Posts Tagged ‘ Mastering ’
Mastering is no playground. Of the entire production workflow, mastering is the most critical and fragile stage. It’s also the easiest to screw up. I don’t mean that to discourage you or put you off, but to warn you to be careful. Generally, there are three reasons to be careful about mastering. Intense listening Of [ READ MORE ]
Mastering is the least influential part of making a recording. It has the least effect on the effectiveness of your creative expression – your ‘sound’. It might sound obvious, but if you want a particular kind of sound, it starts early in the processes – as early as possible. Every subsequent stage of production has [ READ MORE ]
Are you still confused about the difference between mixing and mastering? Do you think you’re mastering when you use a limiter on your mix bus? Do you avoid the term ‘mastering’ because you’re doing it yourself? Do you have trouble explaining what you do when you’re finished mixing? The difference between mixing and mastering is [ READ MORE ]
That’s right. Mastering will not save your mix. It certainly won’t save your song. Forget it. But you knew that already. Common wisdom is that mastering will only make a good mix better. Well, it doesn’t. And if it does, you’ve either got problems with your mix that your mastering engineer has generously offered to smudge, [ READ MORE ]
It seems ProRec is back online, and they’ve published a new article I’ve written. It’s a step-by-step explanation of the mastering process, using a specific song as an example. It’s an account of ‘a day in the life’ - Two And A Half Hours(including lunch) To Master A Single. 10am-10:30am - Finding Reference Music 10:30am-11am – Technical Preparation 11am-11:30am – [ READ MORE ]
Sometimes frequency analysers can be used in mastering. Of course your ears should be the ultimate decision maker, but an analyser can be useful as a ‘second opinion’. It can help sway you one way or another if you’re unsure about something. There are, however, some issues to keep in mind when using frequency analysers [ READ MORE ]
Don’t dismiss this post yet! Even if you’re in the ‘more dynamics’ brigade, these tips will give you clearer mixes that suffer less in mastering. That means better-preserved dynamics and higher fidelity! For those of you who really do want your mixs SUPER LOUD, this tips will let you push more volume without your sound [ READ MORE ]
Compressors are complex tools and, like most other audio engineering tools, there are more ways to set them up ‘wrong’ than there are to set them up ‘right’. If you’re careful though, you won’t fall into these common traps: Too much gain reduction. You know you’ve done this when you’ve got tons on gain reduction [ READ MORE ]
There’s a case to be made for ‘sweetening’ your mix bus. Many mixes can benefit from some subtle processing to bring out the best qualities of the tone of the mix and to use dynamics to give the mix a more compact, controlled sound. To bring out the best qualities of the tone of the [ READ MORE ]
Under most normal circumstances, using reverb on the mix bus is no different to using a send on every track, with every send set to the same level. Usually this it not a good idea – it’s better touse sends to apply reverb in different levels to different tracks. Some sounds can ‘take’ more reverb [ READ MORE ]
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