Mixing and (vs?) Mastering
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  1. #1
    Tech Guru grazz16's Avatar
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    Default Mixing and (vs?) Mastering

    Alright, so I've got a track pretty much all finished and its time to mix and master this track. That being said I have a few questions/thoughts about this whole process. To start with, I've taken a look at Terekiths articles (if you are watching Terekith, feel free to chime in here ) found here http://tarekith.com/assets/mixdowns.html and the subsequent mastering article. Now a few questions arise for me:

    1. In regards to mixing, i have pretty much been doing this as i've gone along and it seems this is acceptable, as he states
    A lot of people will not even approach the mixdown as a separate process, they shape it while they write, and when that phase is done, the song is done and they send it out for mastering. Certainly nothing wrong with this, many a good a tune has been written this way.
    ...ok, good. I pretty much don't move on until I have the levels and general "sound" sounding pretty much exactly the way I want them to. Obviously there is tweaking as new tracks get added and I've done this, as well as an overall tweaking now that the track is done.

    Track sounds great to me and is seems to be on average between -2db and at the very peak coming out of the main build up -0.5db, but there is a lot of talk about reducing the overall volume to like -6db. Now why would one need to do this if the track isn't clipping to begin with? I have volume automations in there so it seems to me like a huge pain in the ass to go over each track and reduce each to match the goal master db if it isn't actually necessary to do, no?

    2. Which leads me to mastering, Terekith states a few goals of the mastering process:
    • Making all the songs on a CD sound cohesive.
    • Preparing the song so that it is not too quiet, and more importantly these days, not too loud.
    • The final quality control for projects going to a replication house.
    • An experienced, fresh set of ears to help achieve the overall balance of frequencies in a song.
    • And more recently, a chance to interact with an experienced audio engineer and get feedback on the sonic qualities of your productions as they get close to completion.

    In general however, I think what most people want to achieve when it comes to mastering their own songs is two-fold: Get the overall level of the song right (how loud or quiet it is), and achieve a good balance of frequencies in the song (making sure it's not too bright or too bass-heavy for instance).
    Given that I'm doing this myself and this isn't going on a cd or anything (yet ...yeah clearly not heh) the first 5 points don't really apply. The last however is confusing, as to me, this seems to be exactly what I've been doing all along and what mixing is for. I must be missing something here. Or am i....

    "Yeah yeah", I hear you muttering, "but how do I master my songs in the first place?"

    To put it bluntly, you don't.

    What?

    Let me say this again, in case you skipped over it. If you are writing and releasing your own songs, there is no reason to “master” them per se.


    Everything you need to do to make a song sound polished and balanced can be done in the mixdown, and this is where you should focus 100% of all your attention. There's only one exception, and that's getting the overall volume of the song more inline with today's standards, and I'll come back to this later.
    So basically it boils down to volume at this point? If my track somehow manages to be in line with the rest of the music in itunes I'm good to go? Even that seems unnecessary as I constantly change the volumes of songs I get off beatport to mix with. When I'm doing a dj mix, each track and the master is capped at -3db to avoid clipping and even then I like to keep it around -1.5 to -1db below that just to keep it in the green. And it's very easy to do: this track is a bit quiet and needs +1 db, while this one is too loud and needs to come down -1db. So why is volume a big concern to begin with? Seems odd to me having to lower all your tracks just to raise them again in the end if they were never clipping to begin with.

    My biggest concern is sound quality on different speakers. I'm listening to this mainly on my Sony MDR-7506 headphones and i gotta say it sounds pretty sick...but so does everything coming through those. Sounds good on my computer speakers too, but how will this sound if someone were to play this on a big club system for example? Its a long shot i know, but its the principle of the matter. A big system could reveal the production quality is actually terrible. How would I ever know that without actually testing it on club speakers?

    Like i said i must be missing something here, any help would be great. (Sorry, long post, thanks for making it this far )

  2. #2
    Tech Convert secretseahorse's Avatar
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    Im no audio engineer by any stretch of the imagination, but ill give my 2 cents for what its worth (its worth 2 cents):

    mixdown focuses on individual tracks and how well they sit with each other, adjusting volume /panning and eq of each track, and when you're done, you bounce out the whole song, only then can mastering begin. i guess mastering focuses on the whole tune, rather than the individual tracks. Mastering involves many different elements (compression/limiting, eq'ing, harmonic enhancing/exciting etc.), and is best left to someone who knows the tools (teh mastering engineer). So i think what the article means is that when you master your tracks yourself, you probably won't have the skill/objectivity to do any sort of competent mastering to your track, and therefore should leave most of it alone -- except for overall volume adjustment/maximising, which is done not only by adjusting the master volume fader, but by limiting, compression and so on. This is where the lower volume (-6db) during mixdown comes in, giving you more headroom maximize the volume of the song without any clipping.

    For the different speakers: a pair of decent studio monitors can help you accurately listen to your mix

    That's just what i know , again, i'm not an expert, nor am i experienced (my tracks are still not well mixed/mastered) , so other DJTT members, do correct me!

  3. #3
    Tech Guru Coldfuzion's Avatar
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    Hey man, I can't answer your other points, but I can make a suggestion about listening to your track to make sure it sounds fine on other speakers. Find your friend with the crappiest car, and play it in his car. If it sounds fine in there, then in my mind you're good to go!

  4. #4
    Tech Guru Tarekith's Avatar
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    1. The main purpose of the -6dB recommendation is just to make sure you're not accidentally clipping anywhere. It's a rough guideline to aim for while writing and mixing, not a firm rule or anything. If you're ABSOLUTELY sure you're not clipping, then you can leve yours as is.

    You could just lower the master fader too, no need to mess with all the individual track volumes.

    2. In general, having your song peaking at -05dB is going to mean that it's probably going to be a bit quieter than other songs in the same genre. In a perfect world we'd actually stop there, leave the track nice and dynamic and still safe from clipping. But people want it loud a possible these days, which means doing some form of dynamic range reduction after this to get as much volume as possible. Thus, modern mastering (or at least one facet of it).

    As for how will it sound in a club, well yeah you'd have to play it in a club to know for sure, or have someone with more experience than you work on it to ensure this. There's no magic way to 'just know', over trial and error you learn how much bass is too much, how bright it can be without getting harsh, how too much stereo information can sometimes disappear, etc. Long story short, it's about a lot of trial and error on your end, or paying someone who's already done all that learning for you.

  5. #5
    Tech Guru grazz16's Avatar
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    You could just lower the master fader too, no need to mess with all the individual track volumes.
    That was another thing I was thinking about, is there anything wrong with just lowering the master volume? Then it got me thinking that this wouldn't really solve a clipping issue if it was turned up to "normal" volume.

    2. In general, having your song peaking at -05dB is going to mean that it's probably going to be a bit quieter than other songs in the same genre. In a perfect world we'd actually stop there, leave the track nice and dynamic and still safe from clipping. But people want it loud a possible these days, which means doing some form of dynamic range reduction after this to get as much volume as possible. Thus, modern mastering (or at least one facet of it).
    Interesting, does seem odd to me to go over this point in volume in the final mix. I mean, do what you want with it when you get it, but I would think that to have your track peaking around 0db would be exactly what a producer would want; very neutral with room for whoever gets the track to play with it without worrying about clipping.

    Ok, thanks for the responses, so where do you think i go from here? I think I'm starting to get to the point of diminishing returns in tweaking the parts, im sure you know what i mean: "yeah this part could be a touch louder or quieter, but is it really adding anything to the song at this point?" Should i just throw a touch more volume on it to bring it up to par with other tracks in the genre (i should have mentioned, this is like a tech house/techno ish track) and listen to it on a bunch of diff speakers to see how it sounds?

    Also, when exporting all this in Ableton you get a few diff options, namely things like: normalize, sample rate, bit depth, and dither options. Any standards for these things? Pretty sure I have to normalize it and i think i remember reading the bit depth was supposed to be 24, anything else?

  6. #6
    Tech Guru Tarekith's Avatar
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    It's not a big deal to lower the master fader, if that's easier than lowering all the track volumes, then go for it.

    Don't normalize, set the final output on the limiter to -0.3dB to be safe, and if this is your final end product and you're not going to work on it any more, then you want to export at 16 bit with dither on. POWr-2 is probably the best all around option for the kind of music you mention.

  7. #7
    Tech Guru grazz16's Avatar
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    Ok great thanks, so the limiter goes on the master track set to -0.3db? Just out of curiosity, why am i doing all of this in the first place? I.e. why 16bit vs 32bit, why shouldn't i normalize, etc? I'm a teacher by trade and i like to know these things for my own benefit

  8. #8
    Tech Guru Tarekith's Avatar
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    You'll have to start googling that kid of stuff man, way too long for me to sum up here. I'd recommend Bob Katz's "Mastering Audio" book, which covers not just mastering, but plenty of digital audio basics like this too. EVERYONE writing music should have a copy IMVHO.

  9. #9
    DJTT Scribe Mod smiTTTen's Avatar
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    Good advice. Im close to completing my first track and will be sending it to Mr Kith for it's makeover. I have to imagine that his more than reasonable fee is worth the investment if for no other reason than to truly understand what mastering adds to the final product. In fact, I've just had a bloody good idea for an article.....
    Beats By Dre is like audio flu for your balls.

  10. #10
    Tech Guru grazz16's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tarekith View Post
    You'll have to start googling that kid of stuff man, way too long for me to sum up here. I'd recommend Bob Katz's "Mastering Audio" book, which covers not just mastering, but plenty of digital audio basics like this too. EVERYONE writing music should have a copy IMVHO.
    haha fair enough, i had a feeling that might have been a bit complicated, thanks again

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