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Self-Mastering Objectivity By Jon O'Neil on July 9 2008 01:04 PM | Permalink | Author Info You've maybe read my rants and raves about hiring services vs. DIY. Let's say you've carefully considered that, and it makes sense to DIY. But in order not to waste too much time and test CDs to drag out to your car, try to inject some objectivity into the process.OK, so how do you "master" your own stuff? You know the disadvantages . . . the same monitoring chain you used to mix, the same pair of ears. What are your advantages? Well, first and foremost, your time. You have lots of it. Let some time elapse so you can listen to the mixes fresh. Then, before you do anything else, burn a CD and keep it in your car (iPod, whatever) for a week. Take some notes. When you get back in your studio, try to figure out why you didn't notice that stuff while mixing. Some of those changes you will make--perhaps most--will be remix decisions, and that's OK and maybe even good. But at some point, you gotta decide the thing is done. I also believe that there are certain things that are actually best done on the master bus, just to add some glue. But those aren't most things or many things, so don't be lazy about mixing. Objective things: If you use nearfields to mix, don't use them to master. What, you say? You only have one pair of monitors? Fine, just don't use them as nearfields. Spread 'em out to six feet and put yourself six feet away from each (equilateral triangle). Wait, you say, your room is totally untreated, that means lots of problems with echoes and standing waves! True, but that's also how most of your listeners are set up, if they are not using headphones. The goal here is to hear your mix in a different situation than your mix environment. When you lack an excellent listening space and high-quality full-range monitors, your alternative is to listen to your mix on a lot of different systems. So reposition your monitors to create a new system without actually spending any money! While I'm on the topic of headphones, listen on headphones. You can't mix on headphones, you can't really master on headphones, but I do every fade using headphones, because you can hear way way down to the bottom of your dynamic range without having room noise mask uglies that may lurk there. Does your track have excess hiss as the last note dies? Is that decaying guitar full of 60Hz hum? Is there video whine that just won't go away? You might not be able to hear that on your monitors, but if you can in cans, your listeners will too. Use some noise reduction or get those fades fast and tight. An "S" curve fade is great for a longish fade that squelches low-level noise quickly at the same time.  OK, you're in the thick of making those master bus changes. I am not going to get into what you should do, because I don't know, I can't hear your mix. And that part is very subjective, and described many other places. But I will give you one hint: you need to hear clearly what each plug you add is doing, and frequently. Ears have poor memory. Putting plugs in bypass is a good thing, but it works best if the volume level doesn't change when you bypass the plug. If the plug has an output level control, USE IT! Match the level in and out of bypass. But eventually you're going to get to the final stage, which is probably going to be a limiter. How do you know if your limiter setting is making your track punchy loud or just sounding like distorted bunghole (which would be a bad thing, the bung wouldn't form a tight seal and the wine would be spoiled!)? Answer: if your limiter doesn't have an output level control, set a gain change plug after the limiter to reduce the level to match the pre-limiter level. Now you should have a master bus chain where any individual plug or the whole effects chain can be put into bypass without changing output volume more than 1dB or so. And then when you are finally really all the way done, remember to set output gain back to full scale! And that's it. And oh yeah, buy an SPL meter and calibrate your monitors to proper listening level. But that's a tale for another time! |
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