ericn
Temp
Balance Engineer
Posts: 14,919 
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Post by ericn on May 29, 2023 20:29:04 GMT -6
I just did some mix revisions on a Jazz record, why ? The original mixer did it exclusively on headphones using VSX LF was totally screwed up because you can’t really tell what’s going on below 50HZ on any headphones, those lowest of lows need space and the 2 channels need to acoustically sum in space to show phase issues.
Sorry but if a mastering engineer can’t hear or correct the very low Frequencies he is not audiophile. VSX can mimimic some of the sound of some decent speakers and is impressive till you demo it next to those speakers, then you understand why ATC is ATC. You can’t subtract distortion.
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Post by viciousbliss on May 30, 2023 0:48:53 GMT -6
I just did some mix revisions on a Jazz record, why ? The original mixer did it exclusively on headphones using VSX LF was totally screwed up because you can’t really tell what’s going on below 50HZ on any headphones, those lowest of lows need space and the 2 channels need to acoustically sum in space to show phase issues. Sorry but if a mastering engineer can’t hear or correct the very low Frequencies he is not audiophile. VSX can mimimic some of the sound of some decent speakers and is impressive till you demo it next to those speakers, then you understand why ATC is ATC. You can’t subtract distortion. Would this be something you think is noticeable on playback systems designed for listening? Do you know what this mixer had his VSX plugged into? I've got an ID14, 404HD, and an Aurora N and the quality of playback is massively better on the Lynx. Before I ever tried mixing, I spent years studying headphones and the sources and amps that go with them. Just having an impedance that's too high on the headphone amp can screw up a lot of what you hear. I made sure to clarify some things about the headphone section with my sales guy and Lynx before my Aurora N arrived. Are you saying that things below 50 hz aren't audible on headphones or just that they don't sound right? I don't solely rely on VSX. I check on K701s and consumer speakers. A lot of times I'll go back and make adjustments. But overall things I do translate pretty well aside from sounding a bit anemic. Plugins almost always sound anemic compared to their hardware counterparts. Fusion, VSE-2, Shadow Hills, there's quite a few. I just loaded up PT and in Pro Q3 I can hear down to 15 hz while subtracting about 1 db. 13hz is audible if I add about 3 db in. I'm genuinely interested in what you're specifically referring to here. I'll see what else I can find. The vast majority of what I read and hear about VSX is how everyone is surprised how effective it is. There was someone who did something notable that was played on national tv using VSX. It was earlier in its release if I recall. You have notable forum posters saying they feel it's just as good as their monitors. Describing it as like having their room "in a box" something like that. If there is some massive flaw in VSX, there has to be a workaround of some kind. |
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Post by chipbuttie on May 30, 2023 7:40:17 GMT -6
It seems that you’re basing your business model on the idea that established mastering studios are turning out low quality work, which isn’t true in my experience. Ok, you listed a few records that are well known for being overly crushed to win the loudness wars but the truth is there are some damn good mastering engineers out there.
To be totally honest based on your sales pitch I wouldn’t hire you, I wouldn’t even consider it… why?
You don’t have credits. You don’t have what I consider to be good monitoring. You don’t have experience. You don’t have anything I look for in a mastering engineer.
You’ve lost me too!
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Post by niklas1073 on May 30, 2023 7:58:26 GMT -6
Well this thread have taken a rather interesting turn 😄. I must say, I don’t know who hires a master engineer based on the rig to begin with. The track record brings the clients. Along with there being more bad engineers, mixers and mastering engineers in the world than ever before, there are also better engineers, mixers and mastering engineers than ever before. It’s the inevitable evolution of knowledge and technology. So I think it’s kind of ignorant to state that no one puts out great masters in these days. Was just listening to Bruce Springsteen’s Letter To You along with reading the thread and f#@& me that is a master piece throughout the production. And I could easily list 100 recently published albums that could objectively be considered as great productions in every aspect including the mastering.
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Post by jmoose on May 30, 2023 14:37:01 GMT -6
Well this thread have taken a rather interesting turn 😄. I must say, I don’t know who hires a master engineer based on the rig to begin with. The track record brings the clients. Along with there being more bad engineers, mixers and mastering engineers in the world than ever before, there are also better engineers, mixers and mastering engineers than ever before. It’s the inevitable evolution of knowledge and technology. So I think it’s kind of ignorant to state that no one puts out great masters in these days. Yes... at this point it feels more like an intervention then anything else. Major conundrum in the "work for hire" realm? What are you going to do when you deliver mixes or cut masters, and you think its great and the artist comes back and says Nope. Off target. Go again. And now maybe they're pushing for something that's against your personal tastes? Pushing out of a comfort zone and / or you think is just completely stupid? Are you gonna say no you guys are idiots? I'm not doing this? Or are you going to try & accommodate to the best of your abilities? Presumably you took the money and said yes to the work? Now what..? Do you let yourself get backed up against the wall or do you have a solution? The guys who are up to par call those clients demanding. The guys who aren't up to par them call difficult. |
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Post by Deleted on May 30, 2023 17:25:55 GMT -6
And lofi or electronic clients impressed by analog gear? That is a seriously misguided flex attempt. If anything most of those guys are just impressed if you have monitors. Any monitors
It’s all about results
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Post by Bat Lanyard on May 30, 2023 17:45:21 GMT -6
Sorry, but this all sounds like ChatGPT or whatever they call it. Everything just going in circles.
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Post by viciousbliss on May 30, 2023 22:14:40 GMT -6
I take into account everything everyone is saying and think things over a lot before making any final decisions. So, I appreciate what people here have to say. Seems like what I've been saying is not translating. My whole pitch is going to be to hire me based on my own branding. Meaning that the potential client knows what they're getting into ahead of time, so there aren't these big disagreements. A lot of my background was in selling to hostile customers on the South side of Chicago, I'm used to dealing with objections ahead of time. I'm not chasing after the clients who are looking for credits and things I don't have. That would be a braindead approach. I'm surprised anyone would think that I believe that I can go buy 20k worth of hardware and then go try and compete against some well-established studio for clients who want something I'm not trying to deliver. All I was looking for was some simple feedback on hardware pieces. I've had a few people tell me that their clients have gone to them because they had certain gear. People here have said that doesn't happen. Is it not possible that both experiences are true? The people telling me their gear entices clients don't have a reason to lie to me. It's not like they're sending me affiliate links so they can get a cut of a hypothetical VK order.
And it's not like I haven't thought about monitors and treatment. If that were a viable idea, I'd have done it years ago. It just doesn't make sense for me to invest a lot in treatment in a place that is either temporary or will be sold in a year or two. It also won't solve the anemic plugin sound. If it turns out that there is a set of monitors that would make a huge difference over VSX in the environment that I'm in, I'll figure that out in time. First, I have to see if I can even get approved for any financing above a few thousand. I may be stuck with only being able to get one Looptrotter piece and IGS Tubecore on a 48 month deal. There's no need for intervention. It's not like I'm attempting to take on massive debt with gear and then renting out a physical space. We're talking $300-$500 a month max invested so I can start off trying to serve a market that can't afford more than say $40-$100 a song. If that works, then try to go up to the next tier.
With modern mastering, all this low DR stuff is compromising the fidelity/quality of the master in the eyes of a lot of people. People can like that style or not. It's not that different from back when some people wanted Pan&Scan movies because they filled a 4:3 screen. You lost information in order to fill the screen. With a lot of modern masters you're losing peaks so the waveform can fill the whole range. If people want or need to do that to make a living, that's up to them. Barry Diament was at one time a top mastering engineer who did a lot of big albums. He refused to master in these low DR styles, so he takes work from people who are fine with his approach. If I want to follow a similar path, who cares? Maybe Dangerous Music is telling the truth in their advertising when they say their compressor nullifies the problems with low DR masters and I'll be happy to use that and churn out DR5 albums.
There's no need to keep going in circles. It's my relatively small risk to take. I could get a few things, decide stuff still sounds too digital and sterile, and send it all back within 30 days and forget the whole thing.
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Post by jcoutu1 on May 31, 2023 8:35:57 GMT -6
If you’re going after $40-$100 clients, that’s not a sustainable business. The quality of recordings you’ll be asked to mix will take WAY too much time to get to a reasonable sounding mix. At that rate, you’re a hobbyist that’s doing it because you enjoy doing it, like the stuff you’re working on, and want to gain some experience.
And I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but it’s definitely not running a business. You won’t make minimum wage doing that. May as well flip burgers at that price.
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Post by sean on May 31, 2023 9:21:35 GMT -6
I take into account everything everyone is saying and think things over a lot before making any final decisions. So, I appreciate what people here have to say. Seems like what I've been saying is not translating. My whole pitch is going to be to hire me based on my own branding. Meaning that the potential client knows what they're getting into ahead of time, so there aren't these big disagreements. A lot of my background was in selling to hostile customers on the South side of Chicago, I'm used to dealing with objections ahead of time. I'm not chasing after the clients who are looking for credits and things I don't have. That would be a braindead approach. I'm surprised anyone would think that I believe that I can go buy 20k worth of hardware and then go try and compete against some well-established studio for clients who want something I'm not trying to deliver. All I was looking for was some simple feedback on hardware pieces. I've had a few people tell me that their clients have gone to them because they had certain gear. People here have said that doesn't happen. Is it not possible that both experiences are true? The people telling me their gear entices clients don't have a reason to lie to me. It's not like they're sending me affiliate links so they can get a cut of a hypothetical VK order. And it's not like I haven't thought about monitors and treatment. If that were a viable idea, I'd have done it years ago. It just doesn't make sense for me to invest a lot in treatment in a place that is either temporary or will be sold in a year or two. It also won't solve the anemic plugin sound. If it turns out that there is a set of monitors that would make a huge difference over VSX in the environment that I'm in, I'll figure that out in time. First, I have to see if I can even get approved for any financing above a few thousand. I may be stuck with only being able to get one Looptrotter piece and IGS Tubecore on a 48 month deal. There's no need for intervention. It's not like I'm attempting to take on massive debt with gear and then renting out a physical space. We're talking $300-$500 a month max invested so I can start off trying to serve a market that can't afford more than say $40-$100 a song. If that works, then try to go up to the next tier. With modern mastering, all this low DR stuff is compromising the fidelity/quality of the master in the eyes of a lot of people. People can like that style or not. It's not that different from back when some people wanted Pan&Scan movies because they filled a 4:3 screen. You lost information in order to fill the screen. With a lot of modern masters you're losing peaks so the waveform can fill the whole range. If people want or need to do that to make a living, that's up to them. Barry Diament was at one time a top mastering engineer who did a lot of big albums. He refused to master in these low DR styles, so he takes work from people who are fine with his approach. If I want to follow a similar path, who cares? Maybe Dangerous Music is telling the truth in their advertising when they say their compressor nullifies the problems with low DR masters and I'll be happy to use that and churn out DR5 albums. There's no need to keep going in circles. It's my relatively small risk to take. I could get a few things, decide stuff still sounds too digital and sterile, and send it all back within 30 days and forget the whole thing. I've never seen the abbreviation DR (except for doctor) but I'm assuming it stands for dynamic range? Anyway, I think if you are looking for a piece of hardware that has what a lot of engineers refer to as "box tone" you might consider the Louder Than Liftoff Silver Bullet or Portico II Master Buss Processor...or some other stereo unit that can give you some saturation...stereo width..."broad" EQ...and in the case of the Portico compression. Usually when I think of clients hiring someone based on gear it's recording studios, not mastering engineers. Because I know some of them, mixers on sites like Air Gigs and Soundbetter might be sitting in front of a large console with a ton of outboard, but that's not where they mix or actually work. It just looks better. And if you are stuck on headphones, I'd check out the Audeze MM-500 headphones. They'd be a lifetime investment and headphones you could reliably mix on without VSX or similar software. And get the piece of gear that inspires you...being inspired is what's going to make your mixes or masters stand out, not because you own some box. But if that box gets you excited when you listen, it's worth it. |
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Post by Deleted on May 31, 2023 9:36:56 GMT -6
If you’re going after $40-$100 clients, that’s not a sustainable business. The quality of recordings you’ll be asked to mix will take WAY too much time to get to a reasonable sounding mix. At that rate, you’re a hobbyist that’s doing it because you enjoy doing it, like the stuff you’re working on, and want to gain some experience. And I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but it’s definitely not running a business. You won’t make minimum wage doing that. May as well flip burgers at that price. The cheap clients can’t tell a tube from a light bulb. The guys charging 20 dollars to mix a track on Fiverr or Soundbetter are making jack shit post 5% Soundbetter or 20% Fiverr cut, 3% payment processor fees, 15.3% self-employment tax, and federal and state income taxes on top of that. It’s going to end up being less than 10 dollars profit a track. It’s physically impossible to do a good job on a multitrack recording and eat for that. You don’t even have time to listen to it. |
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Post by viciousbliss on May 31, 2023 15:40:34 GMT -6
Well guys, this whole idea of buying expensive hardware with financing was predicated on what my rep at VK told me. Now he's not sure it'll be as easy as he thought. It's tough to say definitively what pieces I would find most inspirational as I have to base my opinion on wav files and Youtube clips. If I were buying just for myself to play around with, I would first start with this 48 month Looptrotter and IGS stuff. The SPL PQ plugin is so good that I couldn't really justify spending 5-6k to snag the hardware. I've had really low budget clients in the past give me files that were actually quite good sounding. Usually a lot of sampled instruments and they'd record the vocals, bass, and guitars with some $100 condenser from a brand like Audio Technica. I've spent years learning how to make that stuff sound good enough that I'd find it fun to listen to. And I'm really put off by abrasive sounding stuff. I was just listening to some of this new Barry Diament stuff and while it has these DR14-16 ranges, it's really harsh sounding and it's like one giant peak after another. Just listening to it makes me wish it had some good compression applied. Doesn't sound at all like the styles he used on classic records he mastered for the likes of Slayer and Guns N Roses. I find it easier to listen to the DR5 Fear Disease album. DR rating is a measure of dynamic range, yes. Not the end all be all. There's a noted plugin company that makes a meter for it. I just play tracks in Foobar and use their tool, found here: stoptheloudnesswar.blogspot.com/2011/08/dynamic-range-meter-and-foobar-2000.htmlPortico II has sounded awesome when I've heard it in videos. There's a couple comparing and contrasting it with Fusion. In those, it was a case of where I thought both were great. I've never thought to myself "man, I wish I could have bought the Neve". Lately I keep getting better and better sounding results just using the PA Alpha plugin in my chain. Never really used it before. Maybe I'd be thrilled with the result of just adding one more piece to add a bit more saturation and decide that's all I need. In terms of business, I've planned things in a way where I don't need a ton of money to get by. I've never wanted to be someone who was badly leveraged if I could help it. Worse comes to worse, I take another job somewhere and make a small amount from audio. What I wanted to do was start with the best foundation of gear and plugins before I paid for ads or anything. See how far I could go with it. And, of course, I never stop trying to learn things. I know there's formalities in regards to contracts/ToS, etc, standards for delivery, taxes, all that fun stuff. It's likely that I will educate myself on that type of thing before I try to advertise beyond something like Craigslist. I've had a few studio guys tell me their specific gear was a draw. Someone else who just got an Alpha about 3 months ago told me that no one has specifically asked him to use it since he got it. Is it because the Alpha is not as known as a Shadow Hills or Fairchild? Difference in markets? Difference in marketing approach and effort by the studio owner? Who knows. It's entirely possible that if someone dropped 100k in my lap, I bought a Vacuvox 32 and all the best stuff, and then I bought 10 print ads on top of it that there'd be only minimal interest. We're probably only a few years away from plugins that can really close the gap on the hardest to emulate hardware and then AI that can replicate music convincingly, so, there's not a lot of incentive to go crazy spending. |
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