Dare I master it?

[b1j]

My mix is at a state where I have a full, rich sound, and I don't hear any distracting muddiness. There's even air in the bass, in its very own zone (2k). The other instruments receive selected cuts and their little custom boosts at 200, 230, 400, 800, 1500, and 5800. The bass has a nice wide scoop at 450. That's all I know to do with EQ. No woofs anywhere.

Every note from every instrument is discernible and occupies its aural location, like a small vocal ensemble. There's tons of saturation (see other harmonics thread) and no need for stereo widening; it's been done with panning, EQ traffic control, and the distinct instrument timbres. I sent all the tracks to a single room reverb set for 2.4 sec in a 17x22x10 foot space, which I think gives those resonances the right amount of bloom time.

Apparent loudness is even-handed throughout the verses and events. I did make another significant tweak on one track tonight. Loudness-wise, it kind of dances now through the stages of the song.

The high-strung guitar and the bass each have soft-knee compression to keep them poised and articulate without sharp peaks or whispers. The mix track has the 1176 emulator I gushed about last week. Hanging onto that!

Every track has headroom: none of them exceed -12 dB, and the mix track rides between -4 and -6.

In short, I can't imagine any other mixing adjustments to make.

So to get to the point, do I defy common sense and try to master this mess, nube that I am? I have no clear notion of goals except reference-level loudness. I don't know how to deal with overall EQ, compression, or reverb. It's all done already, right? (Pros, see what I mean about being clueless?)

I wish there was a way to be guided through the mastering process, to learn hands-on.

[thefsb]

Originally Posted by b1j

I wish there was a way to be guided through the mastering process, to learn hands-on.

Being a writer is typically a solo activity. An editor can ask you to revise something but does not usually follow your progress closely and tell you when you're done. It's up to you.

Writers sometimes talk about abandoned words. At some point you turn your back on the work and walk away.

[Rudy4]

It's sometimes said that doing your own mastering is somewhat like representing yourself in a serious court case.

The one time I tried out mastering was at the suggestion of an acoustic group I was doing an album for. Since I had no idea what I was doing I used a mastering plug that had dozens of presets available to audition. I selected a few of them for them to listen to that seemed to possibly improve the tracks and they wisely chose to send the tracks off to be mastered.

The nice thing about doing that was to watch all the different parameters of the mastering plug and see what was being changed to create that particular preset.

It sounds like the best thing for you is to leave it where you like it. Stacking more changes on what you've already done might be counterproductive.

[jim1960]

Originally Posted by b1j

Every track has headroom: none of them exceed -12 dB, and the mix track rides between -4 and -6.

Your mix level is already quite hot so matter where you post it, it's going to be attenuated and/or squashed pretty severely.

Originally Posted by b1j

In short, I can't imagine any other mixing adjustments to make.

If you don't know what to do next, you're not ready to master that track. I'm a big proponent of getting fresh ears on a project for mastering. The reason being that a large chunk of the time spent mixing requires focusing on individual tracks and minute details. It's not easy to switch hats, drop the mixing mindset, and make your brain approach the project more globally, which is what mastering requires.

My best suggestion is one you're probably not going to like: redo the mix.
-4 to -6 is hot even for a cd. Most streaming services normalize to somewhere in the -12 to -16 range. I suggest re-mixing with a target of -12.

[Mobilemike]

The very best part about mastering IMO is the chance to have a fresh set of ears on your track, a fresh outlook and a fresh viewpoint on what can be done to it.

By trying to master it yourself, even if you know what you’re doing, and especially if you don’t know what you’re doing, you lose the most important part of what makes mastering work.

If you’re proud of the mix, great! Send it to a pro to have it mastered.

[runamuck]

What would you do to your mix if you were to master it yourself?

[min7b5]

Originally Posted by thefsb

Being a writer is typically a solo activity. An editor can ask you to revise something but does not usually follow your progress closely and tell you when you're done. It's up to you.

Great analogy.

Originally Posted by b1j

My mix is at a state where I have a full, rich sound, and I don’t hear any distracting muddiness. …

Well, there’s no law that says you have to take it to a third-party for mastering.. You could say the mix is are the master, and you would be in good company, many ECM records for example. Of the nine albums I've released, some were mastered and some were not. At least one back from a mastering engineer and I decided very quickly not to use what they did. Two were mastered twice..

Mastering itself is kind of a deep and maybe a little controversial subject. I think objectively speaking if you're going to print vinyl, you'd very likely wanna have a qualified person make sure the needle is not gonna pop out of the grooves because of the bass! But otherwise, technically anyway, you can release your music however you like on the streaming platforms today. Even if it's an album, the tracks are likely to be more or less normalized to be about the same playback volume even if you don't do anything -though I’d make an effort to at least get that where you want it before submitting and letting the algorithm do it.

Personally I think mastering is mostly about having a fresh set of trusted years in a new space tell you are done, or not. And that can be a big value, because at this point you're so deep in it you've likely lost quite a bit of objectivity. I think the emphasis has to be on the word “trusted” though. These days -especially if one spends any time listening to the talking heads on YouTube tutorials- I think it's justified to be pretty fearful of an inexperienced overly zealous mastering engineer doing a whole lot more to your track than you bargained for.

Sounds like you are very happy with your mix -though again, at this point you’ve likely lost some objectivity. If you can sort of trick your brain into briefly hearing it subjectively, how does it sound and feel to you? Suggestion; don’t look at the screen or think about any metering, close your eyes. I would find reference tracks of things that are somewhat similar to what you have that you know and love, and quickly go back-and-forth with your track. In that scenario, do you suddenly feel like yours fits right in there? Or does it suddenly feel amateurish in that context? I think if it's the ladder, I'd consider getting some trusted ears to hear it in their room or headphones and see what they say. If it's the former, congratulations you're done. Go write more music and do it all again.

[Doug Young]

Mastering is such a misunderstood thing. Maybe one of the pros will weigh in here with more authoritative info. But to me, there are a couple of aspects. I agree with Eric that one of the biggest benefits is just a second set of ears. If you go to a good experienced engineer, you're getting someone who has critically listened to a lot of tunes, and knows what sounds good out in the wild, and they can make tweaks - hopefully relatively minor, to make a track sound its best on all the different platforms it's (hopefully) going to be played on. They probably have better gear and acoustics than you do, as well. but the critical part is the "second opinion", it's like a QA step for any product release.

The other aspect has to do more with if you're releasing a CD, the mastering step includes sequencing, making sure the songs have the right spacing, the right relative levels so the CD flows. There is meta data to be embedded, ISRCs to be assigned, a DDP file to be created, so on and so forth.

[b1j]

Thanks to all for your helpful thoughts.

I do need a new set of ears. I am too close to it.

I don't know of any reference track I could use. The piece is four acoustic guitars and one bass playing a transcribed Beethoven piano sonata. It's hard to find something comparable. (For those interested, check out this mesmerizing two-guitar transcription by Lorenzo Micheli and Matteo Mela:

https://youtu.be/IiezZfaQ4tA?si=DO3_3lZ5gl_AH_2x

Oh, to be a good guitar player!)

But back to the reference track. Theirs (⬆︎) sounds louder than mine. That's why I imagine that mastering could bring the loudness into line. Jim's comment is that my mix is already too hot. So the mystery persists: how does mastering take something quieter (but too hot) and make it louder without clipping? Is it all to do with dynamic range?

Or a different question is, how do I make the mix quieter? Just pull down the mix fader? I see there's some kind of rule of thumb about the headroom you want on tracks. Is there also one about a reasonable sweet zone for the faders? I only brought them down from unity a couple of days ago when I wanted to achieve the -12 dB headroom on the tracks. I moved all tracks down together, inching it along until it felt right and gave the target -12 dB.

I can't help thinking that if someone could walk me through a session I'd learn a lot.

[Doug Young]

Originally Posted by b1j

But back to the reference track. Theirs (⬆︎) sounds louder than mine. That's why I imagine that mastering could bring the loudness into line. Jim's comment is that my mix is already too hot. So the mystery persists: how does mastering take something quieter (but too hot) and make it louder without clipping? Is it all to do with dynamic range?

If you are doing the final master yourself, then you want to think in terms of LUFS (average level), not peak db levels. My guess is that you're talking peak db levels, while Jim is talking LUFS. CD level is -15 LUFS, Spotify and You Tube expect -14. LUFS is a measure of average volume, basically "perceived" volume. Imagine something simple like a hi-hat that does it's thing once a measure, and hits 0db. You'd think that was loud, but the overall level of the track will not sound very loud to a listener (irritating maybe :-). On the other hand an orchestra or a metal band going full tilt so that it fills the sound all the time with a constant barrage of sound, and could easily be -14 LUFS without any single peak being loud. in general, the way you get more average volume without overdriving peaks is compression or limiting, which is something that typically happens in mastering. And so, yes, I guess you could say it has to do with dynamic range.

But there are other things that could be going on as far as overall perceived volume, hard to say without hearing your track. It can have to do with the instrumentation, arrangement or the mix. Not everything has to be loud.

[KevWind]

I would say the most important thing to consider is what specifically are going to do with your mix when it is done ? this will as Doug noted determine what the average loudness LUFS goal should be

Also very hard to actually know if that video you posted that you say "sounds louder" is actually louder than your song You would have to have both that video's audio and your session, playing on the same playback platform to accurately compare
The posted YouTube video is showing a loudness content number of - 8 db below the -14 LUFS YouTube limit.

[jim1960]

Originally Posted by b1j

Jim's comment is that my mix is already too hot.

I was, as Doug pointed out, referring to LUFS. If you weren't referring to LUFS when you said "the mix track rides between -4 and -6," then you have to be more specific about what the numbers reference. Most people reading what you said would take it as a reference to the LUFS number for the mix.

What metering plugin are you using to determine levels?

[b1j]

Originally Posted by KevWind

I would say the most important thing to consider is what specifically are going to do with your mix when it is done ? this will as Doug noted determine what the average loudness LUFS goal should be

Also very hard to actually know if that video you posted that you say "sounds louder" is actually louder than your song You would have to have both that video's audio and your session, playing on the same playback platform to accurately compare
The posted YouTube video is showing a loudness content number of - 8 db below the -14 LUFS YouTube limit.

Thanks, Kev. I played the YouTube video through my monitors, and then played my song without adjusting gain.

As to my goals for this, it’s basically for an audience of one: me. I want to play it in my car. I harbor no illusions that others will want to listen to it. I’ll send it to my brother, the way he sends me his recordings. He’ll probably play it once, and maybe not all arduous six minutes of it. I’ll put it on SoundCloud and send the link to a few family members. I’ll post it here on Show and Tell.

Why, then, do I care about mastering? After having made significant inroads with mic use and room treatment, my acoustic guitars so sound much better than ever, even in the raw track (hooray!). In addition, it feels as though I’m discovering restraint and control with basic plugins and volume balancing. It’s time to step over and try the last step in production.

I just don’t want it to sound like some weird, jarring outlier recording compared to what we hear in popular music. I also have a vague expectation that, properly mastered, it will somehow sound better than my best efforts at mixing have achieved. In particular, I’d love to have the few measures of a dramatic crescendo feel like they’re popping out of the speakers without going outside the limits.

In short, I want to learn more about music production to feed my hobby.

[Doug Young]

Originally Posted by b1j

In short, I want to learn more about music production to feed my hobby.

That's a good goal. And there's a ton to learn. And getting to the point that your home-recorded track fits in well with commercially produced songs is a pretty high bar.

One thing you might find useful is to find someone with more experience who you can visit and observe as they mix/master your track. Every time I've done recording in some one else's studio, I came away with a big list of things I needed to explore - lots of eye-opening moments - "I didn't know you could do that!" kinds of things.

Of course, there are also online lessons and videos on all aspects of recording these days, also worth exploring. Jim has some videos about mastering and so on in the sticky area for starters.

[b1j]

Originally Posted by jim1960

I was, as Doug pointed out, referring to LUFS. If you weren't referring to LUFS when you said "the mix track rides between -4 and -6," then you have to be more specific about what the numbers reference. Most people reading what you said would take it as a reference to the LUFS number for the mix.

What metering plugin are you using to determine levels?

Right. I haven’t gotten to the LUFS stage yet with this song, although I have fiddled with that parameter before in my early bumbling on the Project page with previous songs.

On the mix track, I’m using K-20 metering, based on a rule of thumb I picked up from Joe Gilder. The mix fader is sitting at about -10.6 dB, so that, as the song plays, the bars dance around between -4 and -6 dB. Again, a rule of thumb I picked up from a couple of How to Master a Song websites.

But wait! While writing this reply, I tinkered with the metering method. There are four options: Peak/RMS, K-20, K-14, and K-12. The sound level thingies bop about in the same location no matter which metering mode I choose. What does change is the location of 0, and, in turn, the dB value at the top of the thingies (vocabulary, please). This tells me that K-20 seems to be simply the most conservative yardstick, probably to give the best chance of creating headroom. But to your point, just stating the highest dB is meaningless without giving the metering method. It’s like saying it’s 50 degrees or my distance was 30. So, thanks for that.

Now, what should be 1) my go-to metering setting for mixing and 2) my target highest thingy range?

Lastly, for some unknown reason, I do have a post-fader limiter on the mix track, also using using K-20 metering. The ceiling is -0.48 and the threshold is set at -1.08. It looks like I nudged the limiter’s Gain up to 2.61. I know that last item presents a confounding gain-stage variable, but it’s entirely consistent with the narrative that I’m kind of lost at this point.