PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production Soundcloud/Dolby $5.00 Mastering

Soundcloud is now offering a Dolby-based online mastering service, where you give it a recording plus $5.00 and it gives you back a "mastered" version that will supposedly rival the product of a high-priced professional engineer. https://soundcloud.com/you/mastering

As I understand the service, there are 3 areas in which these masters supposedly excel:

1) They should sound awesome, in terms of basic music mixing fundamentals. (This would be my primary concern.)

2) They should play with a consistent sound on all kinds of different hardware – audiophile studio setup, car stereo, phone speaker, etc. (If this really works, it would be great – I'm tired of feeling like I have to listen to everything I do on every device I can play it on.)

3) They should survive uploading to various online services (YouTube, Spotify, etc.) with little modification or "penalties" that affect playback.

Now, this is fun, and there's no doubt the smarts behind this service produce some nice-sounding results. But having given in twice, I can't help but worry about how quickly those fivespots could add up, and question how cogent the "cheaper than a pro" argument really is.

Wondering if others are trying this out.

Mark,

Several companies offer online mastering, some for a fee and some for free.

You may want to give +++ Bandlab's Online Mastering +++ a shot.

As far as I know the only limitation is you may need to provide Bandlab with an e-mail address to open a free account with Bandlab. FYI, I provided Bandlab with an e-maill address to open a free account and have never received any junk mail or newsletters related to the account.

$5 is nothing. You'll like the results or you won't. If pleased, no reason not to keep on keeping on. Compare with what Bob Ludwig or other equally well-known name will charge you. Then you get to the pros whose names you do not know—we can't do it for $5 either.

Your tracks go into a preset matrix of plugs and parameters that give pretty good results for a lot of people. It will likely survive the automatic compression applied by YouTube. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that but you do get what you pay for.

At this point, a reality check is in order.

That mix does not exist and never will. The destination makes a huge difference. CDs, Radio, YouTube, TV etc. each has different requirements. KLOVe Christian radio is a good example where, if you don't master for their 10W format, your mix is at the mercy of the brickwall limiting that they will apply for maximum signal strength.


If you have a desire to master, $5 per song is a really inexpensive way to learn. You pay the money, compare it to your own attempts and learn things or not. Which leads to


There's no set of plugins or tools that just does the work for you–it does not matter how many marketing departments and fanboys of A, B, C or whatever say differently. Likewise, if inexperienced, you will not learn enough in a 30 day evaluation.

That said, iZotope Ozone is on sale for half price or less (depending on the bundle).
iZotope Ozone 9 Sale

It's a good set of tools at a great price with good support forums etc. Ozone Standard will get you there but the Tonal Balance Bundle includes Ozone Advanced (more and separate plugins) and Nectar 3 Plus for the price of Nectar, an awesome tool for vocal production that includes Melodyne. Music Production Suite 4 adds Insight 2 (advanced monitoring), RX 8 (audio cleanup) and three wicked cool reverbs (R4, Nimbus and Neoverb). Divide any of those prices by $5.

These aren't the only tools I use anymore but it's a good basic set that will let you master for any environment you encounter. Learn how to use them and you'll be telling others,

Thanks, gents. I now have a Bandlab login and will be exploring the other tools mentioned.

As for Soundcloud mastering being an inexpensive way to learn, I wish! I may love the results, but I'm not going to be able to reverse engineer them for future projects. It's not like you get a report of all the changes made; you have to be able to listen to the recording and hear, then reproduce, them. And if you can already do that, hey, you're in better shape than me.

Plus, you're starting their process with an already-mixed-down stereo recording, which isn't the way one would work when starting out with 8 tracks. Of course, if the output from this base stereo mix is a whole set of separate mixes optimized for different hardware/streamers, that would be extremely useful, but this is not that; it's just one stereo remix.

Give me a service that lets me upload a Logic project then sends it backs to me with individual tracks adjusted then mixed down, with a full report on all actions taken! Now THAT would be $5.00 well spent!

Likely similar algorithms to what Ozone can do. You select a genre, a source option (CD, Stream, Vinyl, etc) and perhaps a few more and voila. Or you can purchase and select one Ozone's zillion presets. Ultimately it's whether you like the result or not. I reckon after paying $5 for enough of them you could just buy Ozone. I started with Ozone presets but now use its separate modules and roll my on.

Everything is so contextual. An algorithm can easily tonal balance your tunes by genre, roughly determine compression needs, give you the right LUFs for streaming or even "match" a reference song but does it match what you feel? Has it "changed" your notion of how the vocal or an instrumental performance should sound to you, etc.

Old man rant.

Bud

EDIT: just noticed that Mike had already mentioned Ozone.

I need to learn more about Ozone, reckon I'll try their free trial. I'm looking for something to integrate into Logic, not something to process Logic output, so this should tell me how it hangs together. Thanks.

Later... oh MAN! Looks like the way to try Izotope tools is to subscribe to the entire product line and get 7 days of everything for free. This is as daunting as Adobe. I need to focus on seeing what Ozone is and avoid the temptation to "try" (as if I actually could) all the other pretty stuff. But it's all SO pretty!

Mark, I’m a happy user of Logic and Izotope and BiaB products since 2012. Have fun!

Bud

So is everyone mastering their own stuff now days? What happened to the idea that another set of ears was a better idea for mastering?

I am not suggesting that one thing is better than the other, just asking the question.

Also professional mastering has gone from not so expensive to out of site so it is certainly not economically viable for most of us.

Here is a quoit from Pro Musician Hub. "How Much Does Music Mastering Cost?
The cost of music mastering can vary depending on who does it and where you live. In general, you can expect to pay between $50 and $200 for each song if you want to receive a quality end product. When you master an album, 10 tracks will run between $500 and $2,000.

If you need to mix and master the track, you will spend between $150 and $700 for a good quality song. The cost can be significantly higher if you use a top level producer, but you can get a radio-worthy product in this range. Mixing and mastering an album with 10 tracks will cost between $1,500 and $7,000.

So a five dollar fee is not much if it provides any value. The last time I posted some quick demo track to soundcloud they offered me three free mastering service. As the demo was meaningless to begin with I tried it and it sounded much better than the raw stuff I posted.

Learning to do pro level mastering is not an easy thing to do and escaping you own bias is also not easy. Just why the idea of another set of ears comes into play. Many pro studio engineers do not master their own stuff.

Five bucks? Less than a cup of coffee at Starbucks. Having said that most of my hobbies have become more expensive than I can any longer afford. Two days of fishing in my stupid little boat now cost around $1500. I just hope I die before I run out of money...lol

Billy

Even with iZotope Ozone mastering is a steep up hill learning, and the tool, though brilliant, is not for free - so I second your world class sentence
"Most of my hobbies have become more expensive" - that's indeed 9999% true

I'm not poor - I just have an expensive hobby

(Note...please dont slam me for the following views. they come from the school of studio hard knocks...lol..
note below "gas" is gear acquisition syndrome.)

RE..MODERN MASTERING AND OTHER TOOLS.
1. whenever i get "gas", and i must say up front lots of these modern tools are very good, i ask myself "am i fooling myself ?"..."do i really need this "?..."am i trying" ...to quote a studio engr i once knew "to put lipstick on a pig" ? to quote him.."if the darn source traks arent there, your out of luck buddy".
2. i also remind myself that loads of world class songs were done in past music eras when these tools hadnt been created. so why do i need them ? maybe i'm just not good enough in my creation of the original song track ?
i'm always beating myself up like this..lol.
3. there is always the danger if one doesnt fully understand the dsp based software tool, that actually i might be doing more harm than good to the song. there is also the aspect that my application of the tool , although it might make my song sound groovy on my speakers etc etc,..it might not on other peoples systems. been there done that.
4. given the above, i think of the word "paranoia". this is the root of our continued "gas".
yes, i, like everyone else wants the best result for our songs, but i feel we get too paranoid.
sometimes. we worry ..will people hate the song ? am i good enough ? and many other thoughts percolate through our minds. my goodness , in my paranoia ive even dreamt in my sleep...lol.
thus, given the forgoing we get into these cycles of worry and "gas"... and buying more and more stuff.
frankly i realised years ago this is unhealthy, both for my psyche and my wallet.

SO WHAT IS THE RESOLUTION ?..heres mine.
i just say to myself to do my best, and dont worry if i dont have all the latest tools, ...
and if people dont like the song...so be it.
i take my lumps.....then i go buy a nice present for my wife, who , crazily encourages my "gas"..all the time...lol.
ps..Note....if a big record label shows interest in signing you , probably they will take your song (or songs) and remix probably useing their own studio engineers and tools.

and heres a finance tip from my old grannie who i dearly miss and lost years back....
"let your eyes be your guide, and your money the last thing you part with". very wise was my grannie.
best and i hope i make some sense.
oldmuso

Obviously a lot of folks have vested financial interests in maintaining a carte blanc notion that one should not do their own mastering.

Just saying.

Bud

I have to confess, I'm a little unclear about what exactly mastering IS in the modern world of DAW music-making.

I mean, if I have a Logic project with 4 audio tracks and 4 MIDI tracks, feeding into a stereo output track, I will be making tweaks to both the 8 part tracks and the output track right up until I bounce it. So where is the line between mastering and whatever precedes mastering in post-production?

The sense I'm getting (BTW in case it isn't obvious I'm an non-pro as is possible to be) is that the mastering being discussed here comes after a final stereo mix, and is applied to a stereo recording. Certainly that's what the Soundcloud thing is. This of course involves the limitation that all the parts are married at that point, and can no longer be individually adjusted (fancy AI doesn't count). Does mastering as such involve only global changes that affect the entire recording?

I do totally get it if we're talking about a process where you get multiple masters for a variety of services and hardware platforms. (Here's song123-for-youtube.wav, here's song123-for-apple-music.m4a, etc.) But Soundcloud doesn't offer that. You just get one recording, with very little in the way of controls ("Blue Sky" vs. "Thunder" etc.) and a specific emphasis on avoiding loudness penalties by streaming services.

Yes mastering is considered post mixing. I never light up a mastering chain until I’ve stuck a fork in the mix. The idea as you alluded to is making global touches to the mix. For me it’s typically light EQ, multi-band compression, imaging and limiting. No way could I envision doing such as I mix. There are times when I might make a change to the mix after mastering but not often and if so I go through the chain again.

FWIW, etc,.

Bud

Thanks, Bud, this is all very helpful. Oh, and playing with Ozone presets in Logic is way fun.

I would spring for that at least once. Thanks for the heads up

All of this high tech modern stuff or old lo tech stuff no matter where or how it is done does not preclude making a good song with nothing more than a tape recorder, a guitar and a vocal. Do the guitar reverb with your vibrato and sing in a way people like. Write lyrics people like, which by the way you have little control of.

Write a song and when you get through write another one. If you live long enough you may just screw up and write a hit song...lol

Billy

Well Billy - having written songs for 15 years or more is one thing, but it's also very satisfying to make them sound like it's not recorded on a tape deck device from 1970's - but getting close to pro-studio quality, because today it is within reach.

To me it's more fun to hear your own work in an audio quality that sounds awesome, where ever you play it back.

Matter of choice , I am busy recording my music on to reels of tape on my 1970s Revox A77 And I've never heard them so Good !!.

I am busy using 2021 audio mastering software on low quality cassette tracks from 1982 (the kind recorded by bouncing between two stereo decks, the kind so old you should really bake the cassette before playing it.)