass mastering back today and I wouldn't do it any other way. And we have pretty much no revisions to ask for. What the engineer did with the record blew our minds. Different environment, monitors, expertise... it all adds up into a finished product that honestly has moved me immensely today. Again, if you are that moved by your mastering then totally go for it. There's nothing wrong with that at all. I just enjoy having someone else in a completely different world polish our songs off. And yes, cost a bit of dough, but it gets to a universe I can't completely do on my own. YMMV. Edit: one more thing to add: the 10K hours thing. When you've mastered thousands of songs, maybe different genres, you can master a project and know based on experience how it's going to translate. IMHO if you self-master and it's amazing then you're lucky if you don't meet the experience bar. Rest my case. I’m not happy until my creative output from writing, arranging, tracking then mixing … blows my mind - until it moves me immensely (to quote you) that’s my goal that’s my aim. Many years a ago I used to use outside ME’s. But for me personally, what’s changed is the modern workflow and the equipment that I’ve been able to rack up in my studio, The room treatment, the high end accurate monitoring, the quality of the conversation (in my case Crane Song) the boutique tube outboard. Many years ago there’s no way I would of mixed into the stereo bus chain I mix into today - I’d of left it to the ME. But it was always a compromise of some sort (often subtle) because the ME is working on a stereo file. I prefer this modern workflow where the mix is a work in progress until the moment it’s finished and boom - vision complete. What’s left is then purely a technical release preparation and track to track matching, meta data etc. Theres no more tone or magic to add. I mean would the ME even have the gear I have! I’ve chosen my pieces for a very certain tone and vibe I want to add to my music. It’s a very different work flow for me these days, the responsibility for how my recordings sound and translate is entirely mine. But I’m the first to admit my approach would be perceived as amateur and cottage industry and if I were a signed commercially successful artist I’d be traditionally recorded and produced and mastered and that would be great too! |
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Post by donr on Mar 17, 2023 11:12:18 GMT -6
Anyone else think Tom's mix sounds way better than the finished master? It has huge peaks that extend and are not clipped. The Jensen master clips all the peaks as is the norm with most commercial music. To my ears, the mix could use a little more clarity, but that could also just be because it's an mp3. A touch more compression, just to blend the backing vocals more with the rest of the song. It doesn't need radical changes. It's already got a ton of character, sounds very forward. I've always heard that it's impossible to get things to the standard level of loudness without compromising the sound and I'd tend to agree. Ted's master sounds too aggressive for my tastes. Pushes the cymbals forward in a way I'm not a huge fan of. I've tried converting it to wav and playing around with it in Pro Tools. Just thought it'd be educational to see what happens since it's so rare to hear an unmastered mix from someone like Tom, even if it's a lossy version. At times I'll take a commercial cd and run it through my stuff to try and make it easier for me to listen to as a fan. With this song, the character Tom imparted gives me a lot less flexibility than stuff I mix myself. I don't use any master bus processing on my mixes at all. The third version with the L2 still has a lot more dynamics than the master. It would be great if the labels offered masters with the dynamics intact, I'm not sure why we're stuck with only one version when it shouldn't be that hard to bounce a second one without all the extra compression and/or limiting. Earache Records seems to be the only place that does this and it's only with a handful of classic albums. As a fan/listener, I've spent a lot of time on forums like stevehoffman.tv discussing different masterings, pressings, etc. Recently, I noticed some of the 2015 Bowie remasters had a lot more dynamics than usual. Life on Mars was much clearer than the European RCA cd, but the compression they added compromised the song even though there are no clipped peaks in the waveform. The RCA's peaks extend louder and keep the breathing room that the song needs. The prevailing thinking amongst a lot of mastering people these days seems to be about how they can make stuff as loud as possible while minimizing the damage. That seems to be the best we can hope for. The information we got about Chinese Democracy and Death Magnetic in 2008 was very helpful. Two very opposite approaches there. Some MEs also overdo the EQ. It's easy to go overboard. I've started to use less processing on masters and my stuff sounds better and better as a result. With plugins, it's so easy to just start chaining stuff together and creating all sorts of chaos. Mastering your own stuff makes a lot of sense...or at least attempting to. Just to understand what's possible. As a client, I quickly understood that a lot of supposed pros don't know some basic things. I'd read that a lot of mixing guys would start creeping into mastering territory so that the mastering person had little to work with and couldn't make any real changes. That way they would not get the blame if the mastering engineer ended up doing something that the label or whoever didn't like. Mastering my own stuff has shown me a lot of when to back off on a mix. There have been times where I've heard of mastering guys going back and asking for someone to send them the mix with no bus processing because the mix had such strong character that they had a lot of trouble working with it. The more you know, the better you can communicate what it is you're looking for and the better you can understand the other person's job. It's also easier to work with your own stuff at times. When Ted Jensen mastered the BOC record, I first thought it was 'way too loud. I asked for a version about ⅔ as loud, and he did it, (Don't know what he changed to do it,) but no one in the band thought it was an improvement, even me. If I want to listen to my own record for pleasure, I'll listen to Tom's mix. I'm so old I remember when I liked a song on the radio, I'd turn it up. Today's music, I don't do that. It's already loud enough, no matter what the volume is. I CAN'T turn it up and tolerate it. The last loud modern hit I remember turning up was "Semi-Charmed Life." |
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Post by drbill on Mar 17, 2023 11:17:17 GMT -6
And so we pay extra for a master that's so loud that you can't turn it up?  Times change I guess. Eh donr ? Haha!! Getting old...... |
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Post by donr on Mar 17, 2023 11:22:09 GMT -6
And so we pay extra for a master that's so loud that you can't turn it up? Times change I guess. Eh donr ? Haha!! Getting old...... Loud music sounds better on laptops, cell phones and non-sealing earbuds, I admit. But to truly enjoy a recording, I like it less claustrophobic, a recording that breathes and has some depth. 10-14dB peak to average. I'm generally not a fan of 'remastered' classic LP's. |
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Post by christopher on Mar 17, 2023 11:27:42 GMT -6
That’s one plus of Dolby ATMOS, at least it was when I looked into it over a year ago: no mastering, full range is embraced
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Post by trakworxmastering on Mar 17, 2023 12:44:20 GMT -6
anyone upsampling their own stuff when mastering? from 44/48kHz to 88/96kHz? is it worth it if you later have to bounce and downsample again for CD? I upsample to 96 or 88.2 before processing tracks, be they mine or others'. Because I prefer the sound of certain plug-ins at higher SRs with oversampling turned off. And then I can easily convert to any distribution format from the 32-96 masters, and save high res versions with and without brickwall limiting for possible future use (vinyl, HD streaming). |
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Post by EmRR on Mar 17, 2023 13:31:52 GMT -6
And so we pay extra for a master that's so loud that you can't turn it up? Times change I guess. Eh donr ? Haha!! Getting old...... Loud music sounds better on laptops, cell phones and non-sealing earbuds, I admit. But to truly enjoy a recording, I like it less claustrophobic, a recording that breathes and has some depth. 10-14dB peak to average. I'm generally not a fan of 'remastered' classic LP's. Nothing like those modern masters that are so hot you keep turning them down, till you almost can't hear them, and they still sound too loud....so I turn them off..... I mean, I'm not against stacking a Super Reverb on top of an SVT and dimeing them both so you can't even hear the drummer 2 feet away, but..... |
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Post by viciousbliss on Mar 17, 2023 16:29:50 GMT -6
Anyone else think Tom's mix sounds way better than the finished master? It has huge peaks that extend and are not clipped. The Jensen master clips all the peaks as is the norm with most commercial music. To my ears, the mix could use a little more clarity, but that could also just be because it's an mp3. A touch more compression, just to blend the backing vocals more with the rest of the song. It doesn't need radical changes. It's already got a ton of character, sounds very forward. I've always heard that it's impossible to get things to the standard level of loudness without compromising the sound and I'd tend to agree. Ted's master sounds too aggressive for my tastes. Pushes the cymbals forward in a way I'm not a huge fan of. I've tried converting it to wav and playing around with it in Pro Tools. Just thought it'd be educational to see what happens since it's so rare to hear an unmastered mix from someone like Tom, even if it's a lossy version. At times I'll take a commercial cd and run it through my stuff to try and make it easier for me to listen to as a fan. With this song, the character Tom imparted gives me a lot less flexibility than stuff I mix myself. I don't use any master bus processing on my mixes at all. The third version with the L2 still has a lot more dynamics than the master. It would be great if the labels offered masters with the dynamics intact, I'm not sure why we're stuck with only one version when it shouldn't be that hard to bounce a second one without all the extra compression and/or limiting. Earache Records seems to be the only place that does this and it's only with a handful of classic albums. As a fan/listener, I've spent a lot of time on forums like stevehoffman.tv discussing different masterings, pressings, etc. Recently, I noticed some of the 2015 Bowie remasters had a lot more dynamics than usual. Life on Mars was much clearer than the European RCA cd, but the compression they added compromised the song even though there are no clipped peaks in the waveform. The RCA's peaks extend louder and keep the breathing room that the song needs. The prevailing thinking amongst a lot of mastering people these days seems to be about how they can make stuff as loud as possible while minimizing the damage. That seems to be the best we can hope for. The information we got about Chinese Democracy and Death Magnetic in 2008 was very helpful. Two very opposite approaches there. Some MEs also overdo the EQ. It's easy to go overboard. I've started to use less processing on masters and my stuff sounds better and better as a result. With plugins, it's so easy to just start chaining stuff together and creating all sorts of chaos. Mastering your own stuff makes a lot of sense...or at least attempting to. Just to understand what's possible. As a client, I quickly understood that a lot of supposed pros don't know some basic things. I'd read that a lot of mixing guys would start creeping into mastering territory so that the mastering person had little to work with and couldn't make any real changes. That way they would not get the blame if the mastering engineer ended up doing something that the label or whoever didn't like. Mastering my own stuff has shown me a lot of when to back off on a mix. There have been times where I've heard of mastering guys going back and asking for someone to send them the mix with no bus processing because the mix had such strong character that they had a lot of trouble working with it. The more you know, the better you can communicate what it is you're looking for and the better you can understand the other person's job. It's also easier to work with your own stuff at times. When Ted Jensen mastered the BOC record, I first thought it was 'way too loud. I asked for a version about ⅔ as loud, and he did it, (Don't know what he changed to do it,) but no one in the band thought it was an improvement, even me. If I want to listen to my own record for pleasure, I'll listen to Tom's mix. I'm so old I remember when I liked a song on the radio, I'd turn it up. Today's music, I don't do that. It's already loud enough, no matter what the volume is. I CAN'T turn it up and tolerate it. The last loud modern hit I remember turning up was "Semi-Charmed Life." Any chance you can get Frontiers to just release Tom's mix? In listening to Tom's mix some more, I don't think it needs much eq or compression. Ted's mastering is just a travesty. And I say that as someone who has been buying BOC albums for 28 years and albums from Frontiers for 18. Hearing Tom's mix was the first time I really took to anything on this record. Ted's master isn't even putting this album on par with the dozens of Frontiers albums I've heard or owned. The vinyl version of Symbol keeps the dynamics intact. There's definitely some vinyl coloration there, but it also sounds less compressed and less forward. A bit like when I add Cranesong's Peacock to something, but a bit better. I've generally avoided modern vinyl because so many of them are sourced from digital mix files that have already been limited to death. You never know what you're getting. One of these days I'll have to get a decent vinyl player and learn how to transfer them through the Aurora N. Tom's mix already has peaks going to the ceiling just about, very little headroom, like you said. The key is that they haven't been chopped in order to allow the remaining audio to be boosted to the max. It's kind of ironic that people in big name studios spend all this money on expensive gear just to objectively damage the audio. If you open the files in Audacity, it makes the waveforms very easy to display in a way that's easier to see than in say Pro Tools. You could have just run Tom's mix through a couple plugins as a self-master and it would have been far better than the official master. Maybe a lot of mastering people will make these ridiculously limited masters even if you request that they don't because they don't want to get a rep for making records sound "quiet". My own experience as a client is what led me to learning things on my own. Just after seeing how easy it is for some engineer to hijack a session or to show that they have a very limited knowledge of how to deduce what you're looking for. Tom and Ted worked together on one of my fav albums, Mechanical Animals. So, I looked into that. People say the original Nothing Records vinyl sounds tremendous. In playing back the cd files, it's distorted in a bad way when the music gets loud. I'll have to try a needledrop on this one too. There's this idea that albums that have been limited to death supposedly sound better on boomboxes and cheap gear. I'd disagree. Whenever I play original pressings of Fire of Unknown Origin or Club Ninja on my $32 Sansa Clip Jam with $80 Beats headphones, I don't feel like it needs more volume. What I will say is that bad distortions and other problems with audio are much more apparent when listening through K701s plugged into the Aurora N's headphone out. The public never asked for these limited to death masters. CD sales have always declined over time. Now vinyl is outpacing it if I recall. This loudness war mastering trend probably has something to do with it. When Chinese Democracy came out, I watched to see if anyone complained about the mastering for being "too quiet". I've never seen one complaint on any forum or in any review. Sad that Hard Skool and Absurd have absurd levels of loudness and sound pretty bad. Streaming normalizes audio anyway, so it's not like louder records can overpower everything else on there. |
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Post by christopher on Mar 17, 2023 17:25:50 GMT -6
That’s a pretty blunt, but fair assessment imo. I wouldn’t call Ted’s master *bad* myself.. on the contrary I’d called it an amazing feat of engineering, to fit into the status quo. Incredible! I could never get it that smooth with plugins at home. At least so far, as I haven’t downloaded the files though- I’ve only listened through the Dropbox streaming and they seem to be of a similar loudness, the master stretching deep and elements more on/off that kind of punch, and in your face up front vocals.
Going back to the Tom mix on the earbuds.. it’s hard for me not to just love it. I love how each drum hit is it’s own individual dynamics, bass is not loading up the sub region. I’d love more power from the bass and drums- and thats good! that’s why stereos come with bass /treble EQ and volume knob. The consumer can dial it to perfection .
Thats about all I can say for now, still sort of first impressions.. I’m battling a head cold and will download at some point.
And of THANK you for sharing Don! And John for having this place. I always sort of suspected it was mastering doing this, now I know the producers/mixers still got the skills .
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Post by viciousbliss on Mar 17, 2023 20:08:14 GMT -6
That’s a pretty blunt, but fair assessment imo. I wouldn’t call Ted’s master *bad* myself.. on the contrary I’d called it an amazing feat of engineering, to fit into the status quo. Incredible! I could never get it that smooth with plugins at home. At least so far, as I haven’t downloaded the files though- I’ve only listened through the Dropbox streaming and they seem to be of a similar loudness, the master stretching deep and elements more on/off that kind of punch, and in your face up front vocals. Going back to the Tom mix on the earbuds.. it’s hard for me not to just love it. I love how each drum hit is it’s own individual dynamics, bass is not loading up the sub region. I’d love more power from the bass and drums- and thats good! that’s why stereos come with bass /treble EQ and volume knob. The consumer can dial it to perfection . Thats about all I can say for now, still sort of first impressions.. I’m battling a head cold and will download at some point. And of THANK you for sharing Don! And John for having this place. I always sort of suspected it was mastering doing this, now I know the producers/mixers still got the skills . I'm trying to recall if Symbol was done on tape. I thought I had heard that somewhere. Newer albums that are done without tape seem to survive this sort of loudness war mastering easier than those that use it. Whatever analog distortions that are there just get magnified and it's one reason I really laid off using HG-2 MS and Satin on busses. I've learned that I'd rather leave a lot of the color for mastering and give myself more flexibility. Observing what happens with added color is another reason to at least try self-mastering. You can see what in your mixes magnifies when more processing is added. There's 23 pages about Symbol on the Steve Hoffman forum. Not a ton about the mastering that I've seen yet, most are talking about the band itself. The comments I have seen say the cd is really loud but not unlistenable. Quite a few people there are listening to the vinyl. Lots of rabid BOC fans there and it's great to see. For years I've been puzzled as to how this sort of loud and distorted mastering became normalized. And then we got to the point where it's been whitewashed, with plugin companies claiming they can make stuff really loud as if there are little or no compromises involved. All this talk about "commercial levels" as if levels in modern mastering should ever be talked about with any sort of legitimacy. I get that people don't want to lose work and all, it's just rare to see any sort of pushback against these practices outside of some place like the Steve Hoffman forum. Even on places where people buy expensive gear, speakers, and headphones, they're talking about modern masters as if their flaws won't be made more noticeable by better gear. Then they end up blaming the gear for revealing the problems thinking that the gear/headphones/speakers are bad. |
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Post by donr on Mar 18, 2023 12:05:26 GMT -6
“The Symbol Remains” was a DAW recording. ProTools and Digital Performer. Mixed on TLA’s SSL and outboard, but plugins too. I don’t know what Masterdisk uses, but it’s voodoo.
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Post by viciousbliss on Mar 18, 2023 16:07:29 GMT -6
“The Symbol Remains” was a DAW recording. ProTools and Digital Performer. Mixed on TLA’s SSL and outboard, but plugins too. I don’t know what Masterdisk uses, but it’s voodoo. Maybe what I read was that the intent was to get the record to sound a bit classic and it definitely does. Do you own a lot of outboard, Don? The sites for Sterling and Masterdisk don't really talk about their gear at all. I've known those names as a listener for the last 30 years though. Lots of "mastered by George Marino at Sterling Sound" on so many classics. When I first started buying music, I was always curious how it was created and what was meant by mixing, mastering, spar codes, etc. If you're at liberty to say, does Frontiers push for these really loud masters with low dynamic range? I collected quite a few of their releases before I stopped buying insanely loud cds in 2007. That was when I first started getting into listening gear beyond what was consumer level at the time. |
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fuzzy
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Post by fuzzy on Jun 12, 2023 18:17:49 GMT -6
for me, "mastering" my own mix just means I push the level a little more - or maybe i back it off less. our jobs are to make it sound as good as we can, no? what do you all "save" for mastering? There is no need for an artist or producer to “save” anything for mastering for there to be something that an impartial master can change and help…and I am not talking about just level…certainly eq if not dynamics are seldomly the last word with the final mix in most situations. Even with great mixes. Obviously, everyone wants it to sounds as good as they can. Many of us have found that mastering is a reliable way for the continuation of that that same logic. Whether we master by ourselves or by someone else. I dunno, I guess I wouldn’t consider the 2 buss coming off of my console to be my final master on a slamming mix. I would know that it can subjectively slightly change to fit the context of the surrounding tracks in the project. Not to mention that mastering is also track positioning and fitting the levels between tracks as well as making sure that the material is ready for the particular format that it is being used. For example a master is not the same for vinyl as it is for a streamer… I recently mastered an album for a vinyl release as well as for streaming and discs. The master was very different for each context. Especially for vinyl. Not for just level but image width, eq and comp grip too. I have been tracking and mixing since the late eighties and have been mastering off and on since around 2015. In the time that I have been learning about mastering I can’t think of a single raw project where absolutely nothing could be done to help. That being said there have been many projects that I have seen that have had extremely subtle processing. Some with even no limiter at all…(Classical guitar location recordings for example). I guess I like to think of mastering as the final arranging, balancing and polishing as well as the time to contour the audio to it’s final context. It can also be a time to discover that even though it can be helped a bit they find that the mix that someone thought was great sucks and has to go back… 😀 |
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Post by RealNoob on Jun 12, 2023 20:57:46 GMT -6
Justin here is my current ME. There are two things I appreciate most. Talking about the target honestly. I generally use a reference track to mix and have begun to share with the ME. This collaboration that Justin willingly participates in helps me better put my project into the context of commercial releases I need it to be in.
Second and more about the work, He is able to open up the mix in a way that I hadn't be able to do previously. I haven't asked him to reveal how but I appreciate it. However, now with the IAA LH95's, I hope my mixes will be closer to that openness to begin with.
I have thought about using self-serve options. I just don't have the trust with that yet.
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