[ddots-l] Re: Mastering

  • From: Chris Smart <csmart8@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: ddots-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sun, 04 Dec 2011 13:35:36 -0500

Hi Tim. Well, if your music is going to be released commercially, my advice would be to get someone who specializes in mastering to do this for your mixes.


But ok, usually mastering looks at the song as a whole. What processing gets applied, depends entirely on the material involved. Maybe one track sounds a little brighter than another, so needs some corrective EQ. Maybe one track has too much energy to the sides. Maybe all the tracks need a little multi-band compression to control the lows. Maybe the intro of track 4 needs to come up a dB or so to match the tracks around it on the album. Maybe you want track one's fade out to last ten seconds, but track four's to last fifteen, or maybe crossfade into the next track.
It all depends on the material.

Usually mastering engineers use linear-phaze plug-ins. You have two of those in Sonar Producer, the LP64 EQ and LP64 multiband compressor. You'll want a good limiter as well, something that doesn't produce audible artifacts at moderate levels. Sony's Oxford Limiter, Ozone 5's limiter, Slate Digital FG-X, are a few really good ones. A popular one from a few years ago was Waves L1 or L2, but that one does have a particular sound to it that it imparts to the material.

Other advice:
1. use full-range monitors, not cheaper nearfields.
2. work in a room that has been acoustically treated, otherwise you may be trying to correct problems caused by resonances in your room that aren't present in the actual material. 3. Compare your results to commercial product of the same kind of music and with similar instrumentation. Comparing to a commercial reference is probably the best approach if you've never done this before.

Chris


At 01:00 PM 12/4/2011, you wrote:
Hi list,

Can anyone give me a few pointers on which plugins to use to master some
mix-downs?  Also, in which order would I insert these plugins?

Again, anybody's help is appreciated.

Blessings,
Tim

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