Mastering Questions

[jedkleb]

Yo yo,
Ableton Live.
Looking to master my tracks. A dad's friend of mine works on production but for kid television shows. He claims he can master a track for me. Any reason not to? Free + Easy? Other options?
Also,
What state does the track need to be in to be sent to mastering? Frequency wise? Each sound + hit is Eq'd.
How much of a difference does mastering a dubstep track make?
Sorry for the question rampage.
J

[SirReal]

Check out Jester's Stickythread on Mastering in the Mixes & Productions section.

[amidoinitrite]

not sure if serious..

BUT..
if its free why not?
can't hurt anything.. mastering is very fine processing.. most/all eq should be done in the mixing stage..

[NonChalant]

If the guy knows what dubstep is and actually listens to dubstep then he will be able to master it for you for sure. if not if he is willing to sit down with you and work on it with you im sure that would really benefit you. he might not know what a dubstep song is supposed to sound like per say, but he will have an excellent ear for what sounds balanced. you will probably just have to keep repeating the phrase "no, the bass is supposed to be slightly overpowering".

if he uses ableton he will need the project folder with all of your samples in the project folder and all of your project files in the project folder. and he will have to have the same vst's as you. it may be easiest to bus all your midi parts into audio files with all of their automation/eq's/fx. then once you have a track for every part of your song he can take it and master it in any program. if he is a professional it is quite likely he uses pro-tools.


one tip that you can take with a grain of salt is that when i make a dubstep song, or anything with a constant bass, if there is anything you want to really pierce through the bass put a compressor on the bass (in fact you already should have a compressor on your bass) and sidechain it to the track that has the certain part that you want to pierce through the bass.

cheers.

[misha_val]

if he uses ableton he will need the project folder with all of your samples in the project folder and all of your project files in the project folder. and he will have to have the same vst's as you. it may be easiest to bus all your midi parts into audio files with all of their automation/eq's/fx. then once you have a track for every part of your song he can take it and master it in any program. if he is a professional it is quite likely he uses pro-tools.

cheers.

Nope, just export the entire audio and send him the track. Make sure there are no limiters on the master channel and leave about 6db of headroom.

[amidoinitrite]

MEs don't want to deal with file projects.. just stems!

[Tarekith]

No reason not to try it at least, nothing to lose if it's free. Will it make a difference in dubstep? Sure, if he's familiar with the genre and knows what he's doing it will. Typically Dubstep has a lot more going on around the 60Hz range than most people not familiar with the genre would expect.

You sould send him a 24bit/44100 wav file of your master out in Live's Render dialogue, should be all he needs for mastering.

[biru]

24bit, 44.1k should go to mastering.

Should sent o someone who gets dubstep. Big hint: find out some mastering engineers who did work on proper dubsetp relase.