This was a question posed in the Friday Tips thread, and my response got so long-winded that I decided it deserved its own thread!



Let me break down my mastering process real quickly for you.

Pre-mastering

Mix your track down so that you are really, really happy with it. As good as you can possibly get it. Use sidechaining, distortion, compression, and whatever else you need to get it sounding as loud as possible. Bounce it in as high resolution as you need, with the highest peaks below 0dB - most mastering houses will say below -6dB - and load it into a new project file. This may seem like an extra step, but it is important philosophically because then you are committed to having the track done, and when you open it up in a new project with just the audio waveform, you are committed to working on the mastering alone, and not going back to make compositional changes.

Ozone EQ

The first screen in Ozone is the EQ. I rarely use the EQ. It is a powerful and transparent EQ, but I find that any problems it can fix are better fixed in the mixing stage. For example, if there is too much bass, you should just turn down the bass in the mixing stage, not EQ it down in the mastering stage.

Ozone Reverb

I rarely use Ozone reverb. It is a nice effect, and I can see how it would be useful for, for example, acoustic guitar compositions or vocal tracks, to give a sense of a room, but for our kinds of music, it's unnecessary. I worry about it muddying up my bass.

Ozone Loudness Maximizer

I typically keep the threshold at 0dB and the Margin at 0dB. If you want the track to be loud, you want the peaks to hit 0dB. That is the Margin. The threshold is where you want the maximizer to start limiting the sound. I usually keep that at 0dB as well, to preserve most of the dynamics of the track. You can experiment with different settings on it and see how it affects your sound. If you keep it at zero dB and run the master input in "hot" (above 0dB), you will notice that the effect is similar to lowering the Margin. I prefer to leave the margin at 0 and raise the input volume. I usually leave the character around the middle settings. You can play with that one too. Shorter settings will give a faster release time, and longer will be slower, which can sound a bit more natural.

Ozone Harmonic Exciter

This thing is the shit. I have no idea how it works, but it adds a lots of beautiful harmonic crispness and presence to the top end of your mix. I tend to use the default bandwidths (the 4 boxes at the top) and increase the Band 3 and Band 4 Amount controls by about 1.0, and then dial down the Mix controls until I get it where I want it. I don't touch the delay controls at all. I've heard that if you put a slight delay on everything except the highs, things sound a little more clear. You can try it, but I think it will make it harder to mix the track if you're beat matching. Basically I don't understand the delay effect enough to fuck with it effectively.

Ozone Multiband Dynamics

Here's my quick and dirty technique for boosting the perceived volume of your mix. Start with the bass band (default 20hz-140hz or so). Increase the band gain to 2.0dB. Don't touch the limiter settings. Turn the compression ratio up to 1.25-1.5 or so. Move the compressor threshold down to about -16dB. Visually, what you should see is the that the white dot at the top right of the volume diagram is going to realign itself with the top right corner of the box. When that is in line, your volume is not peaking out, so line it up visually. Then slowly increase the expansion ratio, up to 1.25 or so, and put the threshold of expansion at about -52dB. If you've done it right, you should have a series of 3 lines that connect the bottom left corner to the top right corner, and rise up a little bit above a diagonal. Essentially you've raised the perceived volume of that band by 2.0dB without allowing it to clip! Copy and paste (right click on the band for the contextual menu) these settings to the other 3 bands. Adjust them to taste. You may find that after compression, you need a little extra sparkle, so go back and tweak the settings on the harmonic exciter if you like.

Ozone Multiband Stereo Imaging

This one is great too. It takes the perceived stereo image of a band and widens it! It can also compress the stereo image (mix both channels to mono). I use this to expand the claps, synths, and whooshy noises that I want to sound super wide (high and mid-high bands). I typically leave the mid-low band untouched. I always put the low band all the way to MONO! Why? Because I want to make sure there are no phasing artifacts in the song! If you are mastering for a vinyl release, it is essential that the bass is mono! On a big soundsystem, you always want the bass to be mono. If you solo the low band and then move the slider to mono, you should not hear any change in the signal. If you hear a perceived dip in the volume, your left and right channels are out of phase in the bass range. This is a problem that must be corrected in the mixdown. Go back and solo each instrument and make sure there is no bass that has a phase delay or any other "spreading" plugin on it. Spreading should only be used on frequencies above ~500hz. You may need to use a low cut EQ on sounds like snares or synths to make sure they are not introducing any phasing artifacts in the low end. The stereo imaging is great for identifying this kind of problem, so this is a situation when it is ok to use ozone during the mixdown process. But use it and then fix the problem, bounce the song, and reopen Ozone again for the final master!

A/B-ing

A/B-ing just means comparing one thing to another. Now would be a good time to start A/Bing your master with the unmastered mix. Set up a duplicate channel in your DAW with the mixed audio track on it, but without the master. Listen to the mastered track (solo'd), and turn the volume down so the peak is at -6dB. Turn up the unmastered track (solo'd) until the perceived volume of the track matches, as close as you can, the perceived volume of the mastered track. This may be (indeed, should be) peaking above the level of your mastered track. This A/B test will help you as a reference point when deciding on certain choices you must make as a mastering engineer. For example, when doing multiband compression, you have to choose between preserving the dynamics of a song, and making the song sound loud. To a degree, other producers and engineers have already made this choice for you. If you play a quiet song in a set with a bunch of loud songs, it will be the song where everyone goes to get a drink. Still, you should try to preserve the dynamics as much as possible. A/B-ing will give you a frame of reference for how much perceived volume you are adding to your track, as well as for effects that you can go overboard with if you're not careful, such as the harmonic exciter.

I'm still learning a lot of stuff about mastering, but there is my basic, functional guide to what I do on my tracks. Mastering is not magic, and the mixdown is the most important part of the process.

Good luck!

Thanks so much for your technique sharing. I often just take a -6db print from Live into Logic and just try 1 or 2 diff compressors on it to raise loudness. I definitely need to spend way more time on this process. Then again, I actually have to create songs I am pleased with too before I reach that stage! HA. But the endeavor, as much as a bitch it may be, is half the fun for me.

Cheers.

Eprom dropping gem after gem in this forum. Thanks for the generosity and time. This is really insightful stuff (yet again). Big ups.

I'm sure you could get similar results from Logic's stock plugins. I have just learned Ozone really well, so I tend to use that. Logic definitely has analogous plugs for pretty much every function in Ozone, tho.

This is amazingly helpful even though I don't have Ozone. And it's tempting me to bring out my behringer ultrafex for the harmonic excitement (I used it a couple times when I first got it and it didn't seem to be the standard behringer fail)... but like adverbial I haven't finished anything I really like recently.

Logic has some awesome effects indeed! The delay designer and space designer both sound gorgeous. And channel eqs or the linear phase eq are good. The chorus sounds decent and one can get crazy effects from the spectral gate filter or the ringshifter. The direction mixer and stereo spread rule. The limiter I am not too keen on though.

Overall, Logic is a great tool to have in any Mac user's arsenal. It is just such a damn shame that Ableton has spoiled us with such a non linear method of recording. At least in my case, I find it tough to write tunes right to left. Started on Acid, then Cubase, then Live 4 on a pc, then Live on a Mac, and just got into Logic roughly a year ago.

Ozone has always been a blast to use when I have tried it out on friend's setups.

What it all comes down to though for sure:

DAWs, modular environments, AUs, VSTs, hardware even... all are just tools to get the job done. No more no less. Stick with what YOU FIND comfortable using.

Ok I am rambling. Bed time here for this dude.

Cheers.

Thank you so much for taking the time to lay down such knowledge. This is the most massive thing a person has ever done in the history of human kind. Well maybe there's some 'saving the planet' people out there that have you bested. Eprom you are bringing it all around. Your sets are amazing, Production is top notch, and Your a stellar human being to boot. Thanks again....

A big YES to all of this! Thanks for the knowledge and insight, I cant wait to get home and apply what I've learned from Professor Eprom today at GlitchHopForum University. If we ever get to the point for needing a "Production Bible" in here, this MUST be included. Wow!

im gonna have to buy you an Ashley Schaeffer BMW and a drink at Sh-Booms for this one... thanks for the insight. woo!

I've got an arm like a cannon, a cock like a Burmese python, and the mind of a fucking scientist.

Ladies and gentlemen, Kenny Powers is in the buildin!


Good ish eprom! Thanks for the tips!

Listen here you beautiful bitch i'm about to fuck you up with some truth......


i can feel it....down in my plums......warm....blueish hue.....gettin ready to take em to the faaaarmers market

alright thats it, favorite eastbound quotes thread comin later tonight!!

hey, i am a fucking scientist!

and this soon-to-be doctor says these words should be written upon tablets of stone!

holy moses batman!

Good post up there!

i never usually get far enough to get to the final mastering stage, but my basic philosophy on mastering is to get your sounds down as perfect as possible by themselves first, get them to work as best as you can together in the song, and then start mastering based only on what is needed. Dont overcompress your stuff or it will result in listening fatigue (your brain needs a diversity of velocities and good dynamics or it will automatically start to tune the sounds out) in addition to bringing up frequencies and noise you dont want. Generally, use EQ to cut frequencies down, not bring them up. read books about this, there are tons of books on mastering but for an overall perspective of mastering in conjunction with a shit-ton of other production related information on damn near everything I high recommend Rick Snoman's "Dance Music Manual 2nd edition".

This thread might help...

http://www.dubstepforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=74832

This is a great article that every producer should read. It breaks down gain structure and headroom so quickly and easily. Thanks for posting the link.

Might I highly recommend the fabulous companion manual/joke book to Ozone, Ozone Mastering Guide

sweeeet!

This post is amazing. The mastering stage always frustrates me so it's nice to have something to reference if only for a place to start.

cheers!



*maybe this deserves a sticky?

Question about Limiting and Dynamic...

Here's my situation:

In order to get the loudness I need the match levels with other tracks, I have to pull the threshold down so far (or run in the input so hot) that it squashes the waveform. I've been mastering my own tracks for about 2 years now and I get good results but when I look at the waveform of my masters compared to others...it just seems like I'm over limiting? Example: During "breakdowns" in my tracks...the waveform is still almost peaking at 0db. But that's the only way I can get the proper loudness. What do you think?

Should I try and make my mixes louder?
or
Is this just the constant battle you face with limiting?

That Dubstep Forum link was pretty informative. I already started doing a lot of this about a year ago instinctually ("hey things are SO much easier to work with when they're not all peaking and clipping...") Still some gems in there though.

Every track you have is going to need to have it's own mastering settings and I'm generally of the opinion that it's a bad idea to start messing around with the mastering side of things if you still don't know much about mixing. A good mix will probably sound better than shitty mixing and clueless/noob mastering.

Take the time to render out all of your channels, import them into a new session map all of the channel outputs to a midi controller and adjust the mix appropriately. Zero out all channels and bring up the beat, then the bass, then the leads etc. Work your way up through the parts in terms of priority in the mix. Once you get a nice clean sound with no peaking and plenty of headroom then you can think about sending it out to be mastered.

I have always found ozone's limiter to sound very unnatural but havn't used the new one included in version 4 at all. It's supposed to be reworked. When I have used Ozone for mastering in the past I have always turned off the limiter and used either the Wavearts Final Plug or more recently Voxengo's excellent "Elephant" which seems to be the most transparent and similar to the original Waves L2.
But yea, Ozone's multiband harmonic exciter is Tits! And it also works great on individual channels in the mix as well. Can be a pseudo replacement for the waves Rbass plugin if dialed in properly. Allthough some track delay is usually introduced so u usually will benefit from bouncing the results to a new channel and re-aligning them.

Hey sander, are u on v4 yet?

thats the main thing you can take away from reading that thread,...... if the mixing is spot on, then mastering is nothing more than a formality. if the mixing is shit, however, then mastering wont do shit for you, you'll just get a louder piece of crap ( see metallica death magnetic).

the one constant you'll find in that thread is that if theres a problem that needs a compressor or eq or superduperwhateverthefuck, then you should go back to the mix and fix it there.

i read that thread a while ago, and i honestly couldnt believe that something as simple as gain structure would have such a dramatic effect,..... so i put it to the test on a short loop, with no compressors, and my god if it didnt shit all over every other mix i slaved away on for days.

if you can pick sounds that go well together, and you follow the fundamentals of that thread, then all you need to do at the end is slap a limiter on to it, and it'll come out sounding as loud and more importantly, as fat as you hear it on your daw, good enough to be played out.


the only downside is that it'll make you want to go back and remix all your old stuff,......

all this advice/knowledge is much appreciated!

-peace-

i have a question that hopefully somebody with more skill can answer. basically i mixdown and get a properly eq'd and panned track peaking around -6 to -9db on a meter. i now want to send this file to an ME. but what i used to do, is load up the resulting audiofile and apply some mastering effects via izotope ozone 4 and with slight limiting from the w1 (free excellent). i use a dynamic range meter during this stage (free as well) last in the processing chain. i try to keep in the range of 10-15 on the dynamic range meter. now i have read that popular music typically has a dynamic range of 6 to 10 dB, with some forms of music having as little as 1 dB or as much as 15 dB. i am aware of the k20 and k12 system too. i guess my question is this:

to ppl mastering and know what they are doing -

what dynamic range do you try to keep in your files?

i have posted in another thread how the majority of the glitch hop i listen to and respect tends to be squashed to death when it comes to a lively dynamic range. i do not want to go down this route. hate to be so analytical about this aspect of recording, but quality sounds and the technology behind choons almost gets me more excited than the choons themselves. plus will a track w/ 10-15 dynamic range hit as hard in a club as the squashed file that has 1-5 dynamic range? sadly i do not have access to play my tunes on a banging ass system. just studio monitors and in a car.

thanks for the input. cheers.

what dynamic range meter do you use?