MASTERING INSANITY!! PLEASE HELP!!

[michaux]

I just spend a year making my first record as a solo artist; a mixture of Soul, Funk, R&B and Gospel. I recorded entirely in PT LE with Apogee converters on most tracks. I went to 2 different mastering engineers who both came highly recommended but I had never worked with before. The first one over compressed for my taste. The second one used much less compression, which I liked, but made my tracks too clean; too much highs and mids. I imported the second mastering job into my Masterlink and slightly boosted the lows (.25 to .5 db somewhere between 60 & 80 Hz) and slightly cut the mids (-1 db around 1k) and highs (-.5 to 1.5 db between 10 and 12k) This was a big improvement. However, much of the warmth was lost when the mastering guy cleaned up what he called 'mud'. Now I want a little of that mud back! He had good intentions; the clarity and separation is much better but it is just too clean now for my liking. Here is my dilemma, I have already spent $1,100 on 2 mastering jobs and can't afford to go to a third one. I like the levels and mixes but just want to warm them up a little bit. A friend of mine has ‘T-racks’. I could load the tracks into ‘T-racks’ and warm them up. Or, I could load them back into PT LE and run them through ‘Antares tube’ to warm them up. Any ideas??? I have some mp3s on my website, they are only 128 kbs, if anyone wants to hear the mastering so far. Click on the tunes page (the intro song is not mastered) Michaux Music

[mersisblue]

you might want to even try record to a reel to reel for tape saturation and warmth ,..........just qa thought

[valvebrother]

Michaux,

Assuming the mastering houses gave you 24 bit, non-peak-limited, versions of their work as opposed to just an L2'ed CD master...

I might suggest (on a zero budget) trying the PSP Vintage Warmer plugin very mildly, I like it a lot better than the Antares or T-Racks (both substandard to my ears) plugins.

My best suggestion would be to find someone with a Cranesong HEDD outboard unit or someone on a TDM machine with the CraneSsong Phoenix plugins (which are available for demo) the and see if they could just run your tracks through either process. Both are all digital processes (to help maintain the clarity and fidelity from the mastering work done so far) and both sound EXCELLENT.

The suggestion of running things to an analog machine is also a possibility, but finding a truly quality unit in good repair and paying for high quality tape stock might be more than you're up for.

Damon

[michaux]

Thanks. At this point, I am on a zero budget and out of options. I am going to have to use either T-racks or Antares on the platforms that I have access to (PT LE & Nuendo on Mac and PC).

[where02190]

tel these mastering houses you are unsatisfied whti their work, and what them to remater, and this time attend the mastering session persoanlly, don't leave it up to their opinion as to hwo it should sound.

[valvebrother]

tel these mastering houses you are unsatisfied whti their work, and what them to remater, and this time attend the mastering session persoanlly, don't leave it up to their opinion as to hwo it should sound.

But don't expect this to be free...I will occassionally do some extra tweaking off the books for certain clients, but that's me. As where mentioned, attending the session is best, but usually adds a few hours to the session, so, it often costs more in the short term. But, in the long run....

Michaux, I believe there is a demo version available for Vintage Warmer, I'd give it a try over the other two plugs.

Damon

[JFreak]

while vintagewarmer is a great plug, i'd agree that you should tell the mastering engineer that you are not happy with his results and ask for a re-run. some could do it for free since it's their professional ego that will get hit by your reclamation, but be prepared to pay some more. if it's a small fee that gets the job done, it'll be worth it. home mastering at this point is imho very useless and you will most likely get better results by just accepting the mastering engineer's version. post-mastering already mastered material is usually a bad idea.

[D-Influence]

Michaux... Sorry for the offtopic question... how did you get those scratch sound on your voice? Congrats for the cool songs..!

[jpoprock]

I don't think your songs sound that bad man. Are you wanting them to be a thick wall of analog old school R&B? Those guys tracked on 2" tape and Neve consoles! HA! But I bet you can thicken those up real easy. They really don't sound bad. Everything is clear and the drums/bass stand out real nice.

J

[michaux]

Michaux... Sorry for the offtopic question... how did you get those scratch sound on your voice? Congrats for the cool songs..!

Hey, thanks. I used the mouse to scrub the audio back and forth on a vocal track, while listneing to the song playing back from a CD. I recorded this digitally to my Masterlink and then flew that audio back into Pro Tools for editing. It doesn't sound like real record scratching, but I think it's a cool effect.