Okay then.

< deep breath >

I should start off by ~

< stops mid-sentence, goes to bar and pours stiff drink. Starts to walk back. Thinks twice, returns to bar and makes it a double. Quoffs it back down the gullet. >

Mastering.

I have my mixes. Now what?

Do I send them away for mastering? Do I rent a mastering rack-thingy? Do I buy some mastering software?

How important is Mastering, really? Will it make me go blind? Will it really, really improve my mixes?

Is Mastering the Silver Bullet of recording?

h e l p !


< goes back for another drink. For Pete's sake man, it's only 11:00 in the morning. Monday morning! >

Question: what is the ultimate goal for the recording?

If it's just to amuse friends and family, then you might try mastering it yourself. I do quickie mastering on things that aren't meant for mass duplication or commercial release.

If you're selling the results, you might consider taking it to a pro. The reason I wouldn't do this myself is that I'm far to familiar with the sound of the mixes by the time I'm done. I can't hear what the problems are the way an impartial set of ears will.

Then there is the matter of skill. MAstering is both an art and a science. If you have studied the science and feel like you know the basics well enough be an artist about it, fine. If not...why risk diminishing your wonderful work by giving it to an inexperienced beginner, even if it's you?

www.dougrobinson.com

And then there's also the question of gear.

Particularly in the digital age...there's nothing like a rack of GML EQ and Manley VariMu to sweeten those digital jaggies. Taking that output to 1/2" analog and back to digital with stellar converters. All while monitoring through a set of speakers that cost the price of a luxury car...

I personally do it myself for now. I'm pretty good at it, I think. Maybe better than mixing. I can't imagine posting my rough mixes.

Honestly, though, if I were going to release commercially on anything remotely large scale, I wouldn't be mixing it either. Shooting for more experienced and objective ears than mine for that...

YMMV.

My Tunes

If you care about sonics send it to a pro, if you don't do it yourself.

Just having a friend recording engineer do it will probably be better than doing it your self.

What do you plan to master on? A great room and great monitors and T-Rax is probably better than a mediocre room with NS10's and a rack of Weiss, Z-Systems and Massenburg gear.

A good mastering room is dead silent even with all the gear on. And has immaculate acoustics. Most pro engineers also incorporate audiophile tricks (aka expenses), and such.

How can you choose the best dither if it only effects -96 to -90 and your rooms noise floor is -80? Stuff like maximizers (high end ones) are completly out of the question. And all other processing is just less than ideal. Mastering engineers also find and fix clicks and pops and glitches that might not even be audible in a normal mixing room.

A good engineer will also arrange your album in sets, and space your songs in a way that makes the album more enjoyable.

I personally will probably do quick-dirty masters on my own material for some time.

I have a few books on mastering, but the only one I would recommend every audio engineer own is Bob Katz book "Mastering Audio".

It's not a step-by-step... but it does a great job explaining the things in audio that you just can't read about on most recording forums, and isn't completly gear oriented.

Anyone know the standard rates of professional mastering engineers nowadays?

Have fun Fred.

-Dusty

$85-$100 per hour, AFAIK.

"A great room and great monitors and T-Rax is probably better than a mediocre room with NS10's and a rack of Weiss, Z-Systems and Massenburg gear."

Don't forget, though, that *rooms* don't master--engineers do. I'd take a talented engineer working in an ok room over an ok engineer working in a great room anyday.

www.dougrobinson.com

quote:

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$85-$100 per hour, AFAIK.

---

For perspective, a major label release gets like 2 days of budget for the mastering.

On the flip side, Mobile Fidelidy will spend a week or more doing an album that the record company screwed up.

My Tunes

So mastering basically cost 2 grand?

Jesus.

I know I blow that on gear that would do less for my sound quality... but I can atleast sell that shit if I want to.

I think for that kind of money, I would spend double to setup my own crappy mastering studio and invite some friends over to help me master my own stuff. Then you could do mastering for other people, add it to the services of your studio, master as many of your own as you want, and have a nice room to listen to music in, have a great room to check your mixes, and learn a new skill as well.

I wonder if my parents will let me have yet another room

-Dusty

"So mastering basically cost 2 grand?"

That's for a major label release, according to Pop at least. I've heard more.

But the government also spends $75 on a screwdriver, Dusty, when the rest of us can usually find them at the bargain price of a buck or two. Mastering in the real world (as opposed to a bloated major label budget using the highest-priced talent available) typically runs between $500 and $1000 for an entire album, unless it was shittily recorded and needs major surgery. I've had 11 albums mastered and the most I ever paid was $1100, and it's more typical to keep it in the $750 range.

www.dougrobinson.com

So I could get a super-pimptacular engineer for 2 grand... shiiit, thats incredible. It would also be very cool to be a part of the sessions...

Funny how I went from one extreme to the other in 30 minutes, eh?

-Dusty

We're recording tracks on a 1680, and mixing here...taking the stereo pair to a mastering engineer known for obtaining great transparent acoustic jazz recordings in his space...

I've worked with him before,...rates are going to be around $500 a day...he thought if things go well he could nail it in one day...depending...

No way I'm trusting myself to master this...and, getting level is probably better in a pro room...I really need that objectivity...RD

Good move, RD. Is this an acoustic jazz recording? What do you play? I'm a jazz guy myself, and my upcoming album was recorded (by Dot/Dan Richards, in fact) on my VS2480.

www.dougrobinson.com

quote:

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So I could get a super-pimptacular engineer for 2 grand... shiiit, thats incredible. It would also be very cool to be a part of the sessions...

---

The more high-end the place, the more likely they are to charge you extra to sit in a 'be a part of the sessions'.

I 'mastered' our previous CD at home, but if we could have afforded to pay a 'real' mastering engineer to do it, we would have.

Instead of having someone who mastered commercial-release-grade recordings for a living blow through it in a few hours and in all likelihood do a much better job in a fraction of the time, it was a good week or two of trial-and-error, going back and checking different 'versions' of 'mastered' files on different monitors, stereo systems, car stereos, etc.

I wouldn't recommend 'self-mastering' - at least for something that you're going to ask people to actually buy (whether you're 'selling' the result to music fans or a record label) to anyone, unless your budget dictates that you don't have a choice in the matter, as was the case for our first 'real' release.

It still turned out "OK" for the most part, but most likely would have turned out even better had we been able to 'hire a professional' to do it. Doing "DIY" mastering on something that you know is going to be commercially released (we're a mostly-unknown indie band on a small indie label, but they have decent distribution, so we knew the CD would be going to Tower and some of the other 'big' stores, in addition to indie and online shops) was easily the most stressful part of the entire recording process - most of the "perspiration" from that "1% inspiration and 99% perspiration" cliche was in that last week or two. Writing is fun. Tracking is fun. Playing with arrangements, effects, and mixing are pretty fun. Mastering is kinda just...work. If you're mastering your own stuff, not only are you under the stress of potentially screwing up all your own (and others') previous hard work on the project, you're also often worn out and just want to be over and done with the project, as well as excited about finally having a 'finished product' - which may not be the best headspace to be in for the nitpicky, plus-or-minus-half-a-dB-at-125Hz kind of meticulous detail work that mastering is (supposed to be).


I certainly understand the common temptation to go out and buy a Finalizer or some plugins instead of spending the same amount of money to pay someone else to master a project.

But think of it this way:

An "album" (whether you're selling it yourself at shows, or it's going to be gathering dust in a record store, or whatever) is something that you're going to have to live with "forever" (relatively speaking). A Finalizer Express and some 'mastering' plugins are going last you a couple years at most before you either 'grow out of them', realize they're not doing what you'd hoped, or realize that they're 'obsolete' - but your not-so-wonderfully-mastered-CD may still be around to haunt you for the rest of your life.

Isn't this whole 'recording music' thing, in a sense, an effort to give your musical ideas a kind of 'immortality'?

So why not hire the best, professional 'embalmer' you can?

Flame, there are many mastering houses that are more than happy to master a freebie song for you to show you what they could do with your entire CD. There are also enough good places with good gear that only might charge $500ish or so. And I'm not talking about just some guy set up with a computer and some software - these are real guys with nice gear.

I'd say find out yourself. Mastering can turn your music to shit or it can make it sound more incredible than you ever imagined and give it all that polish you hear on commercial CD's.

You can even put a WAV file online and put the word out that you're looking for mastering. Then engineers can download the file, do their magic and then upload somewhere online where you can access it.

Dan Richards
The Listening Sessions
The Project Studio Handbook

Flame, Vancouver has some of the best mastering house around. They are also, due to competition
farily inexpensive some do it on a per song basis.
do a search on it Vancouverbands.com also has a list of good studios who might have links to a few mastering houses.


That being said, having heard quite a few mixes
and resulting masters I have been generally disappointed with overall quality. It is a touchy area. If it is for wide distribution then by all means I would suggest a mastering house as standards can be applied that are needed for ditribution. But for limited release I think maybe another set of "pro" ears is all that may be required on mixdowns.

As has already been asked, what's the final outcome supposed to be for?

If it's for commercial release, those of us with home/project studios just aren't set up with the right gear or rooms to properly master something at this level. I don't care what plugs someone has, there's absolutely no plugin that'll substitute for years of experience and a room/gear that's specifically designed and setup for mastering. It's just an entirely different world. I'm currently tracking a band that's hoping for label attention and at the start of the project they asked if I'd master it for them. "No way in hell" was my response. Spend the money on professional mastering because your music deserves no less.

Now, if the tunes are for local demos or fun stuff for yourself, go for it. It's fun and can be a great learning experience.

______________________________
. . . cast adrift in a fractal sea . . .

Making me think, which hurts quite a bit.


Maybe the answer is in two-steps.

First of all go for a limited run of a "budget" mastering or maybe mastering from a rented piece of gear. Go through those steps and a)see how mastering works on my material and b)see if it enhances the sound enough.

With that small budget, small run, get out promotional CDs to my promotional list.

Then, pending responses (responses from the gang here of course!) then think about going "big budget" with a larger run. The responses from the limited/small run might help me with a remix or something.

Hmmmmmm . . . . this site is great for answers that make me think. I get tremendous ideas that start two new ideas that start two new ideas each and so on and so on and so on.

Nertz.

I should add that I am familiar with the mastering process for vinyl and tape, but that was some years ago . . . when the world was in black and white and you had to get up out of the chair and turn the TV channels by hand.

quote:

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Originally posted by Jazzooo:
Good move, RD. Is this an acoustic jazz recording? What do you play? I'm a jazz guy myself, and my upcoming album was recorded (by Dot/Dan Richards, in fact) on my VS2480.

http://www.dougrobinson.com

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Jazz, thanks for asking...I play in a duo live with my wife Jane Sytek www.sytekdavies.com ..we[/URL] record as a sort of folk-rock thing, but we do our shows as an acoustic duet...there are many elements of jazz in our sound since Jane is a flutist and has kind of a warmish jazz sounding voice...but I'm afraid I bring more of a scratchy thumpy thing to the mix LOL!!

I'm going to "master" my own tracks for some online presskit stuff we're developing for our website here, mostly because we need some files up for an upcoming promotional effort, and it's before we'll be done with the CD...but for the 4-sale CD I'll really appreciate having our engineer do the work...incidently, his name is John Stites and his website is www.arcadiarecording.com I believe...(check out some of his clients if you're into jazz sounding stuff) (...but please let him quote you the price for YOUR project...although I'm sure he'd be happy with my sharing the info above)

I'd like to hear what you came up with....any files or CD release date? RD

quote:

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First of all go for a limited run of a "budget" mastering or maybe mastering from a rented piece of gear. Go through those steps and a)see how mastering works on my material and b)see if it enhances the sound enough.

---

You could also do an A/B experiment: find one of the mastering houses that's willing to do the "we'll master one song for free to show you what we can do" deal (which is pretty common), and at the same time do your own "homebrew mastering" version - then compare the two (or better yet, play the two versions for other people and see what they say, or if they can even tell a difference).



~ Chris

say . . wait a minute

all I need is as many mastering houses as I have songs . . . . send one to each for "trial" that they do for free . .. heh hee heee . . . all my songs mastered for free . .. . okay maybe each a little different sounding ..

note to self: don't get confused and send the death metal track to the Amish mastering house . .

Just say "NO!" to negativity!

where (approx) are you in Vancouver, Flame? Just askin b/c I live in N. Vanc.