Hi there all, i am new to this forum, but while reading thru it I came to the conclusion that there is a lot of knowledge floating around here... so this is my question...

I am pretty new to the mastering world, i have recorded quite a few bands in my little studio with fairly decent results. I seem to have a pretty good handle on getting the mix to an acceptable sound, but i cannot for the life of me get a good master... I think my biggest problem is in the arena of compression vs. amplification. i have been using Ozone (which i see is not your favorite) but i am having a very hard time getting rid of (compressing)the extreme peaks in the mix. is there some sort of secret to ratio and/or attack releases when it comes to the mastering side of things? i can do pretty well in the individual tracks with vocals, guiatrs and such... but when it comes to the whole mix, i just cant figure it out... and this is, in turn, limiting my ability to boost the mix over all...

i would love to hear some of your feedback.

Thanks, Sef

Have you tried limiting instead?

I have done some... but i wasnt sure what the end result would be if i really threw a hard limit on it. Maybe I'll give that a try... I think i'm just having a hard time with compression. All of these more experienced guys on here seem to know how to compress the snot out of something, and i guess i could do that too... maybe I'm being too cautious...

Thanks for the reply

Sef - www.freewebs.com/unisefmusic

Much of the time, it's not just knowing "how" to do it -- The mix needs to be capable of taking it also. Most mixes aren't. The ones that do are few and far between.

If it helps, most of the ones that can handle the abuse were created with huge amounts of headroom at every possible stage...

Hey John, I actually played aound with this idea this weekend and was quite suprised how much i could chop... I ended up cutting out 2dB with little, if any, adverse affect. And from there i was able to add the boost i was looking for. Thanks for the help... I will most definatley be back in the future.

In my experience if you want to add a few db without altering transients too much, it's a good trick to have a 2 buss compressor before the limiter with 2:1, 1.5:1 ratio. This way you don't have to chop off the wave form as relentlessly as you would with a single limiter.

What you think, John?

I usually have a compressor on the buss at around 1.5:1 before I even start patching the deck in.

Not for volume though... Although it can certainly be a side-effect of it.

So this leads me to another, more specific question on the compression, again, I am quite a newbie to all of the lingo, so bear with me, i honestly have no idea what "patching the deck in" means... and as far as doubling the buss, do you mean, in essence, compressing it twice? and when it is for volume reasons, how do you guys determine what threshold to put this 2:1 and 1.5: compression at, and what attack release settings to have them at, is there somewhat of a general rule in the Mastering world?

The tape deck -- Patching in the tape/playback deck into the console. But same thing if I'm mixing in the box -- Generally, I'm going to have some sort of idea about if the mix is going to benefit from compression on the stereo buss before I start. Many do. Some don't.

The settings are completely dependent on what the mix is asking for.

And it's never for the sake of volume alone... I don't even add make-up gain. (A) It's not worth the risk of noise (B) Headroom. Lots of headroom.

Gotcha... I'm sensing a theme for you... something about headroom I'll most definatley keep that in mind... Thanks John.

Sef

quote:

I'm sensing a theme for you... something about headroom

Besides the gear itself, and sometimes even more important that the gear itself, is running that gear where it's "comfortable" running. Headroom is absolutely the king of the hill. It's the first place most recordings go bad. Once it's used up, it's used up forever. Record something too hot, overdriving the input stage, and that headroom is gone. Turning it down doesn't bring it back. Tracking too hot, mixing too hot, summing, auxes, etc., etc., etc.

I've yet to have a project come in with "too much" headroom. My tracking converters are calibrated to -20dBFS (=0dBVU) and I "pretend" they're at -24dBFS.