Subject:Acid project mastering

Posted by: Pol Davril

Date:6/8/2007 2:28:52 AM

Hello,

Despite many articles about audio mastering, I sill have some unclear thoughts.

I create my own loops and assemble them within Acid.
When the song structure is OK and the basic mix sounds good, it's time for audio mastering, to get "that" commercial sound with adequate frequency levels. Most of the time, my mixes are too muddy, with a lack of mid and high frequencies, compared to commercial CD's.

I plan to use iZotope Ozone and use the frequency spectrum of some commercial recordings, as references.
But what's a good way to use it ?

1) Should I insert Ozone in Acid master bus, check the Ozone spectrum and experiment EQ'ing each Acid track, before starting any processing with Ozone itself ?

2) Do I have to master the backing track first and add vocals afterwards ?
Or should I master the whole mix at once ? In this case, can I apply the same corrections to the instrumental version (for live vocal performance) ?

3) When the frequency spectrum is OK, is it a good way to normalize RMS to -12db in SoundForge ?

4) What are YOUR methods for mastering ? Any tips are welcome !

Thanks !

Subject:RE: Acid project mastering

Reply by: miquel

Date:6/8/2007 3:56:18 AM

Newsletter April and May issues contain two great articles about Mastering with Sound Forge by Craig Anderton

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/news/newsletter.asp

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Miquel.

Subject:RE: Acid project mastering

Reply by: RedStone

Date:6/8/2007 9:57:23 AM

ahh ... there is no real "method" - you have to do what the track needs. Usually having a few other sets of ears on the project helps with these descisions of "what is necessary" - also check your mixes on a few different systems - like a small boom box, a car stereo, and good quality headphones.

So my first question to you would be: what does the mix sound like when you play it on other systems?

Second question: what happens to your mix when you put a limiter on it and smash it to -12dBRMS? Does the final mix fall apart compared to the pre-mastered mix (i.e. turn up the monitor gain for the pre-master, and compare to the smashed version - play with the monitor gain to let you percieve them both as having the same loudness)

Third Question: Do you know your gear well enough to understand it's drawbacks and be able to compensate "in the mix"?

4th question: spectrum analysis is nifty, but you need to be able to correlate what the analyzer is telling you to your ears and apply it to the mix. I would highly caution you against using the analyzer in place of your ears.

I would use the analyzer as a compliment - like if your speakers' range is only 80hz - 19khz - then the spectrum analyzer might tell you if you forgot to High Pass a vocal track, if there is too much sub-sonic bottom end in the bass, or if something has an absurd amount of high end that you can't hear because of your monitoring limitations. This can essentially save you from avoiding some mistakes - but it's not an all-in-one solution by any stretch.

So, you say that your mixes are muddy? What kind of speakers are you using? And what kind of microphones and front end are you on?

The muddiness could be coming from the front end (skewed frequency spread is being captured by the converters on your sound card or recording interface), thin sounding monitors (so you end up EQing in all the mud), or too many instruments playing the exact same thing (i.e. acoustic guitars/vocals/percussion etc).

hope that helps,
Ryan