CD Mastering

[Ross]

There may already be a thread for this - I couldn't find one.

I am currently trying to finish recording for a CD - a bunch of songs I've wanted out of my system for a long time.

Who can help point me to why/how to go about getting the CD "Mastered."

Thanks.

[Billy's Little Trip]

Funny, I was just running a sound check past Fluffy a few days ago about a mastering program I tried, because he seems to have sound detailed ears, which is great for final production. I'm about where you are Ross, in need of good mastering software.
Here is the free trial I've tried thus far. AAMS I've only tried the auto mastering so far. It seems to kill the highs and add more bass. Could be the file I gave it, not sure. All I know is that I want to learn this stuff and not rely on a mastering person for putting together an album.

[ken]

You might find this to be good reading: http://www.tapeop.com/magazine/bonuspdf ... iberti.pdf

Ken

[Ross]

You might find this to be good reading: http://www.tapeop.com/magazine/bonuspdf ... iberti.pdf

Ken

Nice interview.

I definitely want to have a third party do it for me.

Seems like some of these services like through guitar center and such can include mastering. Is that a good idea? Bad Idea?

[Billy's Little Trip]

Well Ken, I read that whole thing. It was enjoyable to read and he hit on a lot of good things that most of us already know. But the only thing that he said that stuck, was "I believe it’s important to turn the project over to someone who can be objective." and "I use the SADie Daw", which would require an initial investment of around $25-30K.
Are there any programs that "average guys" can acquire?

[jb]

Listen to whatever Ken says about mastering.

JB

[melvin]

Well Ken, I read that whole thing. It was enjoyable to read and he hit on a lot of good things that most of us already know. But the only thing that he said that stuck, was "I believe it’s important to turn the project over to someone who can be objective." and "I use the SADie Daw", which would require an initial investment of around $25-30K.
Are there any programs that "average guys" can acquire?

I have a friend who does professional recording/mixing for TV and movies, and he uses Ozone for mastering. He seems to like it.

[ken]

I think t-racks is another program. More important than that is a finely tuned room with accurate speakers and an engineer who knows how to interpret what they are hearing in their room to the many different systems it will be played on later. You can't get that out of a program. Sure, you can do some final EQ and Compression to try and fix your mix, and lastly raise the overall level/dither etc.

The bottom line for me is that you like your final mixes and are happy with them when they are played on a variety of systems. If you can do that yourself, do for it. If you aren't sure, get a second opinion, and be willing to pay for someone who is just as willing to leave your mixes be as tweak them.

Ken

[Billy's Little Trip]

Yeah, I'm starting to get that, Ken. I did D/L the free trial of Ozone that Melvin posted and will play with it for my own curiosity.

Ross, if you do take it to someone, I've used Digital Brothers in Costa Mesa on an album. They came highly recommended by several studios around here. Back then we paid $600 for a 14 song CD. Included mastering and a glass master. I'm sure it's more now, but they did a great job I thought and the engineer takes you to his mastering studio, which is a rather large rooms with sound baffles here and there with his console in the center, and runs through the songs with you and take notes, asks for a phone number to reach you quickly if needed. I don't know if he's still there, but our guy's name is Doug Doyal.
Maybe I should give Ol Doug a call.

[Billy's Little Trip]

Update: You guys have to try that Ozone program Melvin posted. I just tried the default CD mastering pre set for a quick test. I used it on a mix that I had dialed in just the way I liked it. Damn, it really woke up the whole track quite a bit without drastically changing anything. I'm going to play with it more tonight when I get home because this is a really cool program. I'd like to hear other opinions.

[roymond]

Update: You guys have to try that Ozone program Melvin posted. I just tried the default CD mastering pre set for a quick test. I used it on a mix that I had dialed in just the way I liked it. Damn, it really woke up the whole track quite a bit without drastically changing anything. I'm going to play with it more tonight when I get home because this is a really cool program. I'd like to hear other opinions.

I use Ozone and think it's amazing, but I'd never master my own album. It's great for getting a real good sound for SF and getting close, but as Ken and others point out, it can't in anyway fix your mix, EQ or make a final master that holds up to differing environments, etc. like a skilled professional.

[jast]

I just gave Ozone a test drive on a couple of my SF songs, purely as a master effect. To my ear, the defaults all pretty much mangled the sound, generally by doing too much in the mid frequency range. The only song that improved in my ears was my "Half A Million Nerds", probably due to the exciter (though it was a bit too much of that in the best preset I found, at least for my taste). Just confirms what I already thought before: presets aren't really all that great.

Generally Ozone seems like a nice tool but it's not particularly high on my personal list of things to throw money at. The weakest links of my setup are elsewhere anyway.

[jb]

I like Ozone 3's Tape Saturation preset. Actually it's Tape Saturation plus something else i can't remember. the plain Tape Saturation doesn't usually do enough.

[Billy's Little Trip]

Another plug in I tried yesterday was was the Antress modern analog vst. Ken recommended their free D/L about two years ago and I've been updating and using them for different things ever since. Love the whole suite. The reason I haven't used the analog plug in on anything is because it WILL freeze my computer. But I found out where and why, so I tried it again. It really smooths out my final mix the way I like, but I haven't listened on all of my test systems yet. My test systems are My truck with 12" subs and huge amps, my wife G35 with a great stock system, my living room with satellite speakers and a sub woofer, two different headphones and my daw monitors. They are so different sounding that I almost cringe going from one to the other to test my EQ settings. Also, I'm not religious about using all of my test systems when I'm in a hurry.

[jast]

This discussion prompted me to follow through on my plan of writing my own level boost/soft clipping filter. It's pretty much finished now and it works better than expected. It's written in Jesusonic so it's mainly useful for people using REAPER but feel free to download Jesusonic and wrestle with ASIO routing if you want to give it a try in another sequencing app.
To use (in REAPER), simply put the file into the Effects subdir of your REAPER program dir, ask REAPER to rescan the list of effects and that's it. The file contains a block of documentation explaining what's going on, directly below the license.

The general idea: it's similar to the LOSER/Saturation JS effect shipped with REAPER (where you can apply a slightly configurable function to non-linearly transform sample values) but gives you more settings to determine where the knee of the soft clipper starts and how strongly the knee is non-linear. Pre-boost and post-cut are added as useful trivialities. The effect displays a plot of the overall transform function to help you understand what's going on (I find this quite useful).

http://jan-krueger.net/src/JS/SoftClipper

[Caravan Ray]

There may already be a thread for this - I couldn't find one.

I am currently trying to finish recording for a CD - a bunch of songs I've wanted out of my system for a long time.

Who can help point me to why/how to go about getting the CD "Mastered."

Thanks.

How you going with this Ross?

I'm having similar thoughts in this direction too.

[jeff robertson]

This discussion prompted me to follow through on my plan of writing my own level boost/soft clipping filter. It's pretty much finished now and it works better than expected. It's written in Jesusonic so it's mainly useful for people using REAPER but feel free to download Jesusonic and wrestle with ASIO routing if you want to give it a try in another sequencing app.

Hey, I use REAPER.. I should try this. I've written my own compressor/limiter/soft/hard/clipper before (http://www.jeff-robertson.com/fx/axe-murderer) but from looking at your code you've got some different features.

The general idea: it's similar to the LOSER/Saturation JS effect shipped with REAPER (where you can apply a slightly configurable function to non-linearly transform sample values) but gives you more settings to determine where the knee of the soft clipper starts and how strongly the knee is non-linear. Pre-boost and post-cut are added as useful trivialities. The effect displays a plot of the overall transform function to help you understand what's going on (I find this quite useful).

http://jan-krueger.net/src/JS/SoftClipper

Whoah, how long has REAPER shipped with a Saturation plugin? Time to download the latest version!

[Märk]

I've been using Ozone for like 4 years, and depending on your final mix, it either makes magic or mud. Invaluable as a quick mastering plug, but not something I'd wanna use on an actual CD release.

[Billy's Little Trip]

After playing with ozone, it has some cool features. But yeah, I'm finding that the "auto" mastering feature is more like "auto" flipping a coin as to whether it's going to come out good or crap. It seems to be the same with another auto mastering plug I tried.

[JonPorobil]

Why would you want "auto" mastering?

I mean, yeah, obviously, it'd be nice to click one button and voila, a mastered song comes out. But every song is different, right? I wouldn't trust an program's "automatic" setting to master a song any more than I'd trust a robot to improvise a guitar solo.

[Billy's Little Trip]

Why would you want "auto" mastering?

I mean, yeah, obviously, it'd be nice to click one button and voila, a mastered song comes out.

You answered your own question. I know it's not realistic, but oh how nice it would be.

[HeuristicsInc]

I use Ozone on my SF songs... usually I only have to muck with the EQ and little tweaks before I apply, but it can be great for the quick master before you hand in the song right before deadline
Obviously if you spend more time with it your results will get better. My CDs were also mastered with Ozone (not by me).
-bill