Mastering

[lemeiux1]

So I finished the arrangement of my first song in ableton and I feel pretty good about the outcome . I did the track on my headphones mostly as I produce on the go (train, lunch breaks, etc.) and it sounded awesome in the phones, but when I exported the audio out of ableton, it sounds flat and quiet when I play it on my car speakers and even in the same headphones I produced it with. Now I never mastered a track before so what can I do to make it sound like it did when I was working on it in Ableton?

Also any tips on matering for the first time would be very helpful.

Thanks in advance!

[Kwal]

Mastering will only be a success if the mixdown of the track is decent... Sounds like you need to work on the mixdown first... If you feel it's alright.... If you use the stock vst's, then I'd throw the Gentle Limiter onto the master... Make sure to select the soft clip feature and then play around with the limiter, it should boost you a bit. You can also try the Make It Louder stock vst that falls under the glue compressor for an extra boost... I can't promise this will be a success if your track is mixed down poorly though...

[grazz16]

In before Tarekith

http://tarekith.com/assets/mastering.html

[LakeshiaKrell]

i have not tried it anything similar like that but once have got the idea now looking forward to it to form my own version as well

[amadeus]

To get a good master, you need a really good mix down.

Generally speaking the better your mixdown the less that will need to be done at mastering stage.

To give yourself more headroom on the master, On kick Bass etc remove all mid to high freq's
On all other instruments/drums remove the low freq's
Obviously there is a lot more to it than just that, but this will give ou just that bit extra to work with

Personally I avoind putting anything on the master channel

There is a very good article on levels/eq'ing on attack magazine

[grazz16]

Everyone in this thread is right about the mix down. In a perfect world you should be doing nothing else to the track at the mastering stage but making it louder. Obviously that rarely happens, but the EQ issues and such should be very minor tweaks as opposed to large scale fixes at that point.

[Tarekith]

In before Tarekith

http://tarekith.com/assets/mastering.html

Newer version:

http://tarekith.com/assets/pdfs/Mastering.pdf

[Nick V]

Also Mad Zach on "Shmastering"

http://www.djtechtools.com/2013/09/1...with-mad-zach/
Of course you want to get the mix tight as possible before messing with the stereo out but IMHO there are some things other than straight limiting that can really improve a track at the master bus/mastering phase of a track - gentle eq/bus compression/dithering. None of these will make a badly mixed track sound good but the added "glue" can make a good track sound great.

[NiloJones]

I'm no master - pun intended.

I found that you need to give space to each element in your track.

1) Remove those unneeded frequencies that you cannot hear in the mix - so the subs below 20hertz with some nice eq ing.
2) use panning to give each element its own space in the mix, this is really hard to do with headphones and I always have the same problem as you - thumping in your phones but flat in your car.
3) ensure frequencies do not clash in the mix - if you have a low part in your lead line and high part in your mid bass - which one is the most important? eq one of the parts.
4) Use a sidechain to allow the bass to breath a little and prevent the kik muddying up the bass
5) Gentle compression - don't over do it
6) limiter

I found panning to be a good send when giving the mix and elements space to breath. But again this is just a hobby for me, so why listen to me I also don't have live. But i did find the izotope mastering stuff brings things to life.

[lemeiux1]

I appreciate all of the help guys. I have gone back through teh EQing on every track and its exactly as I want it to be. Basically the more I listen to the exported song, the more im finding that the entire thing just needs to be a bit louder when I compare it to a similar professionally produced track. Also, can anyone explain the reason why it sounds perfect on my headphones in ableton, but much lower after export? I'll give tarekith's tutorial a read tonight, I appreciate the link.