Mastering?

[hamerhead]

We are in the midst of recording some cover tunes, mainly to get our feet wet and to see what we end up with. I am the 'engineer' (always wanted to drive a train), capturing on one of those little Tascam 24 track digital machines and dumping it into Logic, where the drummer's kid and I will do the final mix (he knows the software very well....).

We surprised ourselves and what we have - so far - is a lot better than we expected. The topic of mastering has come up, with the other guitar player 'knowing a guy' who wants to take a stab at it.

What would we gain by having it mastered? Or could we just get software and do it ourselves? I've recorded a bit but never got to the mastering stage with anything. I know there's some art and/or voodoo to it, but what's a real benefit?

Thanks.

[scottcald]

It's been a while, but I think -12. to -10 is fairly standard, certainly leaves enough room for things. 

[Dutchman]

Mastering is an art and it can make your mix sound awesome or like shit if done wrong. You need good ears incredible speakers a Mastering limiter compressor and Eq to get started. Software has come a long ways since I had my studio. I preferred to master in analog with tube compressors and limiters. 

Just remember lights and knobs don't mean shit!!! Trust you ears!!!

[scottcald]

Isotope has some mastering plug ins that I think are probably pretty good to either get you started or polish a little if you mostly like it.  As always, do one, check it on different speakers, and once you like how it sounds in multiple places, then use that as your guide for the rest of the songs.  

[gorch]

Mastering makes it sound loud and balances out the frequencies. Apart from better or worse, a piece can sound totally different on different frequency layouts.

[Jakeboy]

Mastering adds the polish that makes it radio ready to include, final compression, eq, and limiting. The volume wars are over. You don’t need average LUFS to be more than -14. All streaming services will “turn it down” to that anyway. Keeping volume under control allows your dynamics to shine forth.

Mastering doesn’t fix a mix…just think radio ready polish. Software has come a long ways and produces excellent results. That said I bought a stereo AudioScapes Buss Compressor for the mix bus that just adds the needed glue. Whether you do it or farm it out, you want it mastered.

[ZR]

You could check this out...Mastering

That site also has a lot of info on various plugins, apps etc. Especially free stuff or limited time offers.

[LucSulla]

Mastering is definitely worth it if whoever does it knows what they are doing. I used to mix a lot of our old stuff, but I always thought having it finished off by a fresh set of ears was worth the price of admission alone. I'll dig around and see if I can find some old board mixes vs. mastered versions of songs from my old band I could post. 

My only advice is that when you mix it down, you leave some headroom for the mastering engineer to work with. Additionally, any reverb or delay you are using (really more reverb) will have a tendency to really wash out once you start bringing everything up to 0 dB and compressing the overall mix. Be careful how wet you make things in the final mix. 

[polara]

I've used two online mastering sites, CloudBounce and LANDR for our albums. It ain't someone with golden ears in a top studio, but we're not Bowie nor do we have his budget. Both do a very good job of an overall EQ for radio (whatever "radio" is) and the compression and overall volume are good enough that when I listen in the car or on AirPods it sounds fine compared to other stuff on my phone.

[crunchee]

I've never recorded, I've only been on the receiving end of music, and I only know what I like.  There is a difference between making something sound fresh and spontaneous vs. lifeless and meh, and/or 'hearing the room' vs. crowded and compressed, especially if it's the same recording.

A couple of favorite well done examples, that probably didn't need much 'doctoring' in the first place, if at all...4 track home recording (yes, at the end, you can tell he reuses tape):

'Drunken', messy studio recording...but it's hard to beat the spontaneity:

 

[planetgaffnet]

On 4/12/2023 at 11:59 PM, Dutchman said:

Mastering is an art and it can make your mix sound awesome or like shit if done wrong.

 

I recorded a few years ago, the guy producing kept reducing the gain on the pre-mastered material, citing 'They're still too loud!' and the singer, like one of the previous remarks here, 'knew a guy who can master'.

I could have cried when I heard the end product.  The stuff that went for mastering was very quiet, if that makes sense, let's assume you listen to a CD or something and a comfortable listening experience could be achieved by rolling the volume up on your hi-fi to 20-25%.  With the material that went off, you'd be rolling the volume up to 70-80%.  When it came back, the songs were just full of all these after-effects where the really really quiet parts were being artificially boosted beyond what was there.  It was just nasty.

Find someone who knows what they're doing.  Even a free mastering VST would have given us a better result.

[Disturber]

On 4/10/2023 at 8:41 PM, hamerhead said:

We are in the midst of recording some cover tunes, mainly to get our feet wet and to see what we end up with. I am the 'engineer' (always wanted to drive a train), capturing on one of those little Tascam 24 track digital machines and dumping it into Logic, where the drummer's kid and I will do the final mix (he knows the software very well....).

We surprised ourselves and what we have - so far - is a lot better than we expected. The topic of mastering has come up, with the other guitar player 'knowing a guy' who wants to take a stab at it.

What would we gain by having it mastered? Or could we just get software and do it ourselves? I've recorded a bit but never got to the mastering stage with anything. I know there's some art and/or voodoo to it, but what's a real benefit?

Thanks.

Like @planetgaffnet says. If you are going to master it, find someone who knows what they are doing. We mastered our latest album at https://westwestsidemusic.com/ in New York. Alan is really good, we used him twice. There are great mastering people in Europe too, but Alan has competetive prices and he knows rock. So we tried him and we are happy.

But, as with many things in life, you get what you pay for. If it's a cheap mastering service. Or a free masteringservice online. You will most probably get something back that sounds like a turd. 

Zenmindbegginer here at the HFC is one of those guys who is very good at many things. He can do mastering as well. Check with him.