Mastering Tips

[Kleekoh]

I was wondering what tips and techniques you guys could recomment for mastering in Pro Tools. I have recorded a few songs lately, but the volume always ends up being half of what I would like it to be in the final product.

Any suggestions to get it boosted?

[Polosul]

I was wondering what tips and techniques you guys could recomment for mastering in Pro Tools. I have recorded a few songs lately, but the volume always ends up being half of what I would like it to be in the final product.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Mastering is more like an Art, but it all depends the type of sound that you want to get, if you want to sound like something on the radio take it to a pro, if you just want a nice decent level upfront mix here's a tip. I have an output of pro Tools straight into Wavelab 4.0 where I have my EQ on at all times.At the top of the chain I use a 10 Band Waves EQ, Then I place a little reverb just to smooth out the mix then I place the Stereo Imager from Waves just to balance the mix and at the end I use the L1 Ultramaximizer or Maxim from Digidesign, then use the threshold on the L1 to bring up the overall level, if you get distortion you went too far. Bounce the mix to disk as a stereo intervealed and 16bit. I use waveburner 2.2 to burn my CD's and I've gotten awesome results, Because you could also bring up the level of the mixin waveburner up to 8db, once again check for distortion, and you'll be able to have a nice decent semi pro CD, nice and loud, This is more or less what I do, the clients like it.
Best of Luck mastering
Joel

[TAPKAE]

"Any suggestions to get it boosted? "

First off, "mastering" doesn't equate to "boosting".

Secondly, I'll let the legions of DUCers to fill you in on what to do to sound like crap, er, the major labels and commercial ready CDs...

[Raymond Hardy]

JOEL, Thanks for the excellent suggestions. You have a talent for writing in a clear and helpful way.
Its confusing to read that certain authors perform the tasks you talk about while MIXING and yet others do these things while MASTERING. So far I haven't found any clear instructions that answer my following questions: 1- how to choose and use plugins (in PT why do you choose between those in the AudioSuite and those that appear as inserts)?, 2- what order to use them?,3-when to use them?
In the general scheme of things, during Mixing and Mastering what is the sequence of steps after making a good recording?
At the end of all this is this, where does the Master Fader comes into play, how do you mix to the final stereo track, and do you Normalize when Bouncing to disk?
Sounds like I'm asking for the moon and if an outline is not possible perhaps you could make some reference suggestions. Thanks in advance.

[guitates]

1-go to Waves.com---click on support, then tips and tricks. Waves will give you the quick answers for compression, and plugin I deas.

2-Read the ProTools Manual 3 times and take notes...

3-go to digido.com and take notes

You would use Audiosuite to have more CPU power, and you can use a plugin 100+ times with Audiosuite.

When you keep plugins open in the inserts, this slows your system down, after you reach your CPU limit... [img]images/icons/cool.gif[/img]

[cwhite771]

If you're looking for a quick and easy method to master with relatively decent results, you could try T-Racks from IK Multimedia. I've had pretty decent results in the short time I've messed around with it. Comes as a standalone app or you can use the RTAS plugin on your master fader.
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c

[valvebrother]

Originally posted by Raymond Hardy:
So far I haven't found any clear instructions that answer my following questions: 1- how to choose and use plugins (in PT why do you choose between those in the AudioSuite and those that appear as inserts)?, 2- what order to use them?,3-when to use them?

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">That's because there are no right or wrong answers to these questions. There are no instructions. Each and every song may require any or all combination of answers to these questions. I mean this in all seriousness, not as a snide answer.

To give you meaningful suggestions, I think it would be good to know:

(1) What kind of music are you working with?
(2) What are you goals? Just to make the recordings louder? Do you feel they lack anything else at this point?
(2) What plugins do you have?
(3) What commercial products are you measuring your work against?

For a better understanding of what mastering involves, how it differs from mixing, and lots of other great info, I would suggest buying a copy of Bob Katz’s book, Mastering Audio – the art and the science, available here: http://www.digido.com/

D

[bzldzl]

The best advice I can give is buy the Waves mastering suite. The manual is amazing and gives really great advice on how to use the plugins for different applications.

Yeah it's expensive compared to the alternatives but nothing else comes close. If you are serious about mastering it's the way to go IMHO.

If you just want you mixes to be louder, put a limiter on your master fader. I would use L1 if you have it. If you are mixing in 24 bit don't forget to Dither to 16.

Also like guitates said, go to waves.com, under support they have a lot of great tips and tricks.

Hope that helps,

Jason

[Joe Egan]

Sehvling EQ on the bottome, try -12 db slope at 44hz

Two passes of the L1.

set realease at 10

Set the threshold so it's just 3 db below your peaks, set maximum at -.6 db, no dither, no quantizing, no shaping.

second pass - Set the threshold so it's just 3 db below your peaks, set maximum at -.1 db, no dither, 16bit quantizing, ultra shaping .

The above procedure gets my recordings as loud as a preofessional mastering studio without sounding squashed.

[Joe Egan]

Sehvling EQ on the bottome, try -12 db slope at 44hz

Two passes of the L1.

set realease at 10

Set the threshold so it's just 3 db below your peaks, set maximum at -.6 db, no dither, no quantizing, no shaping.

second pass - Set the threshold so it's just 3 db below your peaks, set maximum at -.1 db, no dither, 16bit quantizing, ultra shaping .

The above procedure gets my recordings as loud as a professional mastering studio without sounding squashed.