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Craig: Mastering Article


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That's a wonderful article on Mastering.

 

It was great to have all five samples and let them

play and hear how the shaping took effect one by one

after reading the article.

 

What a teacher.

 

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William F. Turner

Guitarist, Composer

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In case anyone wonders what he's talking about, it's in the Lessons section on the home page, not something I did for a magazine.

 

Anyway, I'm really glad you liked it. This is an example of how I want to use the capabilities of the web more, and go beyond what you can do with just print.

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Originally posted by Anderton:

In case anyone wonders what he's talking about, it's in the Lessons section on the home page, not something I did for a magazine.

 

Craig,

Can I get a link to this?

 

 

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Thanks and God Bless!

Y.B.I.C.

Bill

Thanks and God Bless!

Y.B.I.C.

Bill

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>>Craig,

Can I get a link to this?<<

 

It's on the front page of MUSICPLAYER.COM

 

http://www.musicplayer.com/CDA/Player/Main/1,2228,Lessons--5141595,00.html

 

>>This is an example of how I want to use the capabilities of the web more, and go beyond what you can do with just print.<<

 

Bingo. You've always been an innovator at sharing musical information

ever since I can remember. When one thinks about about how musicians

might be able to share and interact if the current broadband limitations

were finally solved, it almost boggles the mind with the possibilities.

 

A question for you and anybody? What peak dblevel do you generally try

to get your final mix at before you start the mastering process. I'm

guessing this is gonna depend on what kind of music your doing. Personally

I find that what I do generally will die if I work towards the general

trend these days of getting the most signal you can out of the final master.

 

For my stuff I usally try to peak somewhere between -3 and -1.5.

on the final mix. That seems to leave me enough headroom in case

I need to make some kind of generous boost in any particular freq range and still keep my dynamics. Just lookin for a profession opinion, as to if that's a good starting point?

 

Another thing I like to do, concering those stray transients that peak here and there, instead of doing a light compression on the mix like you did in your example, I sometimes and especially if they occur to the left or right side of the stereo spread is use the graphic fade function in Sound Forge to tame them a bit in my first mastering step and save that

light compression option for later if I think I still need it (many times I don't). Am I still in the ball park by doing this?

 

 

 

------------------

William F. Turner

Guitarist, Composer

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Agreed... very good lesson.

What I would like to know is: when you used Freefilter, were you using another song to match it up with or did you use it an EQ and dial your own settings? I love Freefilter for the matching feature -- it instantly raised my engineering IQ a few points!

Bill Murphy

www.murphonics.com

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Yes Craig, this is a very nice article! However, I do have a question for you. It seemed like your first step in the mastering process was to normalize the stereo mix. It seems to me that if you normalized the mix that you would only be able to do EQ reduction or else you would clip the audio. If your mix was maxed out at zero or close to it then you couldn't boost any frequencies without first cutting another frequency band. It seems to me that you'd want to normalize and/or optimize the level only at the last step before dithering. Any comments?

 

-Dylan

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Are you the one who coined 'an audio byte is worth a thousand words?' (instead of 'a picture is worth a thousand words')? As usual, your turn of words is priceless...

 

By the way, even more than the article on mastering, I benefitted (?) greatly from your article on DC offset. Who says DC offset isn't sexy? Give me their names, I'll take care of them . . .

 

.... the downside is that now I'm paranoid about my gear . . . hunting for DC offset gremlins everywhere, and holding up little talismans (okay, that's an exageration) - but, needless to say,

 

I love your work. Keep on keepin' on...

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Craig, thanks for the demo. However, how is one to get good at mastering ones self if he always takes it to a mastering facility? As you suggested, it takes years to get good at it. My personal experence is that it's also a subjective art form. I have clients and friends who were not satisfied with some well known mastering engineers work. I agree that without the proper monitors and room, one is better off taking it to someone who does.

I've heard some really bad stuff come out of MCA records as far as mastering goes. Have you heard the SR71 CD? It's so hot that it's distorted.

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