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Elijah
Registered User

Joined: 20 Jan 2004
Location: Calgary, Alberta, Canada Eh?

Posted: Wed Dec 01 2004 02:53 Mastering? define.
what IS mastering. definition. is it exporting seperate tracks and then mixing them using audition or another track editor? placing eq's on the tracks... if thats mastering then madtracker (rc4) can do all that.... confused. also lets put the mastering tips amd pointers here now.
- Elijah

Walter Vos
Registered User

Joined: 04 May 2003
Location: Groningen, The Netherlands

Posted: Wed Dec 01 2004 10:13

Well....

Quote:

is it exporting seperate tracks and then mixing them using audition or another track editor?

No, that is, like you say, called mixing. Very Happy

Mastering is treating your stereo mix for the final touch. So this is something you do on the stereo track, after mixing. But if you do really good at mixing, you'll hardly have to do any. I'll post some mastering tips later (don't have a lot, but i do have a few).

what is hip?

www.waltervos.nl

Blaster
Registered User

Joined: 04 May 2003
Location: Netherlands/Germany

Posted: Wed Dec 01 2004 11:55
A nice booklet by Bob Katz can be found here. Even though it assumes you're mastering with Ozone, this could still be a big help: http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/ozone/guides.html More: http://www.theprojectstudiohandbook.com/articles9.htm Although imo it's good to get some books. Not only are they easier to use and read, but a lot of info can be found there that isn't on the net. "Mastering Audio" by Bob Katz is probably interesting on this subject (although I don't have it, but it seems to come highly recommended).
united trackers

N0N
Registered User

Joined: 20 Oct 2003

Posted: Wed Dec 01 2004 20:33
One thing, graphical dynamic eq's are great to have, none are free, I'm so pissed. If anyone knows were to get one that would be great. I'm using a 30 day demo of MultiDynamics which is one of the lower end Dynamic eq's but if used it in conjunction with FFT (a dynamic spectrum analyzer) you can get the same results as VoxengoGlissEQ (Vox places a silence every 25 sec's, very lame), ozone3, and such. Thou MultiDynamics has all or more options then the others. Free stuff rocks. I just wish there were more of it heh.

Walter Vos
Registered User

Joined: 04 May 2003
Location: Groningen, The Netherlands

Posted: Wed Dec 01 2004 21:10
Graphical dynamic eq's? I've never heard of that. For as far as i know there are only graphic eq's, parametric eq's, and paragraphic eq's (maybe there was some other dodgy thing i can't remember though). You're probably talking about parametric here (variable Q, variable gain, and variable frequency), and i have found one free one: ParisEQ I don't like this one though. My favourite is Eqium, wich is kind of a modular EQ, where you can actually choose what of equalizer you want (you can add low pass and high pass filters, band pass, notch, low shelf, high shelf, parametric, and some more).Firium is said to be really nice for mastering, this is a linear phase eq (eq-ing causes phase distortion, i never really hear it though). Eqium and firium are not freeware ofcourse, but they're not that hard to find either.
what is hip? www.waltervos.nl

Walter Vos
Registered User

Joined: 04 May 2003
Location: Groningen, The Netherlands

Posted: Wed Dec 01 2004 21:12
http://www.kvr-vst.com/get/986.html This might be interesting too btw, there was a topic about something similar some time ago. Oh, i just noticed that it's not really free, only when you already purchased software from this developer.
what is hip? www.waltervos.nl

LogicDeLuxe
Registered User

Joined: 03 Aug 2004
Location: Germany

Posted: Thu Dec 02 2004 00:17
At Bob Katz' booklet, I could say yes to all but 2 of the gray questions? How about you? And to the dither guide: It's pretty good theory, but it lacks one tiny detail: The 15/50 emphasis as defined in CD Red Book, and which is really a great compantion to dithering, even they probably didn't though about that back then. This is a feature of CD audio which is used far to sparely. Many recordings without exaggerating high frequencies might be helped with a combination of emphasis and noiseshaping. Doing this is simple: just appply the pre-emphasis filter before dithering with a highly shaped curve (ie. noise is mainly present near the nyquist frequency). I created a demo to demonstrate the efficiency of just that: http://www.gratissaugen.de/files/ditherdemo.zip I just used the first few seconds of the chainsong, as it is so pretty soft at the beginning. To make the effect more apparent, I dithered down to 8 bit instead of 16 (despite the different human perception). chain_nodither.flac is just truncated to 8 bit: no much left here, really. chain_noiseshaping.flac utilies a standard heavily shaped dither, which gives the low resolution pretty much detail. chain_noiseshapingemphasis.flac has 15/50 emphasis applied according to CD Red Book standard before dithering to 8 bit with the same dither function. Since soundcards usually don't have the required de-emphasis circuit for playback (which CD players have), I reconverted it back to float and applied the de-emphasis digitally and encoded the file with full 24 bit resolution. Of course, this combination is only usefull for CD production, but not for encoding MP3 etc. (in fact, you have to applie de-emphasis manually before you can encode to MP3 correctly). Also keep in mind the downside: you peak of high frequencies are limited slightly lower (which is no problem with the major kinds of music). By graphical dynamic EQ, do you mean a multiband compander? There is a dynamic EQ in Audition, but it's not graphical. It's a parametric one, where you can draw the parameter curves over time. I never used that one so far.

N0N
Registered User

Joined: 20 Oct 2003

Posted: Thu Dec 02 2004 07:10
Yea I also got a dynamic eq in goldwave(which I also never use) but this is different. I looked up mastring vst's, and this poped up and already I love it. This is the glissEQ: dynamic equalizer site. Also the Multidynamics, doesn't have the spectrum analyzer but still does the job and even more so with its 6 band compressors/limiters and such. I'm not sure what a multiband compander is but this could be the same thing, I'll look it up.

LogicDeLuxe
Registered User

Joined: 03 Aug 2004
Location: Germany

Posted: Thu Dec 02 2004 13:48

N0N wrote:

I'm not sure what a multiband compander is but this could be the same thing, I'll look it up.

Ozone has one, like described in the guide posted above.
And those you linked seem to be pretty similar. The one in Audition can only affect one band at a time, which is usually no problem, since you can cascade as many of them you like.

As I took a look at the OzoneMasteringGuide, ironically those points listed under "What's wrong with my song" seem to be exactly the problem in those productions which are refered as "commercial songs" there, at least on recent pop CDs. And often I can imagine that the songs on many CDs would sound even better if they were completely unprocessed. For example, the PCM track on "Sara K. Nautilus Tour" on DVD is unprocessed, and it just sounds perfect.

N0N
Registered User

Joined: 20 Oct 2003

Posted: Thu Dec 02 2004 16:27
Yes, But I also read in one of the mastering sites listed that prossesing is necessary as to make the song a desent level for all aplications, eg. the 100 different types of headphones, as each one sounds different from the others, the countless home theater systems, and the countless car radio and speaker setups. But what most of these guides say, its up to the listener if its liked or dis-liked. So I guess processing is a tool to help, just like another effect, try it out and if you like it keep it , if not try some other "effect". After that I dont know, but I think ozone, glissEQ, or multidyanmics is going on my wish list for now. The future might hold global catostrophy by comets, so I got things I'd like to get first hehe.

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