Mastering and Different Playback Media - ARGH

[Anderton]

Mastering used to be easier in one way: Music was going to be played either over a stereo system of varying quality (but it likely had speakers), or AM radio, probably in a car. So you mastered on the nice speakers, reality-checked on crap speakers...done.

 

I'm in the final stages of mastering my latest album. I'm pretty happy with the way it sounds. But it's astonishing how no two playback systems sound remotely the same - even with headphones. The Ultrasone headphones I have make it sound like I turned the treble up all the way and forget I'd done that, while the Beats headphones sound like I did the same thing with bass. AKG 702s have a beautiful midrange and highs, but the bass is, shall we say, lacking...KRK's KNS8400 have good bass and highs, but the midrange is pretty crispy. Of course, anything can happen with speakers, depending on the room and the speakers. Fortunately I have Sonarworks so I at least know what the music sounds like when flat, but in the real world, nothing is even remotely flat.

 

Last night I played the album on my cheapo Android smartphone. And of course, it didn't sound like what it sounded like in the studio...but you could hear the voice, the words, and the beat, as well as many of the instruments. I reminded me of the thread about whether you listen to the mix or the song. If you listen to the song, it's fine. If you listen to the mix, it's not even close.

 

I've listened in cars (ever notice how rental cars often turn the treble and bass up all the way?), an ancient iPad, Bluetooth mini-speakers...you get the idea. My conclusion: More than ever, all that matters is the song. The mix might as well consist of EQ automation being controlled by a random number generator, and the master is a crap shoot.

 

[Notes_Norton]

The up side of that is everybody's songs will sound the same to the end listener (pumped bass, treble, or whatever) if he/she is using the same gear.

[KuruPrionz]

The up side of that is everybody's songs will sound the same to the end listener (pumped bass, treble, or whatever) if he/she is using the same gear.

 

True, and a great way to explain why listening to other people's music in comparison is important.

 

OP is spot on, there is no consistency and the song will carry the day.

 

I have a set of Mackie HR824 monitors, 2 sets of headphones (AKG and Sennheiser), laptop speakers, a Music Bullet and a crappy little compact fold-out stereo cell phone speaker thingie with no brand on it.

None of them are high-end gear but all of them tell some story or other about the mix.

 

If what I am messing with doesn't sound significantly better or worse than Prince or Emmylou Harris I figure that's about all I can do. :- D

[J. Dan]

I've noticed many of the same things and go through a similar process. After mixing through my JBL studio monitors, I'll listed through my surround system in both surround and stereo modes, my car stereo, and on my iPad and iPhone through their speakers. Each one can reveal different things. Often the subwoofer in my surround system will reveal boomy low end that wasn't revealed by my smaller studio monitors. You would expect there to be more, but it should be comparable to other similar styles of professionally produced music. The effect of compression applied by different systems can certainly play a role - what does an MP3 version on a portable device sound like? I've found that even professional recordings can sound very different on FM radio than off other media sources. I wish there was a magic bullet but it seems to largely be a lot of trial and error until it comes out right.

[KuruPrionz]

Just wanted to add that a pair of inexpensive ear buds are probably useful as well since so many listen that way.

 

The dynamic range of FM radio or streamed music is certainly a factor.

 

The Volume Wars may be over but a song with a full natural dynamic range may lose significant impact played back on something that only has a third of the dynamic range, simply because the quieter parts may drop into the abyss.

[Mike Rivers]

The world was simpler when we just had record players and radios. A big honking monitor and an Auratone were all you needed.

[KenElevenShadows]

But then, those great sounding mixes of yesteryear sound great now through a variety of devices, didn't they?

 

Back then, there were clock radios, AM, FM, cassettes, 8-track, vinyl, and later on, CDs....

 

But if you did an amazing mix, it didn't matter.

 

So the answer is simply: be amazing.

[Anderton]

But then, those great sounding mixes of yesteryear sound great now through a variety of devices, didn't they?

Well...many of the songs still sound great. The mixes...I'm not so sure. Or maybe it was the mastering (the loudness wars have been around for awhile)...or the crappy quality of vinyl in its twilight years.

 

I worked on some tapes recently from an artist (sorry, I signed an NDA, can't say who). Once the tapes were transferred to digital and mixed, they sounded so much better than the original mixes, and translate well on a variety of devices. Major, major improvement. Of course, the songs remain the same, but the mixes sure don't!

 

Remember that back then, record companies often used old tapes over and over. Some even used tape with splices from previous projects, erased them, and recycled them. Sometimes oxide was flaking off at the time, not just years later, and mixes were sometime thrown together quickly to hit budgets. That meant some were spontaneous gems, but others...not so much. What saved them was the songs.

[Mike Rivers]

Well...many of the songs still sound great. The mixes...I'm not so sure. Or maybe it was the mastering (the loudness wars have been around for awhile)...or the crappy quality of vinyl in its twilight years.

 

The song is the song. No mix will make a bad song better - well, unless you're one of those mixers who takes the vocal apart, adds more of this and that, and creates a new version of what grabs the attention of the typical listener . But the mix is a technical thing where everything but the playback chain is under control. And today's playback chains can affect the total package in both good and bad ways.

 

One contributing factor to the more consistent playback of older material is that recordings of old involved less complex mixes. If you didn't have 10 guitars playing the background rhythm part, each with a different reverb, different EQ, different amount of distortion, and maybe slightly differing (static or modulated) pitch or time, you had less to get in the way of the vocal. Some of that muck might be negligible through some playback chains (a good thing in this case) or each detail might be clearly audible in other playback chains (good for tweaky listeners, bad for casual listeners).

 

Mastering used to be to make the phonograph record play reliably. There was usually little to do to change the mix significantly because studios had good monitoring and good engineering and it wasn't difficult to make a mix so that the important parts of the song were always where they should be whether played through big or small speakers, and headphone listening was usually considered a compromise for convenience (which, for most headphone listeners, is still the case). When more recordings started coming from less than, for lack of a better word, "professional" studios, mastering became more of a corrective process, usually to clean up the bass that couldn't be heard through the control room's speakers, and from there, mastering came to mean "make it sound better than it is now." That worked for a while, but when playback chains weren't different in just reproduceable frequency range, but now, as you say, it's a jungle out there,

 

 

 

[KenElevenShadows]

No, my point is that back then, if you did a great mix, it still sounds like a great mix.

 

I recognize that there's lots of poorly mixed songs that are great. But no, if something has a great mix, then it seems to translate really well.

 

It's sort of like that thing I keep saying about MP3s, which everyone always grouses about: The secret to making a great sounding MP3 is to make a great sounding mix.

 

Obviously, little variances matter, but the point is that we've had very different playback devices for a while (again, alarm clocks to AM radios to FM radios to stereo to TV to $10,000 stereo setups). And a truly great mix almost always translates to all of them.

[David Emm]

I finally "gave up" on trying to nail every possible listening medium. Between my own decent monitors, headphones, the Mac's own speakers, the opinions of several knowledgable friends and my reference CDs in a boom box, my results are generally acceptable. I'd love to create a final mix as good as those of Pink Floyd or Andreas Vollenweider, but its an avocation, not Death Race 2000. In a one-finger-orchestra world where there are now plug-ins that emulate old tape behaviors, generating a truly bad sound means you're not sufficiently obsessed. Pull over, you don't have enough GAS.

[KenElevenShadows]

Exactly. That's my point. It's silly to even worry about nailing every listening medium. If I mix something that sounds great on headphones, monitors, and the car, and I'm good. It'll translate to everything else, and if it doesn't, well, sorry, I tried.

[KuruPrionz]

Exactly. That's my point. It's silly to even worry about nailing every listening medium. If I mix something that sounds great on headphones, monitors, and the car, and I'm good. It'll translate to everything else, and if it doesn't, well, sorry, I tried.

 

I still make a mono version and listen for phase cancellation.

 

I want a pair of headphones that have absurd low frequency response so I know what's going on down there!!!!

 

I'm with you though, was walking through Goodwill and Do You Love Me by The Contours stopped me in my tracks.

Blaring out of crappy ceiling speakers it sounded awesome.

 

[Anderton]

I'm with you though, was walking through Goodwill and Do You Love Me by The Contours stopped me in my tracks.

Blaring out of crappy ceiling speakers it sounded awesome.

The best Miles Davis album I have is an Italian bootleg that sounds like it was recorded on a Radio Shack cassette recorder...with Radio Shack tape But it was his amazing late 60s band, and the music was incredible. Good music always trumps a bad recording, and bad music can never be enhanced by a good recording. I just wish all the good music had been recorded well.

 

Do You Love Me by The Contours stopped me in my tracks.

 

Of course it did! It has an energy that rearranges the air molecules in front of the speakers

 

It's also worth remembering a lot of the "classic" tracks were participating in loudness wars 1.0 - e.g., massive compression on the masters. But that hardly matters when musicians play together essentially live, in real time. That can produce magic.

 

 

 

[The Real MC]

Someone on FB mentioned that audio from their mobile sounded a lot better if the phone was placed in a metal or porcelain bowl. I can believe it as the bowl acts as a parabolic reflector.

 

Frankly I don't audit my mixes on a mobile because it is a poor resonant box for sound to develop, they do not project very well, and you would drain the battery playing over the speaker. The laptop is as far as I go for portable devices.

[KuruPrionz]

Someone on FB mentioned that audio from their mobile sounded a lot better if the phone was placed in a metal or porcelain bowl. I can believe it as the bowl acts as a parabolic reflector.

 

Frankly I don't audit my mixes on a mobile because it is a poor resonant box for sound to develop, they do not project very well, and you would drain the battery playing over the speaker. The laptop is as far as I go for portable devices.

 

I've been to deck parties where cell phones were placed inside large beverage glasses for additional resonance/amplification. Still does not sound good but it is a "thing."

 

[KuruPrionz]

]The best Miles Davis album I have is an Italian bootleg that sounds like it was recorded on a Radio Shack cassette recorder...with Radio Shack tape But it was his amazing late 60s band, and the music was incredible. Good music always trumps a bad recording, and bad music can never be enhanced by a good recording. I just wish all the good music had been recorded well.

 

Do You Love Me by The Contours stopped me in my tracks.

 

Of course it did! It has an energy that rearranges the air molecules in front of the speakers

 

It's also worth remembering a lot of the "classic" tracks were participating in loudness wars 1.0 - e.g., massive compression on the masters. But that hardly matters when musicians play together essentially live, in real time. That cant produce magic.

 

 

 

Would love to hear the MIles Davis, one of the most important artists of the last century.

And yeah, Do You Love Me rawks, they knocked it out of the park. Simple but it just gets it.

Even on those craps speakers I could hear the bass line. Considering the time and that it was probably done live it's damn good mix of a great performance.

 

[Mike Rivers]

 

I've been to deck parties where cell phones were placed inside large beverage glasses for additional resonance/amplification. Still does not sound good but it is a "thing."

 

Master Class: "Mastering for the Martini Glass"

 

[KenElevenShadows]

Exactly. That's my point. It's silly to even worry about nailing every listening medium. If I mix something that sounds great on headphones, monitors, and the car, I'm good. It'll translate to everything else, and if it doesn't, well, sorry, I tried.

 

I still make a mono version and listen for phase cancellation.

 

I want a pair of headphones that have absurd low frequency response so I know what's going on down there!!!!

 

I'm with you though, was walking through Goodwill and Do You Love Me by The Contours stopped me in my tracks.

Blaring out of crappy ceiling speakers it sounded awesome.

 

Oh sure, but people have been doing that forEVER. Not a new thing at all. But yes, mono compatibility. Always check.

 

I'm not going to make excuses for my mixes or masters sounding bad on all these mediums. I have no excuses. I have access to great monitors, computer speakers, headphones, and a car stereo.

 

If it doesn't sound great on all of them, that's on me. So it was when we had to make things sound good on vinyl or cassettes and AM radio, and so it is now. Blaming the medium seems wrong to me. That's a constant. The variable is me and my recording equipment.

 

And likewise, I'm not going to say, "MP3s suck!" No. If I cannot make a stereo 192kbps MP3 sound beautiful and fantastic, that's a ME problem, not an MP3 issue.

 

[Anderton]

I'm not going to make excuses for my mixes or masters sounding bad on all these mediums.

Of course not. It's not your fault if the "audio enhancement" processes on some laptops are tools of Satan, or if speakers have nothing below 400 Hz.

 

If it doesn't sound great on all of them, that's on me. So it was when we had to make things sound good on vinyl or cassettes and AM radio, and so it is now. Blaming the medium seems wrong to me. That's a constant. The variable is me and my recording equipment.

Well. it seems like this is once again getting into the "do you listen to the mix or the song" issue. The song is on you, as is the emotional impact, but reproduction is out of your hands. Granted, it is on you to create something that conveys the song over any medium. But it's not on you if no one can hear the bass, the treble is distorted, there's artificial ambiance added that sounds horrific, and the playback sound chip squashes the crap out of your dynamic range.

 

The irony is we now have better technology for leveling the frequency response playing field. But here's the issue. If you give 100 people something recorded flat and those same hundred people a 10-band equalizer, the EQ settings each person chooses are almost certain to be different.

 

I've given several audio workshops with people present who have never heard uncompressed audio over high-quality speakers. When they do, it's a revelation. The closer we can come to that kind of playback system, the better we'll be able to mix and master for it. That's all I'm saying. It has nothing to do with the song per se, but with the opportunity to hear music as closely as possible to the way it's intended to be heard.

 

Ken, your incredible night pictures would still be amazing in black and white. But, I'd rather see the ones you intended to be in color...in color.

[KenElevenShadows]

I'm not going to make excuses for my mixes or masters sounding bad on all these mediums.

Of course not. It's not your fault if the "audio enhancement" processes on some laptops are tools of Satan, or if speakers have nothing below 400 Hz.

 

If it doesn't sound great on all of them, that's on me. So it was when we had to make things sound good on vinyl or cassettes and AM radio, and so it is now. Blaming the medium seems wrong to me. That's a constant. The variable is me and my recording equipment.

Well. it seems like this is once again getting into the "do you listen to the mix or the song" issue. The song is on you, as is the emotional impact, but reproduction is out of your hands. Granted, it is on you to create something that conveys the song over any medium. But it's not on you if no one can hear the bass, the treble is distorted, there's artificial ambiance added that sounds horrific, and the playback sound chip squashes the crap out of your dynamic range.

 

 

Yeah, there's stuff that's going to ruin my sound. I'm just talking about great mixes here, not necessarily great songs, although hopefully it's both simultaneously.

 

But I think my point is that, as much as is possible, all those amazing mixes (not just the songs, but mixes) all translated to great stuff and crap stuff before and do so now, even on crap systems where you can't hear the bass properly, etc. etc. And I feel that if I am to consider myself great, my stuff should translate just as well as all the super great mixes.

 

I know that my music is going going to be played on these horrible mediums, so it's up to me to make sure they translate on those horrible mediums, but not get too hung up on the specific mediums, that's all I'm saying. I mean, does it really matter whether it's AM radio or a really crappy iPhone speaker?

 

Ken, your incredible night pictures would still be amazing in black and white. But, I'd rather see the ones you intended to be in color...in color.

 

Yeah, but really, the same analogy holds as far as mediums go. If I take a killer photo, it should translate whether it is a beautiful 4 foot tall acrylic print or a crappy upload destroyed by compression algorithms on Facebook or a tiny photo on Instagram. Sure, it's gonna look way better when it's a 4-foot tall acrylic print. But someone should still be able to look at one of my photos on Instagram and think, "Wow, that's a great photo." Sure, I wish people viewed it on something larger than a cellphone, but, well, that's what they view it on!

 

I know we're largely in agreement here and this is so much more getting into the weeds, but knowing what I know about crappy mediums, I feel like I should be great enough to compensate for this instead of grousing about the formats.

 

People listened to music on donut-shaped AM radios and clock radios and crap before. They listen to it on iPhone speakers now.

People looked at amazing photos on newspaper print before. They look at 'em on crushed Facebook photos now.

 

And this entire time, if something was great, people could still tell that it was great.

 

So my hope is that my mixes (not talking about my songs now, that's a different subject) or my photographs have that sort of quality.

 

 

[Anderton]

I know we're largely in agreement here and this is so much more getting into the weeds, but knowing what I know about crappy mediums, I feel like I should be great enough to compensate for this instead of grousing about the formats.

Yes, and I think my new album translates over my Android phone because I worked hard to have the music translate over different playback systems. It's just a shame that for many people, that type of audio experience is all they know...or they think that music sounds like it does with Beats headphones. Sure, back in the day people listened to AM radio, but a lot of them also had KLH or Avid speakers in the living room. Today, it's rare to walk into someone's house and see a decent playback system.

 

I feel commercial music traditionally had the equivalent of a hardcover and paperback, like vinyl and cassette, uncompressed and MP3, or hi-fi tuner and transistor radio. My concern is that the "hardcover" option is going away. I was serious when I said some (many?) people have never heard uncompressed audio over a decent set of speakers. Sure, a great song will translate okay. But I'd still rather see the picture you posted in color than black and white

[Anderton]

I just realize I sound like one of those commercials with Sally Struthers...

 

"Every 22 minutes, a child is born who will never hear music over a decent playback system. Won't you help by sending just $1 to help end this auditory tragedy?"

[KenElevenShadows]

It's just a shame that for many people, that type of audio experience is all they know...or they think that music sounds like it does with Beats headphones. Sure, back in the day people listened to AM radio, but a lot of them also had KLH or Avid speakers in the living room. Today, it's rare to walk into someone's house and see a decent playback system.

 

Agreed...and yeah, sad. It's such a beautiful experience to hear an inspiring album on a super great sound system.