mastering??? how necessary is it

[J-malice]

aight i have two questions. first i wana know how necessary mastering is?....what would be the difference between an engineer that knows how to master mastering on computer software (cool edit, wavlab, and all the other sofware versions of what you find in a "mastering house") and mastering with the hardware found in a "mastering house"?

my other question in has anyone here had anything mastered in a "masterin house" that they can post with both versions (the copy of the one that hasnt been mastered and the one that has been)

 

[bigdmakintrax]

J thatz a good question, I mean I know a mastering place where they get stuff from all over the world to be actually mastered and digitally done....I never took anything to them but I heard what they did, and they do a lot of reggae stuff too....there are two studios that are within a few minutes of my house that do outside mastering and I have been inside to see their setup......old school mastering relies heavily on hardware....I think you bring a good test to the table to see what the difference is......when I think tracks that are very well mastered with REAL gear in the hip hop world I think DRE....and the Chronic and some of his later work.......but there is noticeable differences between what is done with plugins and never leaves the computer and what is done using analog techniques....but also I know there is a good mixture of techniques using both hardware and software.....

 

[dacalion]

Mastering is very important if you don't have the ability to do things such as compressing, limiting and final tweaks. Like BigD said..."mastering relies on alot of hardware". The big thing to me is the compression. You have got to compress music especially if you don't do like 90% sampling. You will have major problems when you play your recording on different devices such as car audio, home audio, portable CD players and so on...they all will have different sounds without the compression. I do alot of Post-Production work for one of the local studio's here and its very important to KNOW what to soften, what to smooth out, what to shorten and the kind of things that only an engineer with experience will know.

--dac

 

[Ominous]

I read an article where DJ Permier said mastering can be the difference between a good beat and a horrible beat. I tried to make beats without getting into the nerdy world of waves and frequencies but I found out the hard way that this stuff is really inportant. When I would bounce tracks down to burn to CD I would notice a gain difference of several Decibels just because I didn't know how to compress kicks and synths correctly.

I'm still messing with it which is why I haven't posted a beat since the Brass beat This competition...

 

[JPeg]

mastering aint that important if u making that underground basement shit. I listen to alot of old hiero stuff and llcrew, mf doom and such and alot of their shit aint mastered.

A as long as u are able to get ur song sonding hella tight and loud at mix down stage, than mastering aint a big issue.

but if u think u can do any old mix down and hope mastering will magically make the song sound good than forget it.

the main focus should be good sound selction - than making a tight beat, and then a good mix down.

However the shit i jut said applies more to the independent underground producer if ur working with lables and other commercial organisations than the criteria may well be different.

 

[bigdmakintrax]

Starting out with quality samples that are used with the right levels you can avoid mastering a lot of times because a purely vinyl constructed track should already have been mixed b4 the sample you snatched hit the vinyl.....so if you are good at snatching samples and tweaking them with the right fx or equ....the end result shouldn't need a lot....it's when your samples are dry or low quality to begin with when you need to take a lot of time doing ind depth mastering....

 

[light]

I concider it very important if your selling your music. there are some things that people notice without noticing. mastering will help that. if some dude has to adjust his bass/trebble adjustments for each song hes gonna toss it out the window. some of that comes with a good mix but mastering is hella important.

 

[Gaz]

mastering to me is a run thru the 'master preset' on bb maximizer, beef my tracks up shit loads, and the drums get alot more oomph, maybe when i get more time and money im a send my whole drum library to a mastering house an get the shit beefed outta them properly

 

[J-malice]

o well im definately not makin dat underground shit (just aint me). and im not samplin...does the equipment you use have anything to do with how much mastering you need? well that is if you keep the levels pretty decent...im workin off of a korg triton...i think i keep pretty good levels...but my kicks distort sometiime when i turn the bass all the way up on my computer mixer. i dont konw, the kick is basicly my only problem but that could mean the difference between garbage and a classic

 

[Gaz]

what pisses me off is when u take a beat round someones house and it sounds completely different on their cd player an sounds shit, like a kick is too loud or something, i need to invest in monitors but i have found that 'bb maximizer' plug in solves this problem 9 times outta ten but does distort sometimes so beware if you get this, but i do recomend you 'buy' this plug in

 

[afriquedeluxe]

ive mastered sum of ma older beatz on t-racks n man, dey sound wayyyyyyyyyyyy betta dan wen playin em in da reason sequencer. mastering is 120% essential in ma opinion, without it a beat hasnt been dressed, like a picture printed off a injet printer n hsnt been put in glossy paper or shoes dat aint been shined

 

[nas2000xl]

like light said, if you are planning on selling your music , then you should get your music mastered at a mastering house. they use special gear when bringing out the best in music. they may use 3 or 4 compressors that cost $10,000 each on that one song at the same time and not even squash the sound. they know what its suppose to sound like when its done. they know how to calculate frequencies, they know exactly how to use an eq and when to use it. hell most of their gear you can`t find on the market. if your music was done in the digital domain, they even know how to tweak your stuff without losing any quality. we kinda suffer when we master our own stuff to put on cd.

1. some of us may not realize this but, if we are not going through some decent converters when sending our music over to pc to burn to cd we develope a jitter & quantization problem which to the untrained ear is unnoticeable.

2. those that burn to a stand alone cd burner also suffer because a stand alone burner do not write TOC to the cd. toc allows you to make red book standard cd`s. you will have all the proper information on your cd when finished including your (isrc) code if available. you must burn your cd`s using (DAO).

reason i said all of this is because its part of the mastering process and the difference in what a good quality cd should sound like.

now j being that i said all that, hardware mastering will always be better than computer mastering. you just can`t get what you need out of computer mastering alone, although for people like us that can`t afford all that hardware, computer mastering will just have to do. also i don`t know any mastering house that masters just on a computer. from what i have witnessed they use both, but mostly hardware.

 

[Monacle]

ive gotten stuff mastered professionally and it is a notice-able difference. im an audio engineer myself though my specialty is programming, and i work full time in a studio.

hiphop/rap is too easy to master anyway. the dynamics of hiphop are similar in terms of its all about beats and the vocal. hiphop and rap mastering... you should be able to negotiate a cheaper price.

i wont post before and afters as i dont "give away" any music, and never get into the habit of posting "before" of anything.

in any case, youde laugh seeing how some mastering hosues treat hiphop and punk and most electronic stuff... they just run it through a standard automated chain. they are a business remember.

but all in all, if you pick the right place, know the engineer and know the material/artists theyve worked with, and build up a relationship then youre set.

and yeah, the difference between a $2,000,000 SSL console and your shitty sound card is why you pay mastering engineers so much... that and their experience

 

[Cold Truth]

another thing to remember (nd again, i do not know a lot about mastering) is that if you cant produce a solid recording anyways, mastering is pointless to even worry about. i hope no one takes offense here, but i hear (on occassion) tracks where everything is way out of wack, levels are all screwed up- things like that. i know for myself, it took me a while to learn how to balance things out. you really just have to be able to listen with your ears and fine tune and tweak things in your mix anyways..... i say learn to master your beats in and of themselves before you worry about mastering a final product.

 

[Formant024]

Well, lotta truth in here, I can only advise when you're in the position to have materials mastered that you deliver it as dry as possible ( NO PLUGS ). Why bother with plugs if you're paying to get shit mastered in a studio where they have good hardware that can cover up for semi good vsti's.