Mastering

[Sacred One]

Do anybody have like a lil tutorial on mastering, I've been making beats for a while now, but I'm trying to master it so it can sound nice over the speakers.

 

[DJlow2]

just use as many medium as you can to test out your tracks... like comparing sound between a portable CD player and you big stereo... headphones with speakers... you wanna make sure you get the sound in between the range of speakers and headphones... so that it can come out justified through both...

 

[God]

It's not that simply, unfortunately. Mastering can essentially be considered an "artform" and mastering in a professional setting is a long and arduous task with the mastering engineers possessing a great knowledge of mathematics, understanding of frequencies (more math), and the proper application of that knowledge.

Maybe I can help you:

1. What program are you wishing to master in?

2. What is your understanding of frequency manipulation in general?

Sincerely,
God

 

[Sacred One]

Well I want to master my beats in Fruity Loops and vocals with the beat, I use either Cool Edit Pro or MAGIX Studio(mostly this)

 

[God]

Sacred One:

Honestly, the key to mastering is listening to the track and making sure it sounds good. Thus, I can't necessarily take you step by step into mastering a track because there is no set way in doing so. The process depends on the style of music the song is and what kind of release it is to be...

Cool Edit Pro offers you the most utility for mastering the track. You want to mix your track first, and then save it as a .wav to be manipulated in Cool Edit.

Remember, you can't fix a bad mix in the mastering process.

There are a myriad of equalisers and compressors, that enable you to manipulate different frequency bands. I personally don't use Cool Edit, though I am familiar with it. However, these days, many mastered tracks are heavily compressed at the expense of dynamic range, in order to make the track sound as loud as possible.

Some basic things to consider to use are:

Split band compressors
Dynamic equalisers
Psychoacoustic devices:
Band Exciters
Exciters or Expanders for the overall mix

Obviously, if you don't know how to use these, you will destroy your mix. I can't help you on that, because I can't listen to the track, so you'll have to experiment yourself.

If you want to have a release for radio, there are mastering labs that should be able to do the track for you, because if you're new at it, it'll be a lot of trial and error. Also, you probably don't have the right monitors to work with for A/B references.

Also, make sure your track is in phase. Cool Edit has a function to analyse this. I wish I could help you out more, but you can't really master a track unless you hear it.

Sincerely,
God

 

[BROUSSARD BEATS]

yea i have dp3 and still mastering a track is hard it sounds good until i put it in the car so then i have to go back and lower the vocals or something
i would just master the track and then play it in your home and car radio and if you don't like what you hear take it back to your lab and tweak it you might use up some cd's doing this lol

 

[Architect]

Mastering is no easy task at all and there are so many software applications nowadays that claim to be mastering software but really only include a couple features eq, compressor, etc. Not saying you can't use these, but I would first make sure your track is as clean as possible taken from good sampled sources or instruments at a bitrate higher than 16 try 24 or 32 (Fruityloops Studio works with 32bit) save another version of your song for example 'Mysong-unmastered' in a different location on your computer and then work on the same track with the original file name so you can compare the results as you go.

Monitoring
If you have a good monitoring setup that will help too, in a professsional environment this is essential to have a good monitoring system and you have to get to know you monitoring system, for example if your using house speakers you should know if the speakers exaggerate the bass too much or too little that way when your playing back you don't compensate by putting too much or too little bass in your song (it will sound muddy or thin in either case). Just knowing how your system reacts to levels too much treble not enough mid-range, etc. That's why studio monitors are so important because they give you a flat response but they all aren't created equal either. Whether you have them or not also use good headphones for detailed inspections on your mix.

Compressors
Everybody talks about using a compressor and compressing or squashing your sound, don't use it until you understand what it's doing to your sound and also if you want to eventually take your song to get it professionally mastered by someone else, please use little compression if any at all (maybe just on the drums or bass), they can't work with heavily compressed sounds after you've sqaushed it to death leave compression up to them (mastering engineers) they have better compressors than most of us can afford and know how to use them a lot better.

EQ
Equalization will increase and decrease a sound and also can be used correctively to correct mistakes in the mix. You'll probably need to use that.

To be honest with you check out some sites with information on the technical aspects behind mastering audio, continue to learn as much as you can about how to use the common mastering tools whether software or hardware and aim to get a better mix because I guarantee you can probably also enhance your mix before even going to the mastering phase, and mixers use some of the same tools as mastering engineers but for a different purpose. Here goes some good articles for you.


http://www.johnvestman.com/secrets_of_mixing.htm

http://www.johnvestman.com/prepare_for_mastering.htm

http://www.diplo.co.uk/music/mastering.php

This should get you started and just keep picking up tips as you go.

 

[Loose Cannon]

If you didn't already know this, you can send your beats, albums, mixtapes, singles, or whatever out to certain places, and they'll master it for about $3-$10 per track depending on where your getting it done.
I know you'd probably rather be able to do it at home or whatever, but just letting you know.

PEACE

 

[nas2000xl]

all i have to say is www.digido.com. what ever you need to know about mastering is in there.