--- philicorda <philicorda@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > "Hi, > Hiya. I do the occasional master for releases, and > "make it louder" is an all too common request. > Whether it suits the track, the place in the album > or the recording does not matter, they just want it > LOUD. It's sad, but he who pays the piper.... > Yes, you have to mash the audio (as you have found), > and it kills me to hear carefully recorded tracks > being brutally handled, so the idea is to do it as > kindly as possible. :) In these cases we just do as much damage control as possible. > Here's some rambling about how I go about it. > First, where is all the energy in the track? What is > taking up all your headroom? Those are the questions I try to answer. > Subsonics can really take up headroom, so going back > to the mix and high passing any tracks that don't > need bass end can give you more space to work with. > Starting at 20hz on most tracks and work up from > there. Those statements caused me to be more agressive with high cut. I probably created a little more room. My masters are definitely louder and the damage is minimized but this job just makes me nervous. This is a 13 song album. The client is paying me for a remaster. The print and mix engineer is talented. Unfortunately, half the songs are tracking mixes. The client never let the engineer finish mixing every song. Of course, I am dealing with that. The drummer is a tight and consistent machine. Reguardless, in the tracking mixes the kick occasionaly jumps out. There are always plenty of these problems in tracks but in these tracks those issues would have been fixed. They are good tracks and great players. This is a case where the client wants %20 volume increase across the board but a %50 improvement on the album would have been achieved if the mix engineer could have finished the job. I'm sure you've been through as many of these jobs as I have and know exactly what I'm talking about. At any rate, I sure do appreciate your response. It was detailed and insiteful. It gave me several things to experiment with. I'm not certain that my results are any better but that's not because of your suggestions and methodology. It's primarily because of what I have to work with. I'll probably tell the client that the job is gonna take a couple extra days and spend that time digging deeper and hopefully learning a thing or two. I'm a pretty good print and mix engineer but in the mastering realm, I'm a bit short on experience and need to learn a few things. Thanks much, ron __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - File online by April 15th http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html
