“Why am I never quite happy with my attempts at mastering”

Hi people

There are a few almost guaranteed reasons why first steps with mastering are disappointing:

1:Your expectations

A lot of people think the mastering phase is magic, and it can certainly make a huge difference. However….besides the skill of the M E in question, the mix and challenges it presents are the big deal. So spend time listening to what’s going on BEFORE loading the plugin toys.

Is the general sound balance poor?. Are certain freq ranges  too dynamic, and are smothering other parts?. Are the transients too big?, this will make the main body of the sound too thin. How dynamic is the whole thing?. Play it through, giving it your full attention, listening for anything that needs sorting.

An exception to the rule, is m/s eq. If you don’t have any experience of this, there will be an article about it soon. In some models that offer m/s, you have the option to listen to the mono components or the stereo. Listening to these in isolation can show up some problems you wouldn’t otherwise be able to fix.

If you’re working on a restoration job, then the list of potential issues gets longer: phase, pitch changes from tape sourced material. Remember….if the speed/pitch changes, any eq/crossovers etc you have set become slightly wrong.

So…listen first, to every aspect you possibly can, and have an idea of how much you will be able to achieve.

2:Static settings

Apart from certain recordings that have little or no instrument/sound changes, the ‘one pass master’ (static settings throughout) is going to disappoint!. I have explained the reasons before, but briefly….because the introduction of instruments pushes additional energy into certain freq areas, the freq’s  that need boosting or cutting changes. Remember….in mastering, if you’re not fixing it, you’re just making a slightly different wrong version!.

It’s the same for any dynamics settings. Keep an eye on thresholds, especially if you’re using multiband compression. Push them too hard and your sound has gone.

Getting the best possible finish is all about the amount of time you put in, and the big advantage you have, over even the most well equipped mastering service, is…. time. They have an hour for your track (not everyone can commit financial suicide spending a day getting one song right like I do). You also have the luxury of working over a few days, to keep things fresh.

Don’t underestimate the static setting disappointment problem!. It still manages to catch me out on occasion.

3:Monitoring/room acoustics

This is a bigger problem than most people can imagine. Let me tell you a story…….

Thanks to my less than perfect setup at the time, I learned to “read the curve” in a slightly different way. If parts of the spectrum are missing, there’s no continuity in the sound. Kind of like a cracked bell. One day (after months of audio torture)it just became obvious. This was fine, and certainly helped, however…..mastering is about hearing everything. You need to hear the less powerful <50hz and >8k to get the best out of the material.

If your room is throwing a ton of 100hz at you, thanks to reflections etc, then hearing if you need to lift the 10k a little, or maybe bypass the sub compression(because the 32 hz is too thick) is going to be near impossible. I found certain “open” sounding freq’s (500hz to 1k for example) to be a problem too. How many times have you taken your mix elsewhere, expecting to blow the minds of the listeners, only to be shocked by a nasty 700hz shard of sound spoiling the whole thing?. It’s probably not that your monitors didn’t show it up, but the 100hz(example) was smothering it.

There is of course the matter of speaker translation, which to some extent, can be made less of an issue by working the whole curve. That way, it’s possible to only be off by the amount your monitors vary across the spectrum. If they have a 1db dip at 2k, and the playback system has a 1db  lift around the same area, then you will have a 2db lift at 2k, which can make a significant difference to your sound.

Not everyone has the ridiculous amount of money a good pair of B&W’s cost, but there is a reason for the price tag. In a treated room, they tell the truth!.

So, there’s a few reasons why you may be disappointed. But don’t let it stop you!. Be aware of these points, and deal with them as best you can. Despite the opinion of many, a mastering engineer isn’t defined by their equipment. It can make a difference with the results, of course. But knowledge, approach and experience can’t be bought. Any fool with £30,000 can buy the right gear, does that earn them the right to butcher artists hard work?

Till next time, keep pushing forward, and improving your art.

Thanks for reading

Tone