Beyond a good mix, what is a good mastering strategy for me?

[SprintBob]

I think I am at a point in my recording journey where with good mics, a good mic preamp, a good audio interface, and a proven DAW, I can create decent recorded performances that after my mixing effort sound (to my ear) very good when listening with open back headphones (in this case a pair of Grado headphones). Those same headphones are what I use for mixing. I need to qualify right now that my home studio environment is not conducive to using monitors so I live with mixing through the headphones. I monitor with a pair of Sennheiser HD 280's. My mixing primarily consists of a high pass filter at 80-100 Hz, maybe some subtractive EQ around 250 hz, -2dB to -4dB, maybe some additive EQ around 3.5 kHz, 2dB to 4 dB, and a low pass filter at 10-12 kHz. I add a slight amount of reverb (most recently I have been using the Liquidsonics Seventh Heaven reverb plug-in, specifically the Sunset Chamber preset) and I use the Waves CLA-2A compressor in it's acoustic guitar preset. It's a very gently compression, I barely hear any difference.

That said, when I play the mix back on my home stereo system and in the car, it sounds thin in general. In fact, in the car, if I turn the volume up, I hear a buzzing resonance that happens at certain frequencies. For many folks, where I am at is fine for them since as long as the performance sounds good with headphones, it works. But I'd like to share my music with friends and family either on my home system (Marantz home theater receiver though Definitive speakers) or while riding around in my car (Honda Odyssey, premium sound system).

In general, it sounds like I need to raise the volume level without compressing/squashing the dynamic range and without raising the levels in the mix to where distortion is heard.

Trying to keep this as simple for a layman as possible and this is always for solo acoustic (no vocals or other instruments). I do own Ozone 9 Elements. Any tips for using that mastering plug-in in the context of my needs?

Thanks!

[Doug Young]

Tough one to answer in general, I think. Mastering and even mixing are largely a matter of figuring out what something needs and then addressing it, and I'm not sure there's a general answer. One part of my process is usually listening in other environments, especially the car, and then coming back to tweak based on what I hear. So if your track sounds thin in the car, maybe you've removed too much low and low mids.

A few random thoughts based on what you say: I usually do a high pass more around 30-40, just to cut room mud. 100-120 seems a bit high, you may be losing some of the guitar. I rarely cut low mids (250) - that's the meat of the melody that I want to hear. I also don't generally cut the extreme highs. Sometimes I lift them. Depends on the guitar, track, etc, tho.

Resonances may be an artifact of your room acoustics. If you don't have a good room for monitoring, it's probably also not all that good for recording - tho the tracks you've posted recently are sounding pretty nice to me. But resonances - room modes - are exactly what we're trying to deal with with acoustic treatment. Sometimes those things do come out in listening environments like cars. You may not notice them in headphones.

if you want to share a raw track, I'd be glad to make a stab at a mix for you and share what I did. Others here often do the same, so you might get a few different takes on how people would approach it.

[Doug Young]

BTW, resonances are pretty hard to remove, but Dynamic EQ is a good tool. It can often tame those peaks without affecting your overall EQ balance. I use that far more than regular EQ. Ozone has a Dynamic EQ module.

[rick-slo]

Lots of variables in what "good" is including personal preferences, the type of the playback system and it's acoustic
environment. Also in which case(s) do you want it to sound the best - say your headphones versus the small box of
the interior of your car?

If your references are some specific recordings you have heard (and you have checked them out for comparison by
listening to them in the type of environments you consider important) you may have something less vague to aim for.

[KevWind]

As noted very hard without being in the room to give much advice on Mastering

Can you post a screen shot of your mix window ?

Because I should probably remember but :::: I'm old
You are doing solo acoustic guitar ?
Or guitar and vocal and or more tracks ?
Are you recording guitar in stereo or mono ?

I would tend to agree with Doug (unless the guitar is unusually boomy in the low end) and since 83hz is the lowest frequency for guitar I usually set my High pass on the guitar tracks at about 60-75. maybe 80 with a steep rolloff for my most bass heavy guitar
I would raise the low pass to at least 15 k or eliminate it altogether 7 k and up is where the presence or (air) is

As for any other frequency cuts I always perform the Narrow Q boost and then sweep method,,,,, as opposed to a blanket setting like 250. Find the specific frequency that is most honky, tubby, or ringing culvert, sounding and do a relatively narrow Q cut there. 4 to 8 db.

Now it is true the often 500 is one of the most problem frequency areas, but with the boost an sweep method you can get even more accurate and more surgical (narrower Q)

Thin is what exactly ? Not a lot of width, not a lot depth, and or presence ? More 2 D-ish than 3 D-ish ? Further away feeling with less dynamics ?

Width is matter spreading the L-R stereo field and to some extent also eliminating low end distortion "thin" or flat 2 D ,,,is often distortion build up in the lows and mid's which robs presence and clarity

[SprintBob]

Originally Posted by rick-slo

Lots of variables in what "good" is including personal preferences, the type of the playback system and it's acoustic
environment. Also in which case(s) do you want it to sound the best - say your headphones versus the small box of
the interior of your car?

If your references are some specific recordings you have heard (and you have checked them out for comparison by
listening to them in the type of environments you consider important) you may have something less vague to aim for.

Certainly anything that Doug or you share I aspire to work towards recording wise and I just love listening to any of the amazing guitar demos especially of OM and 00 guitars at this site:

https://www.youtube.com/c/TheNorthAmericanGuitar

[SprintBob]

Originally Posted by Doug Young

Tough one to answer in general, I think. Mastering and even mixing are largely a matter of figuring out what something needs and then addressing it, and I'm not sure there's a general answer. One part of my process is usually listening in other environments, especially the car, and then coming back to tweak based on what I hear. So if your track sounds thin in the car, maybe you've removed too much low and low mids.

A few random thoughts based on what you say: I usually do a high pass more around 30-40, just to cut room mud. 100-120 seems a bit high, you may be losing some of the guitar. I rarely cut low mids (250) - that's the meat of the melody that I want to hear. I also don't generally cut the extreme highs. Sometimes I lift them. Depends on the guitar, track, etc, tho.

Resonances may be an artifact of your room acoustics. If you don't have a good room for monitoring, it's probably also not all that good for recording - tho the tracks you've posted recently are sounding pretty nice to me. But resonances - room modes - are exactly what we're trying to deal with with acoustic treatment. Sometimes those things do come out in listening environments like cars. You may not notice them in headphones.

if you want to share a raw track, I'd be glad to make a stab at a mix for you and share what I did. Others here often do the same, so you might get a few different takes on how people would approach it.

Below is my latest recording which I just posted also in Show and Tell. I re-mixed it tonight. The high pass filter is in my Sebatron pre-amp and it is set at 80 hz. The rest of the processing is via the DAW plugins using Fabfilter Pro.Q3 equalizer. The low pass filter is at 20khz and I boosted the 3.5 kHz frequency 4 dB with a low Q of about .5. The compression is via the Waves CLA-2A plugin which is fairly gentle and the reverb is the Sunset Chamber preset in the Seventh Heaven reverb plugin. I can do a WeTransfer of the raw Wav file if you want to take a look at it. I would be most appreciative.

Originally Posted by Doug Young

BTW, resonances are pretty hard to remove, but Dynamic EQ is a good tool. It can often tame those peaks without affecting your overall EQ balance. I use that far more than regular EQ. Ozone has a Dynamic EQ module.

It's a buzzy resonance that I never hear in the headphones. If I am in the car but not driving, I don't hear it at a comfortable volume level. If I am going down the road at say any speed over 40-50 mph with the wind and road noise competing with the music, I'll turn the volume up and then it can be heard on the louder passages of a song.

[SprintBob]

Originally Posted by KevWind

Because I should probably remember but :::: I'm old
You are doing solo acoustic guitar ?
Or guitar and vocal and or more tracks ?
Are you recording guitar in stereo or mono ?

I record solo fingerstyle only, two mono tracks (one panned hard right and one panned hard left).

See my response to Doug above for more details.

[min7b5]

I'll just add that going back and forth with a reference track or two -ideally something close to what your doing, and something you know you've loved for years no matter where you hear it- as a quick palate cleanser as your working can reset you ear and maybe get you thinking a little less about what you're seeing in metering.. You can even use some eq plugins to analyze your reference track's eq and help you match -I've never done this myself, but could be interesting.

Another suggestion would be to send it to a mastering engineer. You can likely find someone pretty good for a hundred bucks a tune. And then you would have a professionally mastered version to compare to your unmastered version you could use as a reference to try to match. You might even be able to ask the mastering engineer for broad strokes about what he did (probably want to find some working "in-the-box," assuming you don't have a tape machine or Massive Passive You might also be able to ask them how to get most of the way there with the plugins you have.. Just a thought.

[TBman]

Bob, what's your mic recording levels? I'm wondering if close mic'ing and recording with low levels and then raising it in mixing might be causing that hum when its turned up in your car?

[Doug Young]

Originally Posted by SprintBob

It's a buzzy resonance that I never hear in the headphones. If I am in the car but not driving, I don't hear it at a comfortable volume level. If I am going down the road at say any speed over 40-50 mph with the wind and road noise competing with the music, I'll turn the volume up and then it can be heard on the louder passages of a song.

Fingerstyle over road noise can be tough. You may just be turning up enough that some notes are pushing your car speakers too hard (wild guess)

[Doug Young]

Listening to your track, I'd just suggest that maybe the bass notes are too prominent. That may be what's showing up in your car. They're pretty strong and punchy. Could just be my taste, but I think I'd prefer to hear the melody louder with the bass more in a supporting role. You could try a multi-band compressor or a dynamic EQ to tame the bass notes a bit, or maybe work on going easier on the thumb while playing?

[rick-slo]

Regarding the "Here Comes The Sun" recording: Thin body on notes secondary to the way the notes are picked and to the shimmery reverb chosen.
Appreciating a shimmer in a reverb can come through when you can hear the fine details within it. Not likely to hear that listening in a car nearly as
much as using headphones. More power on the picking and a better reverb choice would help a bunch.

[SprintBob]

Originally Posted by min7b5

I'll just add that going back and forth with a reference track or two -ideally something close to what your doing, and something you know you've loved for years no matter where you hear it- as a quick palate cleanser as your working can reset you ear and maybe get you thinking a little less about what you're seeing in metering.. You can even use some eq plugins to analyze your reference track's eq and help you match -I've never done this myself, but could be interesting.

Another suggestion would be to send it to a mastering engineer. You can likely find someone pretty good for a hundred bucks a tune. And then you would have a professionally mastered version to compare to your unmastered version you could use as a reference to try to match. You might even be able to ask the mastering engineer for broad strokes about what he did (probably want to find some working "in-the-box," assuming you don't have a tape machine or Massive Passive You might also be able to ask them how to get most of the way there with the plugins you have.. Just a thought.

Thanks Eric. You are certainly reinforcing that I need to become a more critical listener of really high quality fingerstyle recordings. I remember in your 30 Day Guitar Challenge, one bit of advice you offered was to take a recording you really like and just immerse yourself into it with a good set of headphones and that could also be useful as benchmarks for my recording goals.

I’ve gotten a bit back into flat picking working on the fiddle tunes on your new Homespun course and I am really enjoying the new album you did with Jamie. The FJ podcast about it was also great.

Originally Posted by TBman

Bob, what's your mic recording levels? I'm wondering if close mic'ing and recording with low levels and then raising it in mixing might be causing that hum when its turned up in your car?

I tried to keep the peaks at -6DB or less with the track gain set on each channel at 0 dB. Reaper has a combined master mix control and with the gain on it set to 0 dB the combined peak numbers were going into the “red” so I used the Waves compressor to tame that combined response back into the “green”.

Originally Posted by Doug Young

Fingerstyle over road noise can be tough. You may just be turning up enough that some notes are pushing your car speakers too hard (wild guess)

I believe that is accurate since I don’t hear it at all with the headphones. However, when I play really high quality fingerstyle recordings in the car, that buzzing does not occur so it suggests there are some offending frequency bands that are the root cause that I need to sort out. I’m taking you up on the offer to send the raw file to you and look forward to your feedback on it.

Originally Posted by Doug Young

Listening to your track, I'd just suggest that maybe the bass notes are too prominent. That may be what's showing up in your car. They're pretty strong and punchy. Could just be my taste, but I think I'd prefer to hear the melody louder with the bass more in a supporting role. You could try a multi-band compressor or a dynamic EQ to tame the bass notes a bit, or maybe work on going easier on the thumb while playing?

Will do, thanks for that feedback.

Originally Posted by rick-slo

Regarding the "Here Comes The Sun" recording: Thin body on notes secondary to the way the notes are picked and to the shimmery reverb chosen.
Appreciating a shimmer in a reverb can come through when you can hear the fine details within it. Not likely to hear that listening in a car nearly as
much as using headphones. More power on the picking and a better reverb choice would help a bunch.

Taming my thumb and getting the melody notes more in front for a more balanced dynamic range is an evolving journey for me. Your feedback mirrors my teacher’s feedback. We have a lesson next week and this will be a big part of our discussion. Regarding reverb, it’s so subjective. In using the Seventh Heaven plug-in on the wet/dry blend, I’m at around -6dB (i.e. more dry than wet) and I’m not adding any gain so I think it’s a minimal amount overall. I value your experience on what you are hearing. Lots for me to learn there.

[rick-slo]

Originally Posted by SprintBob

Taming my thumb and getting the melody notes more in front for a more balanced dynamic range is an evolving journey for me. Your feedback mirrors my teacher’s feedback. We have a lesson next week and this will be a big part of our discussion. Regarding reverb, it’s so subjective. In using the Seventh Heaven plug-in on the wet/dry blend, I’m at around -6dB (i.e. more dry than wet) and I’m not adding any gain so I think it’s a minimal amount overall. I value your experience on what you are hearing. Lots for me to learn there.

Good to hear. Reverb choice is subjective naturally. Personally on reverb use I am usually at -14db or lower (or in percentage usuall well under ten percent). Also there are reverbs and usage of them that fatten up the initial pluck of notes rather than drawing them out much time wise.