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Hi folks,

Just wondering is there any plugin available that I can run a commerically availabe song through(country)and it will give me an idea of what to do as regards eq or other things when mastering my own country song?

Something pretty simple but maybe thats not available.

Thanks
Musiclover

I believe that professional mastering services have (or should have) a specialized room with "perfect" acoustic treatment and high end monitors and a few hardware and software tools to master songs according to sonic requirements of today's music.

What to do if you are like me with the lack of a specialized acoustical treatment and monitors? Mastering for me just becomes an exercise in leveling the volumes across all the songs that would make up a CD. of course today, folks like to think that you can master individual songs. If it is for one song, you are going to use a compressor (or a limiter -- a specialized compressor) to compress the peaks and then boost the overall gain to get closer to what one would consider radio ready volume levels. Perhaps a multi-band compressor with a limiter on top of that is really the most you can reasonably do (Free multi-band compressors).

Your job, as a home studio guy, is to just really mix really well. If you have an excellent mix, then mastering is not as required -- except for maybe that multiband compressor and limiter combination on the master bus.

Kevin

The problem is that the song is already mastered, so there's no plug in that will tell you what was done. Even if there was, you still wouldn't have the original file to compare to what the mastering engineer did.

Manning1 used to say 'What is the black art of audio engineering?', IIRC, and he's right. In a sense, it is a black art.

Today's engineers are tending to use a minimalist approach. Use as little effects as you can to achieve the required and desired sound.

One old trick that I really like is this. Cut a CD with your track on it, and then go play it on as many different devices as you can find. Your computer, your home stereo, your car, your personal CD player, etc. If it sounds good on all of them, at the settings you find pleasant for all other listening, then you've mastered it pretty well. What this does is help you to identify bits of your monitoring system and listening enclosure to determine what's happening in there. From there, you can adjust the mix as necessary to produce the best sound.

Gary

Quote:

... Cut a CD with your track on it, and then go play it on as many different devices as you can find. Your computer, your home stereo, your car, your personal CD player, etc. If it sounds good on all of them, at the settings you find pleasant for all other listening, then you've mastered it pretty well. ... --- Gary

No, I think you can say you "mixed" it well. Whether or not it translates on various system is not the primary function of mastering engineer, that is the primary function of the mixing engineer.

Can y9ou define the terms mixdown, mastering and enginnering for me so I know when I read your posts, and I read them carefully because you know what you are doing, I know what you really mean. I know a lot of people who use those terms interchangeably and it would help me understand to know how you define "mastering".

"Home Mastering" is a term not unlike "Home Neurosurgery". If you need a radio-ready track, pay the money and get it mastered.

Regards,

Bob

Throw the word engineer away -- that's just whoever is doing the work.

mastering: Here are some good definitions I've found:
(a) Audio mastering: "...is the process of preparing and transferring recorded audio from a source containing the final mix to a data storage device (the master); the source from which all copies will be produced"
(b) "The last transfer from work in progress to finished product that is intended for the end consumer."
(c)"a process whereby a number of songs, after being mixed down, are EQ'd, compressed as necessary, and balanced in volume with each other, so that they will sound good when placed together on a CD."

Basically mastering is always done to the finished stereo file. Can you use EQ and compression to overcome a less than stellar mix? I guess so, but that seems like a self defeating task.

Mixing: This is what all of us do (ha, ha). We take our 4, 8, 12, 24 ... tracks and individually pan them, eq them, compress them, reverb them, and (optionally) send them to mix busses as groups to process them there (eq, compression, effects) so that we get a nice, balanced sounding stereo master output. If we have done our jobs well, we can take our stereo mix out to the car, over to a friend's house, put it on a mp3 player, etc. and it will pretty much sound the same (within reason) as what we heard in our "studio". If they sound too different on different systems, it is back to the DAW and re-mix a little. The key to good mixing is "trusting what your hear".

I have an untreated room, BX5a 5" monitors and ath-m50 headphones. I listen under everything, listen to reference tracks (commercial CD's I think are great) and do the best I can. I can't seem to get a good mix without listening on other systems though -- my listening setup is not that good, I guess. Is it magic ears??? Nope -- I can get the mix to sound pretty decent on my setup. It just doesn't "translate" to other systems like I would hope. My ears are "OK", it just means my room and my monitors (and headphones) are not re-producing the full EQ spectrum accurately enough.

Now, if I can't Mix accurately enough, how in the world could I ever hope to master accurately?

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"Home Mastering" is a term not unlike "Home Neurosurgery".

So I am guessing "home vasectomy" is also not a great idea?

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If you need a radio-ready track, pay the money and get it mastered.

I agree in principle, but "Eddie" and "pay the money" are rarely used that close together in a sentence.

Kevin,
Okay, you're right. Mixing and mastering are two different things. Yes, I used the words interchangeably. In a home studio, it is possible that the terms are closer to one another in meaning than if you were to go to DiskMakers or such and have them prepare a Red book CD for you.

Now, here's the real question. Which term did the OP mean? Did he use the term "mastering" correctly, or did he mean mixing?

Gary

I am actually doing a CD (finally) and I hope to be finished in the next month or two. I have 12 songs that clock in at around 36 minutes. My plan is to mix them as best that I can do, then turn off the compression/limiting on the master bus and output the 12 stereo files to individual wave files.

To "master" them, I will then import those songs one by one into a new Sonar file with spaces between each one. So I will have 12 songs end to end on one track that will last 36 minutes. Then I will apply light multiband compression and limiting on that new "master" bus and try and make the songs flow together volume wise. Once I have it as good as I can do, I will then re-rendered the 12 songs individually, drag them into a CD-burning program and bam!, a CD is born. Oh, I will find a special "mastering engineering" hat to wear while I do all that!

Quote:

... Now, here's the real question. Which term did the OP mean? Did he use the term "mastering" correctly, or did he mean mixing? -- Gary

I just re-read that OP and I guess I missed what he was wanting to do. I believe he has the terminology right -- but there is nothing out there (that I know of) that will do what he wants. You have to go the other way -- tweak and tweak until you get a sound close to those commercial records.

Here's a quick interesting article on pre-mastering tips: http://passivepromotion.com/a-mastering-engineers-guide-to-final-mixdown Note that he does talk about "mastering" being used to allow consistent playback on many systems. However, if you don't have that part right in the "mix", you have just made the mastering engineer's job a lot harder (and more expensive if you want it to sound great).

Of course, since you don't have the same expensive listening room that the mastering engineer has, you can only get so close to a final CD that translates excellently everywhere.

Professional mastering is really not that expensive, when you consider how an experienced ME can make your tracks sound. Approx. $2.00 per minute, and you get a red book master that is ready for duplication. Here is a good article on mastering:

http://www.musicbizacademy.com/articles/gman_mastering.htm

p.s. I am not, nor have I ever been a mastering engineer. Anyone who listens to my tracks will attest to that.

Regards,

Bob

Thanks a lot for replies. Yes it’s the mastering part that I am on about, the final tweaking after mixing to give the mixdown that little bit extra to make it shine and closer to a commercial release that we hear.

In fact I am just talking about doing one song at a time, as I don't have a whole bunch of songs that I could turn into a CD.

I do have ozone 4 with a lot of presets in it, and I suppose it helps a bit, but still a lot of hit and miss.

1 Just wondering if a song has each track mixed down well, with the proper eq's and other plugins added to each track, does this minimize the need for mastering on the final stereo track) (if its a standalone song not to be put on a CD)

2 As regards the Harmonic Series for each instrument in a song, is it wise mainly to tweak the eq frequencies for a particular instrument's song range i.e. cutting the frequencies of that instrument so that it won't clash with another instrument in the song? I am probably not understanding or asking this right so if you don't understand what I am asking feel free to ignore it.

Gary's tip about playing the finished song on different systems is good, I had thought about that, and maybe even loading a commercial song into the DAW so that I can compare the tonal qualities of it to my song as regards mastering.

Thanks very much for your replies and advice,

Musiclover

There's really no such thing as mastering one song.
Another trick I learned when it comes to seeing how your mix is. Pull out the old vacuum cleaner and start cleaning your mix room.Then see if you can hear the tune evenly with all the noise going. Start turning the song down and see if you start losing stuff.Sounds ridiculous I know but give it a try.The wife will be happy as well.

Quote:

There's really no such thing as mastering one song.
Another trick I learned when it comes to seeing how your mix is. Pull out the old vacuum cleaner and start cleaning your mix room.Then see if you can hear the tune evenly with all the noise going. Start turning the song down and see if you start losing stuff.Sounds ridiculous I know but give it a try.The wife will be happy as well.

Thanks a lot John for your reply, I thought it was was possible to master just one standalone song, surely single releases are mastered.

Thanks for that tip about the vacuum, must try it. Unfortunately I don't have a studio room due to lack of space, the spealers are sitting behind my 22 inch LG monitor, and I mean directly behind it.

receipe for disaster I know as regards having a good mixdown.

musiclover

Single Releaases are indeed Mastered. Or at least, they should be.

If you think that tossing the title of "Engineer" out is all you need do, don't expect to be able to reliably get good results every time.

That said, there are softwares and plugins designed to make the Mastering rather easy. Likely the leader of the pack these days would be T-Racks, also check out Ozone.

--Mac

If OP already has Ozone and really wants to do it himself, he should spend time learning it.
Read the manual (very good stuff in there).

Oh, and saw this today
http://www.izotope.com/artists/adam_ayan...2012+Newsletter

In the old days, when balancing the tracks on an album, the mastering engineer would use his ears, instead of relying only on the meters, to assess relative sound intensity. This approach seems to have largely died out, which is perhaps a shame.

ROG.

Quote:

Single Releaases are indeed Mastered. Or at least, they should be.

If you think that tossing the title of "Engineer" out is all you need do, don't expect to be able to reliably get good results every time.

That said, there are softwares and plugins designed to make the Mastering rather easy. Likely the leader of the pack these days would be T-Racks, also check out Ozone.

--Mac

Mac,
I think you miss my point. I actually wasn't real clear on what I mean. Of course if you take a single song from a project of a bunch of songs it will have been Mastered.My point is that you don't take say 12 songs Master one ,set it aside. Master #2 and set it aside.Master #3 and set it aside. Mastering is really taking a whole group of songs and making a cohesive sounding project.If you record just one song, take the stereo file and do some hokuss pokus to it I really don't call that Mastering. To me it's just finishing the mix of the one tune.Any good engineer can finish a single song to be release ready. It takes an Engineer that's also an "artist" to Master a group of 12 songs. Just my opinion.

In Logic Pro 9 you can load a song and it will make the frequencies that are present into a template so that it's EQ can be replicated. But that's a long way from what mastering a song from scratch would be. There are so many other aspects to mastering, and listening a pro song and trying to match the sound isn't as easy as it would seem although not impossible. I've heard some homemade stuff that was as good as any studio, but if I was needing a pro sound I would use a pro studio. I'm just a hobbyist so I don't need perfection to have fun.

Quote:

Mac,
I think you miss my point. I actually wasn't real clear on what I mean. Of course if you take a single song from a project of a bunch of songs it will have been Mastered.My point is that you don't take say 12 songs Master one ,set it aside. Master #2 and set it aside.Master #3 and set it aside. Mastering is really taking a whole group of songs and making a cohesive sounding project.If you record just one song, take the stereo file and do some hokuss pokus to it I really don't call that Mastering. To me it's just finishing the mix of the one tune.Any good engineer can finish a single song to be release ready. It takes an Engineer that's also an "artist" to Master a group of 12 songs. Just my opinion.

In the pro world, it is done both ways.

If there is just one cut and no others, that one cut is still subjected to Mastering process.

A compilation or "album" is often Mastered such that there are no apparent abrupt changes in volume, amplitude (almost the same thing as Volume but not quite), EQ, etc. but a good a Mastering Engineer can bring out the exact same qualities when confronted with only the single. And should.

This is not a black art, it is a technology.

--Mac

OK,

I'm going to pretend that there isn't an argument about what mastering means and whether or not there are professionals who do or do not know what they are doing, and whether or not this is a black art.

I can tell you that there are methods which can take what you have now, run it through a preset called 'country rock', and doggone it if it doesn't make it sound more like what a proper country rock tune on the radio sounds like.

rharv pointed to one of the plugins that have presets like this, Ozone. In Tracktion (for those of you that purchased it at $19 last year, there is the Final Mix plugin which functions very similarly). http://www.mackie.com/products/tracktion2/mackie.html

The final mix plugin has the following for a signal chain - all inside this one plugin:

6 band parametric EQ, for pre-dynamics shaping
3 band dynamics processor
6 band parametric eq, for post-dynamics shaping
limiter; with lots of controls of knee points, etc.

Now, with that kind of signal chain, there are infinite combinations of parameters. However, the good thing is that it comes bundled with about 100 presets, some aimed at final 2 track treatment, some aimed at individual track treatment.

You can indeed cheat significantly with this plugin, or with Ozone - which rharv pointed to farther above in the thread.

The presets are outstanding. You may need to tweak them a bit, but while this sounds like copping out, indeed spending a few minutes auditioning presets that seem to fit your desired outcome can lead to amazing results that would take hours and days to construct on your own.

All of this is coming from the mindset of treating a final 2-track mixdown for some extra special sauce that you were unable to achieve through traditional mix exercises.

I know that the best way to go about this is through proper mixing and individual track technique - please let's not go preaching about that.

To the OP: To demonstrate, I will do this for free for you. Send me a PM with a link to a high bit rate .mp3 of the file; at least 192kbps. Send me some links to the type of song you want your track to sound like. Then I'll fiddle around putting it through some of the presets in Final Mix, and send you back the links of 192 kbps .mp3 files. I'm not going to spend more than 20 minutes on it. Most of that time will be spent rendering the output audio files.

There will be one or two of the links that are likely going to be improvements to your ears.

When that Tracktion 3 deal went down for $19 last year, it was worth it alone just for the FinalMix plugin. Mackie made it so that it will only work native in Tracktion - it's really too bad, because they could be bankrolling quite alot of money for sales of that plugin alone.

-Scott

Another all-in-one mastering tool that is relatively inexpensive is EZMix2

All though this is thought of as a mixing tool it also has some pretty good mastering presets that you may find fits your needs.

Final Mix is cool, especially being a free 'thrown in' type effect, but you have to transfer the work to Traktion.

Ozone works in most DAWS (including PGMusic) and has:

8 band Paragraphic EQ
4 band Multiband Dynamics (including 6 band mid/side option)
4 band Harmonic Exciter
Mastering Reverb
Loudness Maximizer
Multiband Stereo Imaging
Dithering
tons of presets
.. and the OP already has it.

He needs to spend some time with it, or have someone else do it. Either one could be a good choice.

Quote:

Final Mix is cool, especially being a free 'thrown in' type effect, but you have to transfer the work to Traktion.

Ozone works in most DAWS (including PGMusic) and has:

8 band Paragraphic EQ
4 band Multiband Dynamics (including 6 band mid/side option)
4 band Harmonic Exciter
Mastering Reverb
Loudness Maximizer
Multiband Stereo Imaging
Dithering
tons of presets
.. and the OP already has it.

He needs to spend some time with it, or have someone else do it. Either one could be a good choice.

Hi Bob, I missed the part where he said he already owns Ozone. As you correctly stated he has everything he needs right now.

Izotope has a very informative document that is one of the best introductory text about mastering that I've found. It's free and very useful even if you don't own Ozone:

Mastering with Ozone:
http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/ozone/support.asp#guides

Here's what they say about presets:

"The difficult part of mastering (and trying to create a guide like this) is that every effect, setting, and parameter is entirely dependent on the content of the mix, the genre, the desired result, etc. With this in mind, we don’t believe in products that fool you into thinking you can just select the “Hot Pop Master!” preset and you’re done."

They designed the preset system just as start point that some users can find useful (and I suppose that there are also some marketing considerations behind that).

I think the same could be said about other mastering suites, as T-racks.

Thanks very much for all replies and for the offer MarioD. Going to give ozone a shot to see how it comes out, and read the manual as pointed out by Rharv.

Still messing around with this little song of mine at the mixdown stage. Will post it in user showcase when I think it sounds reasonable, just a sinmple little country tune.

Thanks for all advice I really appreciate it.

Musiclover

Actually, there is software that tries to do exactly that. The concept is called "spectral balancing."

If you use an FFT graph (such as SPAN), you can see what sort of balance curve that an mastering engineer would be aiming for. You can then use a multi-band EQ to target your own music to match a similar curve.

There are a number of programs that will attempt to automate this for you. You can either select a reference curve from the library, or have the software build a reference curve for you from a song.

Here are some examples of reference EQ curves for various styles.

One of the first programs that claims to be able to do this is Har-Bal. You can find an on-line tutorial program explaining the process here.

Voxengo's CurveEQ also claims to do the same thing.

I can't say how well either of them work. I've never tried Har-Val, and I can't figure out how CurveEQ is supposed to work...

Missed that the OP has Ozone. I also missed that his monitor speakers are BEHIND his display monitor.

Fix that first. Report back here after that is done.

@Dcuny,

SPAN won't let you do an entire song, just the most recent x seconds. HARBAL is designed to analyze the whole song at one swipe. However, looking at the spectrum only lets you see what is going on from an EQ standpoint - doesn't do anything to help with the dynamics processing. It is a tool, but not enough to go where the OP seems to want to go.

-Scott

Thanks for the information on those tools.

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However, looking at the spectrum only lets you see what is going on from an EQ standpoint

Since the OP asked about mastering "as regards eq or other things" I figured these tools were in the ballpark. Obviously, mastering is a lot more than that.

I have the previous version of Har-Bal (an update was released a few months ago) and it's an excellent home mastering solution. Not only is it easy to use, it does exactly what the OP wants to do. You can load a professionally mastered song and either match it or use it as a reference to get an idea of how to balance your songs. It also has dynamics processing (now) and even loudness matching, which helps with multiple tracks with varying volumes. With that and Ozone, you could do a whole lot of mastering and save the bucks.

IMO, while it's certainly not the best idea to master your own tracks, it's a rediculous waste of money to pay someone if you're a home hobbyist and not planning some kind of pro career. Since you have the tools, why not give it a try? I think it's half the fun. Just make sure you take a few weeks off from the mixing stage to start mastering.