Quick mastering tip .. Example included.

[jshawpro]

Heys guys. I need some mastering advice. I feel like I'm getting really close to a professional sound .. but I just need a little more guidance to ice the cake.

Below is a track that I produced recently in Ableton. My "mastering" / finalization process is this: I export my unmastered mixdown into a new session. I'll then iron my peaks .. Followed by processing on master channel via Izotope Ozone 5. I understand what I'm looking at and tweaking in Ozone ... I'm getting a clean ... big sound ... It's just not HUGE! See example:






I am happy with the mixdown and sound I achieved on it ... But I'm looking for a waveform more like this:





Driven so hard its a rectangle!! Any tips?

THANKS IN ADVANCE!!

[dope]

Compression.
It helps fill up the headroom. But don't overuse it or you'll lose the dynamics, and it's these dynamics that make the music. I dont get how can you state that you are "getting really close to a professional sound" without knowing about compression.

Edit : btw in the 2nd track there's kind of a huge sub which is taking most of the headroom, hence the big rectangles. It's not really the same in your track so don't expect a THAT square waveform.

[ksandvik]

a) Hard to judge any mastering based on 128k Soundcloud streams. Both cases distort quite a lot.
b) What setups are you using in Ozone? I suspect you don't set the right values for the transparent limiting section. If nothing else, use a preset as a starting point. Ozone 5 has a nice graphical view showing how much it compensates up and down.
c) Block based mastering versions are evil, but I guess that's what most ears are used to by now.

[jshawpro]

Thanks for the replies guys!! I think I'm getting closer ... This is a track I produced a couple of days ago ... "Remastered" ... Please bear in mind that this is a remix of an mp3. It's only gonna' be so clear ... but I was definitely able to give it balls!!



My biggest problem is that I was not fully respecting my peaks. Which I know are managed by mixing, compression, and other techniques ... But I had to MIX THE CRAP out of this to get it balanced enough drive it like I'm speaking of ... METER was barely moving by the time I was done.

Sounds pretty decent considering how bad abused it in Ozone!

Thanks again, guys!

[ksandvik]

What DAW are you using? If you give some headroom in the master before sending it to Ozone you get better results as the plug-in has dynamic head room to adjust. What I usually do is to place a Gain utility in front of Ozone and key down the gain until it pumps nicely and then this signal is sent to Ozone. You could of course adjust all the individual channel volume settings but this is faster and with 32-bit resolution in the summing engine you don't get distortion from the individual tracks, rather the sum itself sent out.

Also you get good results with small values in Ozone, most of the presets are a little bit dangerous as they have settings over the top unless you take down the amount within each module of course.

[jshawpro]

I'm using Ableton ... And yes sir, I try and leave headroom ... but there's always seemed to be debates as to how much. I'm learning that it's circumstantial from track to track to some degree. And how one finalizes their sounds is unique from person to person. I think the key really is to have a reason to want to take a track as far as you can ... get frustrated ... then WORK on your weaknesses.

I use the Utility trick as well ... I can't wait until Ableton 9 drops! <-- don't know what made me say that!


I hear ya on Ozone as well ... I'm starting to feel it though!!


Thanks again for your insight ... I'll keep in touch.