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.)

Well this is embarrassing. This isn't a Bose service, it's Dolby, but although I am able to change my original subject, all replies retain the incorrect information. Sorry about that!

Jim,

I just tried the Bandlab online tool. Pretty cool for four presets.

I would just advise: Make sure not to press button at end: "Would you like to share your mix with Bandlab so others can use it for free and make samples of your tune? Press here. Press here."

Other than that, cool!

However, it is funny, I used Loudness Penalty to spec out a tune and master it for Spotify. Then Bandlab turned it up 1.7. Then Loudness Penality said turn it back down.

Will it never stop!!!!!

That's ridiculous beatmaster. You need to get with the program.

Follow the science man.

David Man !! Good pic but that isn't a Revox L.O.L.

As i said matter of choice , think that's why the clinical sound from CD discs is fading and reel to reel is the new Black (vinyl).

And the vinyl come back !!, that's following the science . l.o.l.


Not to mention plug ins tape saturators etc .???.

a) if you have decent ears and gear you will be able to hear and see differences in level, EQ etc. THAT's the learning point if you're inclined to pay a fiver for this sort of thing.

b) MASTERING has, traditionally, been preparing a finished mono, stereo or surround sounds track for reproduction. many M.E.s will happily STEM MASTER for a client - a blend of correcting sonic errors of the stems and mastering the end result of that and CAN, if requested/advised and agreed, involve a little rebalancing of those stems to make a better end result and therefore a better product for reproduction. I've asked for stem mastering many times and learnt an HUGE amount from it. I haven't had that done for quite a while because I learnt plenty that improved my mixes as well as tracking. It's obviously more time intensive and costs more. A good M.E. will let you know if you need to fix stuff before they'll touch your song - they don't want to be associated with something that is a bad end result.

and
c)that's mixing...there're lots of folk who will mix via up n download for you but it's pretty expensive. Most will allow a few revisions with the cost package and may even master the end result for you.

Having a realistic expectation of your skills as a cook, a chef's skills and what an automated sausage maker can do is always a good thing.

If you REALLY want to find out the difference save up a little then invest in having a mix of yours mastered by a M.E. and by one of those up n download processes then compare the differences.
It'll let you know a lot about your song, your recording and what can be done with it. All up you might be out AUS$60, (I wouldn't recommend using an expensive or NAME M.E. 1st time but you'll KNOW.

I get my stuff mastered IF I think the song's good enough becasue I don't have the ears, room or gear to master effectively and I'm easy pray to ALL of the psychoacoustic tricks employed by shysters and the automated lot.

SOME folk can self master because they have decent ears, lots of experience AND patience. Bud, above, is one of them but I only know three home recordists who have what it takes to make a master sound like a master.

I still have two Yamaha FourTrack cassette machines (MT100s) and a VERY old stereo reel to reel machine. I do use them when I'm in the mood OR want THAT sound. I'm not keen on using a tape saturation plug when I can saturate a reel of tape and use the outs from that, (cassettes don't REALLY do the tape saturation thing though running them into the red does sound good often). I even have an outboard Dolby tape processor to do the NR thing. Working ITB isn't bad though - particularly when a 24 channel deck & machine aren't in the room.

One psychoacoustic trick is to make it louder.

Oooh, ooh, it sounds mastered.

No, they just turned it up and charged you...

(replying to rayc)

Regarding the ability to "reverse engineer" Soundcloud masterings by listening:

Sure, I'll be able to hear some stuff, especially if the tweaks are static, like if SC just applies a customized "Blue Sky" patch to the entire recording.

But if it's dynamic, if SC is adjusting dozens of parameters constantly, from moment to moment, frequency band to frequency band, yikes, that's just not something I can imagine hearing clearly enough on my own to try to reproduce.

An obvious factor here is that Soundcloud/Dolby DOES NOT WANT TO BE TOO HELPFUL in this area, and the more I contemplate this sad little factoid of life, the less inclined I am to want to put time or money here. I mean, when I say it would be nice if, along with the recording, you also got back a report saying "we did this this and this", it almost sounds ridiculously kumbaya, since of source they aren't going to do that if they want to keep you coming back for another $5 hit (no pun intended!)

Having now played around a bit with Soundcloud and Izotope, and having subscribed to the sprawling Izotope package for month-to-month use, I don't see myself using Soundcloud again. Maybe I'll check out the free preview clips for ideas, but not buy the whole track. This is all for my personal use – and if I'm looking to learn, why go to someone who will never tell me what I need to know?

Thought: Soundcloud wants to sell me a subscription to fully prepared fish dinners. Izotope wants me to learn to fish and cook so they can lease me fishing tackle and kitchen appliances.

Anyway! Regarding the relationship between mixing and mastering:

All the information you provide here is much appreciated (and obviously much needed by my fairly clueless self.) To be clear, I know nothing of the real world of professional musicians or engineers, I work at home on my iMac, and am about as likely to consider hiring a pro to mix my latest creation as I am to consider hiring a pro to write this post. So I just work away using BIAB and Logic and whatever until I can bounce it down to what I think is good; there's no reason for me to add a separate mixed-down stage to the project since there's no need for that division of labor.

Thanks again...
Mark

Mark,
I work at home on my P.C.
I work away using BIAB, my instruments and Reaper until I can bounce it down to what I think is good.
IF my song and mix seem "good" I spend the small amount of cash to have it "mastered" because I can't do that step, for the reasons explained.
I don't do it often.
The difference it makes is amazing.
The difference having an objective pair of ears listen carefully and communicate what they hear is equally amazing.

I suspect the Soundcloud, and other algorithm based, processors are static...IF you're lucky they "listen" to the track, match your requirements to a template and modify the template according to the source the process.
if you're unlucky it'll just apply the template before processing. It's very unlikely they'd shift settings within a track.

The "subscription model" is the new way of milking.
At AUS$1.10 a day for the Izotope bundle seems cheap but it's $1,200 over three years. OUCH.

Soundcloud at least pretends to listen; there's a cute animation. Thing is, during the setup operation, it does this for 30 second "preview" chunks you choose, and can re-choose if you want, and I'm not sure what the price is for choosing badly. It says to pick the part with the most dynamic range, but what if I don't? Do I get a terrible master because of that really noisy part I forgot about?

Regarding subscriptions: Yeah, there's some heinous stuff going on, but I find a subscription to something like EastWest's "ComposerCloud" really valuable as a source of bazillions of virtual instruments I could never buy on their own. Izotope gives a free week, which I went into expecting I'd pay $20 for the first month after that; I may or may not continue, but I don't know how else I could get to try out all this stuff.

Mark,

From time to time, Ozone Elements goes on sale for 29.99. I think it may be on sale at plugin boutique right now for 19.99.

Ozone 9 Elements packs a lot of punch for 30 bucks. It has a stereoizer built in (Imager) and also a master assistant button that will listen and make suggestions as a starting point.

The presets I think are more than enough as starting points for most mixes.

As I have said elsewhere, the "master" is really a final little sprinkle of fairy dust--the hard part is in the mix, and if you are careful with effects and EQs on each track, then the master should be easy.

It is a mistake to try and solve mixing issues in a "master"--which I am sure you already know. You cannot take the tomato out of the tomato soup once it is made, so to speak.

Anyway, for ease and economy I have recommended Ozone 9 Elements to a lot of folks and they seem happy. Sometimes less is more--though I am sure Ozone would be happy to sell you the $5,000 version.

Thanks, David.

The pricing here is crazymaking: Ozone Elements currently goes for $129, unless you buy it with 3 other things where the whole "suite" is... $49? I think that's really happening, but it does make the unfamiliar wonder if there's some product difference to be known about.

I'll probably just keep using "MUSIC PRODUCTION SUITE PRO" for the next month, then let the subscription drop and go for something like this.

That the version I have. I like to have all the tools at my disposal and they are awesome tools!

Hi Steve. To be clear, I'm talking about the "Music Production Suite" subscription service, which I believe is not *exactly* the same as the purchaseable product package. (One difference may be the inclusion of standalone applications, not sure.)

Oh, and now I see there's the "Izotope Everything" package, for a mere $2500! https://www.izotope.com/en/products/everything-bundle.html

Mark,

Keep your eye on that Musicians Bundle if it is $49.

I got it with Ozone 9 Essentials, Nectar 3 Essentials and Neutron 3 Essentials. (Also Iris and Rx, but I don't ever use those.) By the way, I have older, fuller versions of the same, but the features inside Essentials are all I ever use. And they are lightweight.

Nectar 3 is Amazing for vocals, and I use Neutron 3 in the signal chain on almost every track on every song, with the bass, drums, guitar and vocal presets (along with other plugins).

These plugins really bring tracks to life. For example, if you have a BIAB acoustic and you run it through the 12 string preset on Neutron 3 your eyes will pop out. It's a huge difference.

If you can get the same for $49 and learn how to use them they will radically change your sound.

Thanks for the clarification Mark. I have "Music Production Suite 4" as an outright purchase and do not use their subscription service. During previous years I had smaller packages and when upgrades came around would spend a little more $$$ to upgrade the whole package.

@DavidSnyder: "Ozone 9 Elements packs a lot of punch for 30 bucks. It has a stereoizer built in (Imager) and also a master assistant button that will listen and make suggestions as a starting point. The presets I think are more than enough as starting points for most mixes."

I found that using Ozone9 Elements as a plugin on a vocal track, often with Nectar Essentials plugin ahead of it, provides some interesting "magic" even with just using the presets supplied.

"Misusing" a plugin instead of for what it was intended can add some fun to the creating music process!

I agree!

I misuse plugins all the time!



As I said in another place, I use Neutron Essentials on almost every track, and Ozone 9 Essentials and Ozone Nectar 3 on every mix.

I have to say, though, I also have Ozone 5, and that thing is a BEAST. I see on you tube that a lot of producers swear by it and seem to like it too.

Older versions of stuff can have their place.

Like Nectar 2.

Also a beast.

Now on sale for $29.

https://www.izotope.com/en/shop/elements-suite.html

Get it.

I did. =8^) Just finished deleting all the subscription stuff and tried out my new plugins.