Mastering and finalizing a mix
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  1. #1
    Tech Wizard Metrojolt's Avatar
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    Default Mastering and finalizing a mix

    Hey all,

    I was curious as to what ever did/used once a mix has been "Finished" to master it. I know there are things like Izotune, but I want hear what everyone is using/doing

    Cheers!
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  2. #2
    Tech Guru SirReal's Avatar
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    Check Jester's post on Mastering a mix in the Music Section. Quite informative. (Nice Jester)
    "Walking the fine line between Stupidity and Genious" My Soundcloud ---- My Mixcloud
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  3. #3
    Tech Guru SirReal's Avatar
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    Sorry, it's a sticky in Mixes & Production
    "Walking the fine line between Stupidity and Genious" My Soundcloud ---- My Mixcloud
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  4. #4
    DJTT Moderator Dude Jester's Avatar
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    Hi Metrojolt. Have a look at this thread http://www.djtechtools.com/forum/showthread.php?t=31907
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  5. #5
    Tech Guru mostapha's Avatar
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    by "mix," do you mean a mixdown of a track or a recorded DJ mix.

    If it's the former, I think the guides to leveling and mastering on tarekith.com are very good.

    If it's the later, the absolute most you need is a brickwall limiter at about -.5dB with input gain set so you never get more than about 1-2dB of gain reduction on its meter.

    Edit: I just read through that post of Jester's on mastering DJ mixes. Umm…I disagree with almost everything he said (or quoted…can't tell).

    • 10% wet is a lot of reverb to my ears, especially with the other settings in the screen cap. That room is huge and that tail would last forever. It'd sound like you were playing for an empty room.
    • Saturators are not the way you want to go, especially on audio that's already been mastered. I think all its going to do is introduce noise.
    • If you're going to use it, you almost certainly want soft clip on.
    • Normalization is kind of generally a good thing if you don't know what you're doing.
    • Knowing what you're doing involves checking for intersample modulation distortion, which is really easy to get using the limiter as he's set it. Solid State Logic–one of the world leaders in dynamics processors and consoles–gives away a plugin to check for it called X-ISM. Google it. You want it as the last device on your master channel every time you can use it.
    • If he recorded the mix correctly and didn't clip, those limiter settings would literally do nothing unless he's boosting the level earlier in the chain.
    • Izotope Ozone is cool and all, but it's just as entry-level as Live's included stuff. I think it sounds worse, mostly because having all that stuff sitting there encourages you to use it even if you don't know what you're doing…just because it's there.


    I'm sure that whoever wrote that knows what they're doing, and my opinion is certainly not Gospel (or the equivalent for your religion or lack thereof). I've learned most of those points by trying some/all of the exact things he mentioned.

    To my ears–especially when working with audio that's already been mastered by someone who knows a lot more about it than you or I do–less is almost certainly always more.

    A single Limiter on your master channel with a decent but not ridiculous amount of headroom and just a little bit of input gain to get at most "a couple" dB of gain reduction at the loudest points will raise your RMS level that little bit more than normalization would…and it will make your mix sound just that last little bit louder than it was before.

    If you're using a limiter to smooth out levels…you did it wrong. Go back and record again. There's no reason to use a limiter that will add noise and squash dynamic range to do what you should have done with gain knobs while recording. Doing that is like admitting that you don't know how to run a mixer or read a meter.

    Considering that most modern dance music I've bothered to look at has maybe 8dB of actual dynamic range in it anyway…taking away even more is a really dangerous proposition.

    The techniques are good to play with, and you should certainly be doing your own experiments and critically listening at each step to see whether it helps or hurts your mix.

    But with the exception of the Limiter–which I'd set differently, with 2 meters after it–most of this advice is about the exact opposite of what I'd do.
    Last edited by mostapha; 06-17-2011 at 09:45 AM.

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