Mastering questions

[Gtrfinger]

When recording solo fingerstyle, whether it be steel or nylon and your project is simply two tracks - would it be better to a) leave any FX off the master track completely, render in 24 bits to another track and then import that rendered wav file to your daw and master it?
Or b) master the track within the original project itself.
Or c) does it make no difference in terms of sound quality?

Intuitively I'm thinking that if I follow (a) , I'll lose some audio data.

[Doug Young]

If you're working in digital, it should make no difference. You can bounce tracks (make copies) as often as you like, there should be no data loss. By why go to the extra effort? I just record in my DAW, edit, add effects , etc, and do whatever "mastering" is required (bring up to release level and so on). For solo fingerstyle guitar, the line between "mixing" and "mastering" is pretty blurry, since there's really nothing to mix.

[Gtrfinger]

Thanks Doug, I was probably, and not for the first time, overthinking.

[Rudy4]

Your initial tracks should already be recorded in 24 bits, so no "rendering to 24 bits" for initial mixing.

You need to start with high resolution initial tracks and hopefully that's what you mean to relate here.

Work with those 24 bit tracks for edits and applying any effects, and then apply any mastering to your final edits when rendering your tracks in their final form.

[DupleMeter]

Originally Posted by Gtrfinger

When recording solo fingerstyle, whether it be steel or nylon and your project is simply two tracks - would it be better to a) leave any FX off the master track completely, render in 24 bits to another track and then import that rendered wav file to your daw and master it?
Or b) master the track within the original project itself.
Or c) does it make no difference in terms of sound quality?

Intuitively I'm thinking that if I follow (a) , I'll lose some audio data.

It doesn't matter, except for workflow/ease of project management.

If you're doing it all yourself, you may as well do it in a single session to keep things simple. Sure, some will say that the "proper" workflow is export the mix & then master the finished mix...but that mostly applies if you are sending the final mix out to a mastering engineer. If you're keeping it all in-house, just keep it simple.

[KevWind]

Originally Posted by Gtrfinger

When recording solo fingerstyle, whether it be steel or nylon and your project is simply two tracks - would it be better to a) leave any FX off the master track completely, render in 24 bits to another track and then import that rendered wav file to your daw and master it?
Or b) master the track within the original project itself.
Or c) does it make no difference in terms of sound quality?

Intuitively I'm thinking that if I follow (a) , I'll lose some audio data.

I don't think you will "lose some audio data " per .se but I see no reason to export and import .

What I do is master within the original project/session .. BUT I usually do not have multiple FX for mastering and use basically only on effect, so I can bypass it and check that any 'mastering" is not actually more a detriment than a benefit.

If you tend to use multiple FX's for mastering you can simply print the un-mastered original to a stereo audio track (within the project/session) and then you simply use track mute and unmute to check between the original and the mastered version.

[TBman]

I record using a portable device - a Zoom F3, which records in 32 bit. This removes the need to get the input gain right. I can move my mics around and not have to worry about gain adjustments. I then import the music files to my pc via usb connection and then load the sound files in my editor, Rx 10 Standard to trim, fade, and clean up the file using low levels of noise reduction, de clicking, etc. Rx 10 has a automated clean up tool (Repair Assistant) which does a good job. This editor is destructive so I always save various stages of editing before do more editing.

When I feel satisfied with the sound track I will then import the file in Reaper and have 3 "channels" - the guitar stereo track, a reverb bus and the master. On the guitar track I will apply low and high passes as necessary and do subtractive and/or boost certain levels, many times using presets (sometimes tweaked by me) provided by plugin manufacturers.

The reverb bus has a high pass before the reverb plugin.

The "master" track sometimes has a stereo field adjustment plug in.

I like doing as little as possible to a track once I have it edited. If I feel I have to do a lot to get it better, that's a hint I need to play it better so I'll start over from scratch.

[kurth]

Originally Posted by Gtrfinger

When recording solo fingerstyle, whether it be steel or nylon and your project is simply two tracks - would it be better to a) leave any FX off the master track completely, render in 24 bits to another track and then import that rendered wav file to your daw and master it?
Or b) master the track within the original project itself.
Or c) does it make no difference in terms of sound quality?

Intuitively I'm thinking that if I follow (a) , I'll lose some audio data.

Are u recording to a separate recorder? Why would you import...and from where? Didn't you record in your daw?

[kurth]

Originally Posted by kurth

Are u recording to a separate recorder? Why would you import...and from where? Didn't you record in your daw?

ok I get what you;re saying now....always go the shortest route. I believe you only want to render once, at the last. Any rendering looses even in losseless imho. I hear the difference in pre-rendered and rendered. So I do it only as the ultimate compromise to having the music accessible, in a playable file format.

[Doug Young]

Originally Posted by kurth

ok I get what you;re saying now....always go the shortest route. I believe you only want to render once, at the last. Any rendering looses even in losseless imho. I hear the difference in pre-rendered and rendered. So I do it only as the ultimate compromise to having the music accessible, in a playable file format.

My guess would be that if the rendered final file sounds different than in the DAW, it's due to the playback mechanisms. If you are editing/mastering in Logic for example, and then click on the final file and it plays back in iTunes. Different playback software might sound slightly different, perhaps simply due to a slight difference in volume. 0.1db difference will make a track sound different. If you loaded the file back into your DAW and listened, making sure to exactly match levels, and not have any affects applied, it'll probably not sound different. There are ways to test this, but it's likely more work than its worth.

All a bit moot of course, since others will be listening to your track thru different playback mechanisms, different speakers, different rooms, different ears. No one will ever hear exactly what you hear in your DAW.

[kurth]

Originally Posted by Doug Young

My guess would be that if the rendered final file sounds different than in the DAW, it's due to the playback mechanisms. If you are editing/mastering in Logic for example, and then click on the final file and it plays back in iTunes. Different playback software might sound slightly different, perhaps simply due to a slight difference in volume. 0.1db difference will make a track sound different. If you loaded the file back into your DAW and listened, making sure to exactly match levels, and not have any affects applied, it'll probably not sound different. There are ways to test this, but it's likely more work than its worth.

All a bit moot of course, since others will be listening to your track thru different playback mechanisms, different speakers, different rooms, different ears. No one will ever hear exactly what you hear in your DAW.

Doug....yeah it used to be alot easier and more uniform when everybody just played records. And yes each player sounds different. VLC , itunes, windows media player etc. But wouldn't the pre-rendered daw file be playing each of the wave files for each stem separately, and the rendered file would be those stems each coalesced into another format like wave or mp3 using the particular algorithm of each daw for mixing down, ? For example, your compu will work alot harder playing a 10 track wav daw file, than it will playing a mixed down wav file of the same song. It looses something to my ears. And at times somethings come to the forefront that were not as noticable. I have to actually listen to a mixdown to know if it's right. Whatever that mixdown algorithm does...to me it sounds like it does something. Just my 2cents.

[Doug Young]

Originally Posted by kurth

yeah it used to be alot easier and more uniform when everybody just played records But wouldn't the pre-rendered daw file be playing each of the wave files for each stem separately, and the rendered file would be those stems each coalesced into another format like wave or mp3 using the particular algorithm of each daw for mixing down, ? For example, your compu will work alot harder playing a 10 track wav daw file, than it will playing a mixed down wav file of the same song. It looses something to my ears. And at times somethings come to the forefront that were not as noticable. I have to actually listen to a mixdown to know if it's right. Whatever that mixdown algorithm does...to me it sounds like it does something. Just my 2cents.

Maybe. It's software, so anything is possible, including bugs. No way to guarantee anything. My expectation would be that whatever extra work your computer has to do to sum all those tracks together, it's going to to the same when you export the mix. If anything, maybe it'll do "better" when exporting, since it can take any amount of time it needs to do the export if you don't do it in real time. I often save a mix in real time, at least if I'm using a hardware reverb, so there should be no difference. These days, unless you have like 100s of tracks, most computers don't break a sweat playing back audio. I'm assuming you aren't downgrading the sound on purpose on rendering, not dropping to mp3 or 16 bits, or dithering, etc.

In any case, I'd say any minor difference pales beside what will happen when someone else plays the track in a different environment. Records doesn't really solve the issue, if anything that was worse. What you heard in the control room had to be altered to adjust for the lathe process of cutting the record. Then everyone's record needle and turntable was different. Your record got played on anything from a high end turntable with a $1000 needle and fabulous speakers, to a portable record player from walmart. And all the other issues - speakers, room acoustics, listeners ears, etc, remain, meaning that no two people hear *exactly* the same thing.

If you hear a really dramatic difference in your DAW, it's worth exploring - maybe something's wrong - either a bug in the DAW or a problem with your setup. If it's just that you sort of think it might sound different, make sure the levels are identical - as mentioned 0.1db is enough to throw you off, and maybe chalk it up to a small difference that doesn't matter.

Also remember that our impressions can be swayed easily. Probably every recording engineer out there can tell you of times they made adjustments to a mix and thought "yeah, that sounds much better", only to discover that they were turning a knob that was inactive. Have someone play you the two sounds blind multiple times and see if you can reliably tell which is which. If you can, maybe something's really happening.

[kurth]

Originally Posted by Doug Young

Maybe. It's software, so anything is possible, including bugs. No way to guarantee anything. My expectation would be that whatever extra work your computer has to do to sum all those tracks together, it's going to to the same when you export the mix. If anything, maybe it'll do "better" when exporting, since it can take any amount of time it needs to do the export if you don't do it in real time. I often save a mix in real time, at least if I'm using a hardware reverb, so there should be no difference. These days, unless you have like 100s of tracks, most computers don't break a sweat playing back audio. I'm assuming you aren't downgrading the sound on purpose on rendering, not dropping to mp3 or 16 bits, or dithering, etc.

In any case, I'd say any minor difference pales beside what will happen when someone else plays the track in a different environment. Records doesn't really solve the issue, if anything that was worse. What you heard in the control room had to be altered to adjust for the lathe process of cutting the record. Then everyone's record needle and turntable was different. Your record got played on anything from a high end turntable with a $1000 needle and fabulous speakers, to a portable record player from walmart. And all the other issues - speakers, room acoustics, listeners ears, etc, remain, meaning that no two people hear *exactly* the same thing.

If you hear a really dramatic difference in your DAW, it's worth exploring - maybe something's wrong - either a bug in the DAW or a problem with your setup. If it's just that you sort of think it might sound different, make sure the levels are identical - as mentioned 0.1db is enough to throw you off, and maybe chalk it up to a small difference that doesn't matter.

Also remember that our impressions can be swayed easily. Probably every recording engineer out there can tell you of times they made adjustments to a mix and thought "yeah, that sounds much better", only to discover that they were turning a knob that was inactive. Have someone play you the two sounds blind multiple times and see if you can reliably tell which is which. If you can, maybe something's really happening.

Doug ...here's some arbitrary threads found googling that discuss 'summing algorithms' so there does seem to be a grey area of some interest.
https://gearspace.com/board/music-co...ing-angle.html ...and another https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=414209 .... and I agree about players and environment...even the headphones someone uses change the sound. But I hear a slight loss of dynamics, not just volume, and it's not my daw per se. I heard it on garageband, on logic pro 9 , and on ableton. That's the reason I started using ozone 9. It seems to be able to 'sum' the parts where more dynamic response is saved. thanks

[KevWind]

Humm interesting discussion

[TBman]

In Reaper, when you want to save/export the "mastered" sound file to wav, mp3, etc it is "Rendered" to the device's storage media. That's the menu item name of the process.