On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 05:20:15PM -0500, Ricardus Vincente wrote: > On Mon, 2011-01-17 at 14:11 -0800, Ken Restivo wrote: > > On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 10:31:41PM +0100, fons@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote: > > > On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 03:38:48PM +0100, J?rn Nettingsmeier wrote: > > > > > > > don't forget the most important aspect of mastering: a second pair > > > > of ears, in a very good listening room. > > > > > > Correct. > > > > > > > take that out of the equation, and all that's left of mastering is > > > > some parametric eq and (if you must) multiband compression. > > > > > > And I wonder why these shouldn't be done when mixing instead. > > > > > > In the 'old days' EQ and compression was required to adapt a > > > mix to the limits of the distribution medium (vinyl in most > > > cases). No such problem exists today. Why on earth should you > > > re-EQ a mix ? If the mixing engineer did a good job (by carefully > > > EQ-ing individual tracks), what chance do you have to improve this > > > by acting on the mixed signal ? If he didn't, the way to correct > > > for this is to redo the mix. Same for compression, it's much more > > > effective and less intrusive when done on single tracks. > > > > > > > For the record, I hate mastering and compressed loudness-war mixes. I > > enjoy making use of the dynamic range of 16-bit (or more) audio. And, > > I also put the mastering (multiband compression, really) stuff in the > > chain while mixing, one of the wonderful things about JACK. It's just > > an insert on the master bus in Ardour for me, and my exported mixes > > are mastered. > > > > However, today's popular music must contend with limitations of the > > listener's equipment, just as it did in the days of turntables and > > six-peices-of-particle-board-and-an-8-inch-speaker turntable/stereo > > combinations. The limitations are different and so therefore are the > > solutions and workarounds. > > > > Today, people listen to music on iPods and truly wretched laptop > > speakers in noisy environments. And everything else they listen to is > > compressed out the wazoo. So when my lightly-compressed mixes come up > > on shuffle, they are inaudible, not just in comparison to other > > professionally-mastered mixes, but against the background noise > > they're competing with. > > > > So, next time around, I'm putting my mixes thorugh NAMA and squashing > > the holy hell out of them, until they sound like whatever the major > > labels are pooting out these days. > > Unfortunately most mix engineers suck. That's why you need a real > mastering engineer to fix your mixes. Taking the tracks back to a guy > with tin ears isn't going to help. > > Most people making records today are inexperienced and doing it at > home. Yep. I guess that's what mastering engineers spend most of their time doing: fixing bad mixes. Not that I'm any great expert mix engineer myself, but, when in doubt, I run mixes by people who have better ears than me to get their feedback. Once in a while I deliberately choose to do things "wrong" because I like the way it sounds, but most feedback is very valuable. > > Having said that, when a world class mix engineer does a mix, the > mastering engineer doesn't have to do much, as someone pointed out. But > unless someone like Dave Reitzas or Ed Cherney is mixing your tracks, > take it to a qualified mastering house. Even those guys take their > mixes to guys like Bob Ludwig. Running your mix through a Farichild 670 > isn't going to hurt it. :-) > Hmm, this thing? http://www.proharmonic.com/images/schema/Fairchild670.JPG I know a guy who runs mixes through an old tube 2-track 30ips tape machine, to use the tape saturation as a limiter. I guess there are all kinds of tricks people have, and probably superstition and magick has a good deal to do with it too. Currently, I just need to make louder mixes, using tools that don't introduce artifacts into the signal, so I'll try NAMA and I expect it'll go well. -ken _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-user mailing list Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user
