got this info tonight from the dubspot workshop with:

Daniel Wyatt (Sonica Media, Atlantic) - Multi-platinum sound engineer Daniel Wyatt will cover the techniques that make ordinary mixes sound extraordinary. That differentiate between what is just a cool composition and a commercially ready master: a world-class sounding track with a clean-soundstage, precise EQing, and razor sharp highs, mids and lows.

you guys have helped me a ton here, time to pay it forward!

1) use reference songs for your master. have a cd of 10 well mixed/mastered tracks that you can constantly compare to. play it in your car, ipod, in the studio, etc. the point of this is that you can readjust your ears throughout your mixdown. also, anywhere you record or play you will have a subconscious understanding of how the environment is effecting your sound

2) mid-side mastering: our goal is to have a louder sound comparable to commercial song. this technique is used in most commercial songs so the sound is very recognizable and loud (not too loud though). we will be cutting a few dbs off the low end of side of the mix and making musical boosts of the low end in the mono to give it that nice bump. we will also be boosting the slightest bit in the highs to give it an airy sound.

steps:
-create an audio effect rack with a utility rack in each chain. set one to width of 0% and one to width of 200%. one rack will be the mono information on the track, the other will be the stereo. we will call it mono and sides.
-good trick is to map your midi controller the on/off switch in the rack for A/Bing,not necessary however
-on the low end, create a shelving EQ to cut the bass 1-3db at around 250hz, and roll of the freq. below 30hz.
-on the mono, we are going to make two musical boosts. say the key of your bass is 60hz, make a a small 1-2db boost at 60hz as well as 120hz. 50hz-100hz. 55-110hz, etc. they are an octave apart which is what makes it musical. you can also boost at a fifth, etc.
-throw a limiter on the end, and have it barely riding the limiter. the kick will most likely be trigger the limiter to may 4-6db, but the rest of the sounds are on slightly limited, maybe 1-2db. go easy on the limiting.
-A/B that shit, tweak away. he said that for dance music, compression is not really necessary on the master. he only uses it in rock and other genres.

forgot to add: in ableton or any other 32 bit floating system (i think thats what he said): run the mix hot into the red. run it unti you dont like or notice the distortion. apparently this is one of the big secrets.

Nice info

Im curious to hear reactions on running the master channel into the red.

thx for the tips! wish I coulda been there. but I'm broke. and I dont finish songs anyway so I never get to the mastering stage

aye nice tip cheers, im am also curious about running the mix hot into the red?

Im no expert but surely the 32 bit floating point allows music to still sound ok above 0db in the DAW, but as soon as you export its going to sound awful? Not sure what you would have to gain by running it into the red.

personally i think in the software realm that running hot is a bad idea. analog added warmth to the sound when things were run hot. digital adds harshness. big difference. there are many other ways to add warmth and definition to your mix. distortion on return tracks is one way. splitting frequencies and adding distortion to just particular bands of sounds is another way. i have just been told not do so endless times. and of course now i cant find any data to show you why. i do remember that the occasional overshoot is alright. but to always be in the red on any channel is for sure a no no. plus keep in mind, when mixing down to send stuff to the ME u want to peak around -10 through -6 on the meter. this gives the cat with skills plenty of room to make your mix sound best.

my 2 cents. for what its worth. hopefully someone with more knowledge can chime in.

Dude I was just as skeptical about it. As far as the mixdown I would not run into the red.this guy has been doing serious mastering as a career. Look him up, he knows his shit. He was a top level professor at sae so I imagine he would know more than most on here, no offense, just sayin.

i take no offense. just going with what i have heard from many many many other people. vs this 1 dude. i dont doubt anyones skills. push your meter in the red. tell me that u like how it sounds. if u do. then keep doing it. /end.

Well...i could see it being beneficial.
on a 32 bit floating bus you can push it harder than a normal 24 bit bus. Its still not like burning tape and getting the natural compression and warmth.
Considering its for mastering and loudness maximization when its running into red it might just be transient and certain frequency spikes that are inaudible and will be cut down during normalization or limiting etc.
Sure thats not ideal, however if its not something that is audible but it'll boost your track 2-5db...why not?

Your mix should be about -6- -10db going to a ME so they can burn it with their high end converters/comps/eq's.
If working 100% digitally....i can see it making some sense.

yeah i hear ya adverd, i'm sorry i probably came off like a dick on that last post. i tried it on a few of my tracks and it sounds a lot better than the shotty jobs i was doing in ozone haha.

thanks for the grits. i've been studying a lot of mastering lately and this sounds similar to how my buddy explained. i just gotta say look into a vectorscope as to not shoot a big fat hole down the center of your tune...my goal is to find a free one soon...so if anybody knows give me a holla.

thanks for the tip man. I found this quite useful

Ahh yes the never ending mastering debates, im curious as to how major issues like mixing techniques ect. are so easily agreed upon but as soon as sum1 brings up mastering watch the fuck out.(i personally think ur shit shouldn't need to b tweaked that hard and way to much enmhasis is put on it neways cuz it should sound like delicious right out of ur daw).

Slap an eq on that bitch level the tracks on ur disk and add a little limiter love works everytime.

the internal representation of digital audio has a fair amount of headroom so you can get away w/ running into the red to get a couple extra db of volume. you have to be careful tho, if you go too far you will overload playback at the DAC.