Just before christmas, Steve Smart was interviewed on 2UE radio by Mike Jeffreys. He was asked for his opinion on the vinyl and mp3 mediums:
Have a listen to that interview here:
Update: Sorry, the interview is not available anymore
To book Steve for your mastering project, contact Lynley on 02 9698 5888 or mastering@studios301.com
To book Steve Smart for your mastering project, click here or contact Lynley on 02 9698 5888 or mastering@studios301.com
This is the third of a three part series:
First of all, when the engineer finished mixing, either they or the assistant would put together the many different takes of the mixes onto two reels of tape – for side 1 and side 2 of the LP. They put the gaps the way they wanted them, but there would be discrepancies between the individual tracks – the volume level and the individual sound/tone – which affected the continuity of the album. And that’s where the first mastering engineer truly was a master engineer. He would get the master tape, play the reel through, make some notes, set-up some equalisers and compressors for each individual track and then, with those settings in mind, and in real time, transfer or cut that tape on to a disc by means of a cutting lathe.
Well, we had the luxury of four equalizers, where two equalizers were used for the operation of each song. One equalizer being for the music that went to the cutter head, the other equaliser being for the music that went to the brains of the lathe. This “brain” was called the preview, because the lathe had to mechanically know what was coming up at the same time as what was going into the groove itself.
So there was one bank of EQ (two units) for one song, and while that song was actually cutting, you’d set up the second bank of EQs. During the crossfade or the gap between songs, you’d simply crossfade between one batch of EQs to the other. Then, while that next song was travelling along, you’d set up the next bank of EQs for the song following.
It was very attention grabbing. You had to set up your EQs and your compressors and you had to also drive the lathe at the same time. Fortunately, everything was on remote control to the central desks so you could keep it all within hand-grabbing distance. But it was quite fast and furious and if anything went horribly wrong, that whole cut just simply went in the bin – it was ruined.
Well, a good cutting engineer knew exactly what to do – he could play a tape, knew what potential problems may be laying in the music itself, and note the corrections that had to be made. Let’s just say if there was a ballad followed by a big rock track, a cutting engineer would guesstimate how much real estate would be consumed by the various amounts of “energy” in each song. The ballad would take up less room, the rock track requiring a lot more, so you’d plan your consumption of the side of the record to accommodate. If you had, say, 25 minutes per side, you could get away with cutting that at -2dB, or -1dB if you are lucky, depending on what sort of music it was.
But you also did little test cuts of each track just to make sure that it translated to the actual lacquer and played back as you intended, because it was also the slight change of the physical playback of the groove itself that influenced it greatly.
If it’s a mono signal, the groove remains at the same depth, but moves from side to side, known as a lateral excursion. If it’s in stereo, and the content of that groove exceeds a certain degree of phase, the groove depth (known as vertical excursion) can change anywhere between 10 to 50 microns. It’s always noted that in record cutting, a groove is half as deep as it appears wide (by physical design). So when you’ve got stereo information in low frequency content, you don’t really have a lot of depth to play with before you actually end up with a groove that’s so small, that it’s smaller than the point of the playback stylus on the turntable. So, that stylus will want to force itself towards the centre of the groove.
Conversely, if you’ve got a groove that’s too deep, then when in the cutting process, it can actually cut so deep that it can go into the aluminium substrate of the lacquer itself. That will completely sever the tip of the ruby stylus, which is very costly.
Essentially, the thing that dictates the depth/width of the groove is the amount of time that the music runs for, versus the song volume levels that you wanted to cut the record at.
It’s interesting because I think it begins when you are recording an actual track itself. If you recorded a kick drum onto a tape machine at excessive level, it would start to overload, distort and bleed into the other tracks on the multi track tape. Also, there was a very strict level of what you could record a hi-hat at. The medium of tape itself dictated at what level you could record. Interestingly, by the time you push the mix up, you generally find that those things were all in context. Things were, I guess, forced to be where they were.
If the mixing engineer or producer decided that he just wanted the hi-hat a little bit brighter or louder on the day, it was then up to the cutting engineer to decide whether he could get away with that or not. If the high frequencies were too excessive when cut to the lacquer, it would saturate and distort when played back. Also, high frequency grooves on lacquers are very jagged and would physically tear when you separated the metal from the lacquer (during the subsequent plating process).
So you had to, through experience, make an educated assumption of how much you can get away with. On some lathes, particularly the one that I’ve used and (I’ve still got a piece of the equipment from it), there were high frequency limiters installed for the sole purpose of protecting the cutting amps and the cutter head from overloading on high frequency. This is because the high frequencies demand the most amount of electric current from a cutter head. It has to generate – it has to resonate – that stylus at an incredibly high rate for it to carve that high frequency signal into the lacquer.
But, you know, the art of a good cutting engineer was just how much you could get away with.
There was a whole team of people and excellent manufacturing facilities required. I mean you had to have great quality lacquers, a great cutting lathe, a plating department…. And top quality silver, top quality nickel, and great quality vinyl to press records from…. Plus all of the fitters and turners that looked after the pressers and fed the steam lines. If everybody got it right, that whole company could produce a really high quality record. And there were companies, for example, like Deutsche Grammophon who used to be just be renowned for cutting fantastic classical records. They used to have it down pat, you know, they just really knew their stuff. It became an art form and engineers / producers who mixed records sought out specific cutting engineers, because they knew that they could get a really, really good sounding result on to the record at a really good level.
Part of the level thing was in order to cheat the surface noise, which was the biggest drawback of vinyl. It was that increasing surface noise each time you plated it, it just got louder and louder. And each time the dog sat near the record collection, you know, it just got dirtier and dirtier.
The vinyl wearing over continual playing is an issue, as is the static dust that accumulates on a piece of black plastic like vinyl. They just got worse and worse over time and so, you know, major record companies used to make a killing out of just repressing. I think while I was working at CBS, I had to cut Bat Out of Hell by Meat Loaf more times than I’d care to remember!
Well, it kept selling and it also kept wearing out and, you know, you can only get so many records pressed off the metal stampers (that pressed the vinyl) before they physically wear out. They just get blunt, you might say, and the cut sounds distorted and noisy.
You know, with all that said that vinyl records are great, they’re possibly one of the most environmentally unfriendly music carriages of all time. They are a petroleum based extract. The waste products that come from manufacturing a vinyl record are insurmountable. Getting rid of a bad bath of nickel and silver isn’t cheap these days. Apart from that, they’re hardly portable and they’re noisy and obtaining a vinyl cutting lathe, obtaining the nickel and the silver and the processing that goes with it, the presses, it’s no easy avenue to get into. It’s quite expensive accumulating all of that sort of equipment and putting it all back together and having enough work to – supplied to you – to meet your demands.
In our vinyl mastering process, we aim to have the clients totally happy with the sound of that song, and possibly with some information garnished from us, go to a reputable vinyl cutting house.
Once the master leaves 301, the complete process of vinyl pressing is a series of stages. When something is mastered at 301, we supply the file, and the vinyl cutting engineer then uses a digital workstation to play that file back. He can simply lower the cutter head on to the lacquer and cut one side. This is the lacquer – well the record is actually two lacquers – Side 1 and Side 2. Those lacquers are then dipped in to a large chemical bath, which is charged with electricity, called an electrolysis galvanic plating process. The lacquer is dipped into the bath and coated with silver, then with nickel, growing the “plate” on its surface. This plate is then separated from the lacquer and is called a “father” (The lacquer is rendered useless and destroyed). The father is plated again, producing a “mother”, which can be played and checked. The mother is then plated again to produce a “stamper”. This whole process is repeated for the second side, then the two stampers are finally loaded into the pressing machine for bulk manufacturing of the vinyl.
People sometimes shortcut the three step plating process simply by generating a plate straight from the lacquer and putting that into the press. This is most commonly known as DMM cutting (Direct Metal Mastering).
The father and mother plating process is deemed necessary to mass-produce a record into thousands. If you are only doing a 500 run, you can go for the single plating process where you simply grow the metal stamper straight on to lacquer and then bolt that metal stamper into the press and press from that. That saves a lot of money, as it saves time and cuts down on waste.
It depends on what sort of press is used. There were three pressing plants in Australia – EMI, Festival and CBS, and they used various methods for pressing (the CBS press where I worked was steam-rammed). You can hold the pressings from different plants up and you can definitely tell the difference between where they were pressed, just by physically looking at them.
No, just different. Absolutely just different. Different ways of pressing the same thing. the CBS records were thinner and more flexible. The EMI and Festival records were much heavier.
Standard vinyl is pressed using black plastic and the coloured vinyl can be whatever the client orders. When CBS was pressing coloured vinyl, they would have to change the bag of vinyl (that was feeding to the presses) to a particular colour. It would take a few attempts to get the colour to run clean (eliminating any black residue).
I used to like sneaking into the pressing factory when they were doing this, because the first records that were pressed were useless due to the remnants of the black vinyl in there. So, the first twenty or so had streaks of black and you always ended with really cool designs in them. I souvenired a few of those in my time!
To book Steve Smart for your mastering project, click here or contact Lynley on 02 9698 5888 or mastering@studios301.com
To book Sameer Sengupta for a mastering or mixdown session, contact Lynley via mastering@studios301.com or 02 9698 5888.
I have been one of the resident Mastering Engineers here at Studios 301 for almost 3 years. You can usually find me in MS2 where I specialise in mastering electronic music. Alongside mastering, I also make music, producing artists, and mixdown albums.
Today, I’ve decided to share some simple tricks I use when mixing drums.
[1] Snappy snares.
I use the Waves SSL Channel a lot when I online mixing drums – I discovered I can bring a really nice snap to things like snares, kicks, rim shots or sometimes even a stabby bass line, just by driving the input of the channel strip really hard. I wind up the input gain knob till the signal is well into the red… then bring down the fader so that the output signal isn’t clipping at all. Leave it in ‘Analog’ mode, and apply a little EQ as needed, and leave compression off. The result is a nicely saturated snare which is full bodied, yet snappy.
[2] Drum buss saturation
I use the PSP Vintage Warmer 2 in almost every mix. If you find that your drums are sounding a little ‘thin’ and lacking weight, instead of trying to layer additional drums on top, I suggest applying the PSP-VW2 across the entire drum buss. Start
off by winding the MIX all the way to 0%. Increase the DRIVE to around +4 to +10 depending on how thick you really it to sound… and then gently wind the MIX knob up till you can hear the drums thicken up, but can still hear the transients from the dry signal. Adjust the DRIVE to a point where the needles are kissing the Red occasionally, but not constantly clipping. Set the MIX amount till you like what you hear. Like parallel compression, this is parallel saturation – works a treat!
Another trick that I love is using the KNEE. If I find the drums are jumping around a little too much, instead of using a compressor, I’ll leave the DRIVE at zero, but dial in a little KNEE… this acts like a compressor, and will instantly ‘lock’ the sound from jumping around too much – but has a nice sound to it. Then adjust the SPEED knob to tweak the pumping. This works really well too for vocals.
If I’m trying to get that Chemical Brothers WALL OF BREAKBEATS sound… I will wind up the DRIVE knob significantly too, then just play with the MIX knob until you like what you hear.
Make sure you run it in FAT and MULTI mode… and I prefer to leave the Brickwall limiter OFF.
[3] EQ’ing Kicks
The Kick of any dance track is the single most important sound to ‘get right’ because the whole basis and signature of most dance tracks will stem from how the sounds sounds. Once you’ve chosen the kick and bass sounds… you may find later on, that you’ve lost some definition between the kick & bass… to get this back, i’ll apply some very narrow band EQ to the kick. The kick’s unique character will come from somewhere between 100-300Hz. While the bottom end push of the kick will be much lower, its this ‘wood’ area that give it character, but this can also clash with what your bassline is doing.
So, what I do is solo the Kick & Bass and sweep through the Kick with EQ until I find that magical point where the bassline instantly breathes a little more. Basically, I’m taking out a drastic but super narrow point in the kick that clashes with the bassline… this in a sense carves out a little niche in the kick to accommodate the bass sound. Its always better to solve a problem with subtractive EQ rather than additive, and this technique has solved many problems for me.
To book Sameer Sengupta for a mastering or mixdown session, contact Lynley via mastering@studios301.com or 02 9698 5888.
This is the 2nd part continuing on from last week’s post, where we sat down with Senior Mastering Engineer, Steve Smart to chat about his experiences working with Vinyl.
This is the second of a three part series:
To book Steve Smart for your mastering project, click here or contact Lynley on 02 9698 5888 or mastering@studios301.com
It all starts in the recording and the mixing process to always have in mind, what you can and what you can’t get away with. Specifically if you’re going to do it for vinyl, you have to seriously keep in mind the restrictions that the music will be placed on through the process of being physically cut to vinyl. So you know, stereo bass lines are not gonna cut it. If you’re doing dance music, you can’t have that hi-hat as loud as that kick drum. It’s just not mechanically or technically possible to be able to get away with that on vinyl.
If you don’t intend for it to be released on vinyl at all, you can do whatever you want really, as long as in your opinion you think that sounds good. It’s not really fair for everyone to say, well, “that’s not good because I think so”. If it’s your music and that’s how you wanted it to sound, then so be it. That’s the way it comes out.
We had a lot of fun doing some really interesting records. I remember one we did, Severed Heads “Petrol”, where Tom Ellard (from Severed Heads) really wanted to experiment with the 7” format. We tinkered with the Neumann cutting lathe, so that when we cut the single it wouldn’t cut a run-out groove. We got the lathe to actually stop and then we lifted the cutter head and dropped 5 or 6 concentric little grooves in the space where the run out groove usually goes – then we put loops in there so that you could play the loop and have it play over and over again. The song would end forever on a loop, and then if you actually physically lifted it off, there would be 4 or 5 little loops there after that. I wish I still had a copy of it…
Tom was always into experimenting, he was fascinated by it all. Someone else that was also fun to work with was an engineer called Nick Mainsbridge. We worked on a band in the mid 80’s called Tall Tales and True. We cut one side as a 12” 45, so that basically, it was a 12” inch single. But on the B-Side were another 5 tracks, cut at 12” 33. It was a 12” single, but on the other side was half of an album as well.
One of the first 12” singles that I ever cut was “Blue Monday” by New Order. It was a luxury to have that much real estate to put one song on. It was just out of this world, the whole single format was completely blown out of the water. It was something like 7 minutes, at the time it was completely unheard of. But clubs were on the ever increase and DJ’s just wanted extra long versions of a song so they could play with it. To this date, I think that song is the biggest selling 12” single of all time. I think it started to revolutionise the way that record companies saw the marketing of the single as such. You weren’t necessarily stuck to the constraints of the 7” single’s purpose, for sticking in jukeboxes, they were on the decline. It was basically radio stations and clubs that were their new market, so all the record companies were all requesting extended versions done as 12” singles.
….Read part 3 of this interview with Steve, in which he explores vinyl in more technical detail.
[Steve Smart is one of the senior mastering engineers at Studios 301]
To book Steve Smart for your mastering project, click here or contact Lynley on 02 9698 5888 or mastering@studios301.com
Steve Smart is one of the few mastering engineers in Australia who started his career as a Vinyl Cutting Engineer (back at CBS records in the 1980’s). Based on his experience of seeing Vinyl come, go, and come back again, we asked him a few questions about Mastering for the format in the 21st Century.
This is the first of a three part series:
To book Steve Smart for your mastering project, click here or contact Lynley on 02 9698 5888 or mastering@studios301.com
The difference between vinyl and CD in the very beginning was that the CD was deemed to be indestructible and you didn’t have the surface noise of vinyl, you didn’t have that crackle. They were immune to dust because they were read by a laser and so all of the – you know the comparisons – that’s why I think they were welcomed so readily ‘cause you could (sort of) be rough with them and abuse them a little bit. Also in the early stages, the dynamic range was far superior to vinyl and the frequency response was restricted, but also far superior to vinyl. It had a frequency of 20 Hz to 20 kHz. With Vinyl, you couldn’t really get away with too much low frequency and you couldn’t get away with too much mid frequency and so a lot of vinyl records don’t have a lot of bottom end.
Well you can get away with 20Hz to 20kHz on vinyl, but the mechanical and physical constraints of cutting a 20 Hz frequency, is such a violent excursion of the groove on the record. 20 Hz on a groove produces all manner of distortion factors, just by the tracing of the groove and the tracing of the needle itself. Same for that fact with high frequencies. So if you brought the frequency range in a little bit, you could get away with a really nice sounding cut. It’s said that in vinyl, all you really had to do is get the bottom end right and everything else would fall into place.
But in CDs, all you really got to do is get the top end right and everything else will fall into place.
Yeah, a lot of people say that vinyl sounds warmer. You know, what is warm? I guess it’s a colourful explanation of the way something sounds. So in warmth, I’d say that there aren’t exceptionally high frequencies just due to the limitations of the vinyl medium itself. There’s more presence, and I think the mid frequencies are catered to a little bit better. Because most of the information is in the mid frequency area anyway, a lot of cutting engineers paid particular attention to the mid frequencies just to get them right so that it sounded like a really good, level cut.
I think what’s happened is that CDs got out of control. Maybe it is due to the fact that the artist/label demands it to be louder than everybody else’s master. The whole loudness war started with the 7” single and in cafés and jukeboxes because every artist wanted their 7” single to be played back in the café louder than the other records. That’s the first loudness war. But the loudness of a record or a loudness of a CD doesn’t really matter on radio or television because they have multiband limiters to take it to a certain level anyway during broadcast. And so for that fact is iTunes, it stops at a certain level. If it’s too loud, it gets turned it down. If it’s too quiet, it get turned it up.
Yes, iTunes playback. The whole loudness war got really out of hand, especially when there’s only a certain amount of level you can put on to a digital device, after that it starts clipping and goes into red distortion. Digital distortion isn’t as nice as analogue distortion. It tends to end up just being a crackly annoying sound. Analogue distortion can take on some sort of interesting facets where it becomes quite pleasing. So with everyone wanting their CD louder than the next guy’s, someone ended up writing software and implementing that into devices at the hardware level, which is called “Look-Forward Limiting“. This is where the limiter basically looks at the transient’s absolute peak, or the most significant bit of the program itself, and chops it off. It just squares it into a square wave, instead of a nice sine wave.
Hence the clipping distortion. CDs just got louder and louder and louder and of course the one thing that really started to suffer was the music itself. The dynamic range started to decrease significantly. That nice transient deluxe kind of quality of the whole high frequencies where the most energy is, started to just simply get squared off.
So CDs, I guess, now started to sound more and more and more horrible and horrible…. and horrible.
Harsh, hard, abrasive and very confronting. The basic dynamic in digital is on and off. It’s a word. It’s a 0 or a 1. The basic dynamic in analogue is loud or soft. So there’s a big difference there between the two in a way that you’re listening to them. Either your ear is switching on or off or your ear is detecting loud and soft. It goes against the grain for the brain to switch on and off. It can slowly switch on and slowly switch off.
But I think that’s what’s encouraged this resurgence in vinyl music, apart from just the pure fascination of it, is where basically you do have limitations which you’re stuck to – if you make a record too loud, it physically won’t playback. The grooves will make contact with each other and cause skipping and jumping so that record is basically a failure. The way to make a record sound loud is in sound, not just its pure level.
Particularly on vinyl and, I guess in generally, you can apply that as well. You can make a record sound loud, without it actually being loud, just by the choice of frequencies that you apply to it. Commonly, if you apply upper mids to a piece of music, it’ll sound louder. It’s just the way the human ear works. So you can only go to a certain level with vinyl records and then you physically can’t go any louder. Vinyl records are pretty much generally within a couple of dB, all very much the same level. And the beauty of a good cut and a bad cut is in the way it sounds, not actually it’s levels.
But unfortunately what’s going on with CDs of late has now been misconstrued. What is a good CD, is it loud or soft? Because it’s irrelevant if it sounds good or not. It’s whether it’s loud or not. I’ve been asked as a mastering engineer to just smash it. And, as a mastering engineer, that’s almost like destroying your work.
You do what you’re instructed to do by the client, within your recommendations. But then if they bring out a CD that’s had look-forward limiting applied in the recording process and look-forward limiting applied in the online mixing process and look-forward limiting applied to the mastering process, versus something that hasn’t had any compression or limiting at all, it’s almost impossible to match that without destroying the pure sonic integrity of the music itself.
You know, there’s a lot of CDs out there that I’ve bought because I like the music, but I don’t play very often.
Well they’ve been, I guess, destroyed by this ever increasing need to have a loud CD. I mean, I can to listen to it but I can’t exactly be too close to the speakers. That’s probably being a little too fussy, but I’ve got to pretty much ”put the stereo on and go in the backyard” because it’s just too annoying to be too close to the speakers.
But you know, when you get a vinyl record, you are almost drawn to the speakers. You’re invited in to what’s being played for you.
I think vinyl does sound in some ways better than CD because of the limitations that the medium applies on the music. But CDs can – and do – sound better than vinyl if they are treated technically properly.
Admittedly, I’m not a big fan of the 44 kHz / 16-bit sound. I don’t really think, that in its vocabulary, it truly understands harmonics. I’ve recorded pianos on analogue and I’ve recorded pianos on digital. And the analogue recording sounds like a piano. The digital recording sounds like a keyboard.
It’s the same microphone, at the same level – I remember reading somewhere, some bizarre misconception that they didn’t really want the public to have any more capability of digital recording because it was getting far too close to the realms of military spec!
So they restricted it – Well, apart from the obvious case that you can’t really fit that much data on a one-sided 700MB-ish disc, it can only be done either at the sacrifice of the sampling frequency or at the sacrifice of the bit depth.
So there was an equal trade-off between 44 kHz, which was deemed acceptable and 16-bit, which was deemed acceptable for digital.
I much prefer the sound of 88 kHz / 24-bit. I think that just seems to sound a little bit better than 96 kHz / 24-bit. To me anyway, sitting in here, I just find that there’s a little bit more subtlety about the recording itself at the 88 kHz frequency.
I’m not quite sure whether what I’m hearing, but there does tend to be a coldness about the 192 and 96 kHz sampling frequencies. Whether it’s paying too much attention to the real sound and not masking some details of it, and you’re actually hearing too much information, or – I’m just not sure, but 88 kHz / 24-bit is capable of recording and playing back natural sounding instruments like trumpets, and particularly wind instruments, very well. You end up hearing a lot of that natural distortion and intermodulation that you get from trumpets and trombones.
Absolutely.
I think that, you know, it’s a personal thing. When you’re listening to vinyl as versus CD, vinyl has more inherent side effects to the music than the CD. If the digital information is properly recorded and properly mastered and played back with a much more musical and sympathetic approach to doing the job, rather than actually just flippantly slamming it down, CDs can sound better than vinyl. In fact, they do. But, you know, it’s just simply the constraints of the vinyl medium that prevent you from overdoing it, in which case, you know, there’s quite a lot of CDs out there that are overdone.
Absolutely. There’s just far too much room for error. There is no room for error in vinyl, either it’s a good sounding record or it’s shit. And it’s quite clear and obvious. If there is a problem, physically it will not playback correctly and therefore it probably won’t get through quality control. But who’s to say what’s deemed acceptable in the days of CD mastering. There’s very little quality control. Well, [they’re] certainly not played and checked by someone when the CDs are being pressed.
That’s correct.
In saying that, I think that CDs can sound very much like we want them to sound. Warmer, much more in characteristic with, the sound that you get from a vinyl record. A mastering engineer who has actually cut records for a long period of time and who understands the process and has the right equipment, whether that equipment be analogue or digital, can master a record sensibly and not make it harsh and un-wanting.
Yes, experience.
Yes, definitely. There’s a requirement of the way people want their stuff to sound as far a CD is concerned. And then there’s the complete no-go zone for mastering it for vinyl, where you just can’t get away with that sort of stuff. So, the difference between mastering specifically for vinyl and CD is that you have to pay very strict attention to the low frequencies. You have to whittle out all of that dangerous overly wide stereo low frequencies and you have to pay serious attention to the high frequency transients and make sure that they’re not too fast or not too abrasive or don’t contain too many extraneous unwanted high frequencies. So you, musically I suppose, smooth it over a bit and make it a little bit softer. There’s also no need whatsoever to apply any of the digital gain structuring, such as the look-forward limiting to turn it up because it’s completely useless, because there’s only a certain level you can cut that vinyl record out at, which is dictated by its duration. So then comes the artistic and loving application of compression. Whether that be analogue or digital, whichever you choose. But in good old school compression and good old fashioned limiting, it makes up this lovely musical piece of mastering. But I tend to utilise the approach of mastering for vinyl, and mastering for CD, in everything I do.
Either it sounds right or it sounds harsh and brittle. And depending on the original source recording, unfortunately some of the recordings you get aren’t really done to their best possible advantage, but you get what you’re given to work with and you try and bring the best out of that as you possibly can, with the equipment you’ve got.
Very much. I mean there’s not gonna be much difference between what you’re hearing in this studio and what you’re hearing at home. CD replication and duplication is so good these days that what you give is what you get.
With vinyl, we try and make the assumption with garnered knowledge as to what’s necessary to get that song onto a piece of plastic and playing back the best it possibly can.
There is a little bit of imagination, some knowledge that you’ve gained from having done it before. But it’s also good to know exactly where you’re sending it to be cut. If you’ve already got that place in mind and you’re fully aware of their capabilities and the equipment that they use, you can pretty much guarantee that what you send them, you’ll get back. But that can’t always be the situation, particularly if you don’t have control over where it is being pressed.
Read Part 2 of this blog series here
[Steve Smart is one of the senior mastering engineers at Studios 301]
To book Steve Smart for your mastering project, click here or contact Lynley on 02 9698 5888 or mastering@studios301.com
One of the hot topics requested through our Facebook page has been ‘recording using a small number of microphones. This is a really easy technique and can be far simpler and effective than putting out every mic you have just because you can. It is especially effective when wanting to achieve that ‘vintage’ sound. Of course, this technique is also good for those that own, only a few mics.
The first thing to be said about this technique is that it relies greatly on the quality of the musician, their instruments and the performance. This is because the fewer the microphones, the less scope you have to edit and tweak individual elements, in terms of timing, pitch and tone. This is an incredibly important thing to remember and to convey to a client when they request to use these types of techniques. Often the idea of recording in this way is alluring to an artist but unfortunately if they can not play their material well, many of the modern fixes for bad playing are not going to help due to the lack of separation in the sound sources. You want to have this discussion before your session and not after tracking!
Secondly the most important aspect of using a small number of microphones is mic selection and placement. When you are tracking with only a few mics it is imperative that you select mics with the right tone. When recording in this way you want to use as little compression and EQ as possible and what you hear during tracking should be as close as possible to the finished product. Once you have a microphone you feel suits your sound source be sure to play around with the position. Even small movements can make a drastic difference to the quality of your recording. Be sure (as always) to make sure the phase relationship (if your not sure what this is google it) of all your mics is good. You need to remember that you have no fall back option with this recording scenario, if you get it wrong you ave no additional mics to help correct things later.
Recently I did a project with a four piece blues band who wanted to recreate the sound of early blues, i.e. Muddy Waters etc. They wanted to play all in room and all in one take. I made sure they understood this meant no (or very little editing) and they assured me they were well rehearsed and understood. This was great because to actually achieve an early blues sound the track needed to be played live. All of those early recordings are one take often recorded straight to acetate or vinyl and the energy of a live recording is very hard to emulate with multi-tracking.
I chose to use mainly ribbon microphones for the recording, the most popular type of microphone for the period, using a Coles 4038 as a mono drum overhead (all early recordings were mono so this lack of stereo spread actually helps it sound older), a Royer 121 copy (made by Carillon and are a great budget option) on the guitar amp and I was lucky enough to have a Coles 4033-A which served as the vocal mic and the room (because of the figure 8 polar pattern of the mic). That was all the ribbons at my disposal so I put dynamics on the bass amp, hi hat/snare and kick drum, and the Wurlitzer was DI’s, although the speakers in the Wurli meant it would feature in the room sound as well. I find for these kind of recordings any modern condensers sound too bright and clear, bringing the sound of the recording to far into the modern day.
I let the band position themselves in a circle to that they felt comfortable and able to perform their best. This is paramount above any micing consideration. If the band do not play well you will not get a good recording. Once they were set up I turn the bass and guitar amps away from the centre of the room to minimise direct spill.
For the drums I placed my mono overhead directly over the drummers head, playing around till I found the sweet spot for the snare, position my hi hat mic loosely (so it picks up some snare) and placed my kick drum out outside the head directly in line with the drum beater. I also placed a couple of additional mics (pencil condensers) spotting the crash and a position over the top of the ride and floor tom (try and aim the mic right at the edge of the ride) just in case I needed to add a little more detail (FYI I ended up using these on one fo the tracks that needed a slightly more modern sound). I did mic up the snare (SM57) as well (just for safety) but I didn’t end up using it in any of the online mixes.
a band in a circle
Although I am a fan of making sonic choices and sticking to them, if you think you might need something later it’s better to grab it! Once I had checked all the phase and was happy with the sound it was just a matter of letting the band do the work. The most important element of this particular scenario was the vocal mic. The large amount of spill captured really made the whole mix glue together and gave it that live energy. So make sure if you’re doing this kind of recording that you have a good well placed room mic.
Playing with recording in this way is one of the best parts of being an engineer and everyone has their own special placements and ideas on pulling great sounds (I heard of one engineer mic’ing the drummers feet!) so even if you only have a few basic mics (if you don’t own a mic GO AND BUY ONE!) experiment and have fun!
[Jack Prest is an In-house Producer/Engineer at Studios 301]
Resident Producer/Engineer Guy Gray is back with another set of Tips & Tricks to share with you. This week, he lets you in on a simple but crucial skill – the gentle art of CRITICAL LISTENING.
Every so often during your mixdown session, you should listen to your mix in mono at a very low SP level on one monitor only. Do this preferably on a domestic, non-pro type house hold speaker. Small multi-media or laptop type speakers are perfect for this, given we are living in the Youtube century! Many large scale studios tend to have Auratone’s for this very purpose.
Look (or ‘listen‘) for any obvious frequencies or level masking. Check for phase coherency and any instrument / frequency cancellation issues.
And remember the Golden Rule: The main vocal is of paramount importance so make sure it sits just right in the mix. It’s amazing how this critical listening mode can help you. Just re-tweak a couple of levels to make your mix sound better balanced and more finished. Remember balance is the corner stone to a great sounding mix.
[Award-winning producer/engineer/mixer Guy Gray has rejoined the Studios 301 team following his recent return to Australia.]
Guy Gray as 30 years of experience includes engineering scores, large orchestral recordings, surround mixing as well as music production for successful film projects throughout Australia and Southeast Asia. He will be providing you a with a short series of Tips & Tricks, as only he knows how. To begin with, he delves into some MIXING secrets.
(1) When mixing vocals, use High Pass & Low Pass filters on your delay returns to help prevent masking of the vocal frequencies.
(2) To give your DAW mix buss more headroom, before you even begin mixing, lower all your faders by approximately 4 – 8 db. Then use your Mix Buss Compressor / Limiter gain make-up to achieve a healthy gain structure on your final online mix level.
(3) Using the PRE-fader mode on sends to a reverb can help you get that ‘3D’ sound and puts the source sound in it’s own space.
(4) Try compressing the send to your drum reverb for a bigger, more coloured reverb effect.
[Award-winning producer/engineer/mixer Guy Gray has rejoined the Studios 301 team following his recent return to Australia.]
One of the most important aspects of mixing a vocal and getting it to sit in your mix is the amount and type of reverb you apply to it. Reverb is critical to create depth and space around your vocal. A favourite technique of mine for a lead vocal (especially in pop music or hip hop) is to use 2 reverbs, where the vocal needs to be way up front but still sound connected to the rest of the mix.
First up we want to create a mono aux send and place a clean and modern sounding reverb, in MONO. My favourites for this are Waves RVerb, UAD Dreamverb,
Valhalla Room or the old faithful D-Verb. You want to have this panned directly in-line your vocal (9 times out of 10 this is going to be dead centre). Set your reverb up with a short pre-delay 2-3ms on a small room setting with a short time setting that decays away nicely with your vocal. When you turn up your Aux send, you should hear something between a slapback and a room sound. The idea with this reverb is, to actually bring the vocal forward in the online mix, an effect that is created by the short pre-delay. If you walk towards a wall talking/singing you will notice that when you get really close to the wall there is a noticeable short slap. By creating this reverb with a short pre-delay, we create a feeling of standing right in front of the vocalist. It is important that this reverb is in mono as we don’t want it to spread the vocal out at all in our stereo field. One plug-in worth mentioning at this point is the
UAD Ocean Way; it is capable of this effect with amazing clarity and can really add “that” sound to your vocal – it’s expensive but totally worth it!
For the second reverb we want to create a separate STEREO send, and place a vintage style plate (or spring). I like to use the UAD EMT 140 but the Valhalla Vintage is cool as well. The setting can be a little less precise here with basically a long plate verb that fits your mix in terms of time and tone. The only key setting is a long pre-delay 30-50ms. You want to set the level of this verb to just where it starts to disappear in the mix, although how much you add will depend on the style of your track, i.e. more for a ballad, less for a rap. This will help your vocal sit back and blend the rest of the elements. You can also send other parts of your mix like, pads, rhythm guitar or drum overheads to this stereo verb, which will further gel the vocal with the other elements by putting them in the same “space”.
If you use this technique and tweak it to your mix you will end up with a vocalist that sounds like they are standing right in front of your face in a large space. Giving you that in your face sound, without appearing separate to the rest of your track.
[Jack Prest is an In-house Producer/Engineer at Studios 301]
Hi, my name is Harvey O’Sullivan and I’m the Mastering Assistant here at Studios 301.
The nature of 301 is very dynamic and being an assistant requires a “Jack-of-all-trades” attitude. My responsibilities cover the daily maintenance of our 3 dedicated Mastering rooms, as well as preparing production masters.
A typical day for me could be breaking out the Studer to transfer some 1/4 inch tapes, replacing a broken woofer driver in one of our monitors or helping our workshop technician, Steve Crane, test modifications to our custom built AES digital signal router, the DES. Every day has its own set of tasks, be it scheduled or unexpected.
With so many projects being worked on by our mastering engineers, on multiple computers, we heavily on our network to power the backup system, nicknamed ‘Captain Tom’. This means ensuring everything is always in sync and constantly backed up across the entire complex.
That said, a lot of the Mastering Assistant’s job is, quite frankly, plugging stuff in, and testing if stuff works. It certainly helps to have a good understanding of technology and knowing how to troubleshoot on your feet.
Here an example of the ever-expanding album of “photos I take at work”:
The core of my role however, is making up Production Masters. The majority of masters end up as one of two formats: a DDP or PMCD.
A DDP is a file format that is sent off to CD manufacturing plants to press. A PMCD is a standard audio CD that has been burnt under special conditions to avoid any errors during the burning process. Its a physical object that operates as the master disc.
DDPs offer a number of advantages over the PMCD format in that they are simply a file format, which can be stored, backed up and sent digitally. It’s a specialised format requiring special software to read and playback. It’s at this point I will also enter additional track information data such as CD-TEXT and ISRC codes (serial numbers for music files) into the DDP.
PMCDs have to be treated with care, though they do come with a reference audio CD for listening to. You wouldn’t want to be chucking your PMCD in the car stereo.
Before sending these to the client, I’ll listen over the entire project, whether it’s a single, an EP or a full album; listening for any small glitch that might have snuck its way through. This requires a keen ear for detail and a great deal of concentration. This task is the absolute last step in the mastering process and is a deadly crucial one – because failure here could potentially result in an audible glitch being present on thousands of CD that have just been manufactured at great expense!
At the end of the day, what I love is getting to work with music every day and being surrounded by creative and talented people.
[Harvey O’Sullivan has been the Mastering Assistant at Studios 301 since January 2013]
We ran a survey recently to discover what aspect of production many of you want to learn about.
So, this time around I’ll be looking at a popular topic and technique, parallel compression. This is where you blend a compressed version of your signal back into the original. The idea being you can create a bigger, harder compressed sound without messing with the dynamic range as heavily. (I’m presume you are familiar with how to do this, if not I’m sure youtube can help you out with tutorials.)
First off I’d like to say that I think parallel compression can be (and often is) overused. For myself personally I prefer to use good old fashioned balance, gain and volume to make things sound big and dynamic. Never underestimate your most powerful mixing tool, the volume fader! That said parallel compression is a great technique for adding punch to your mix.
One technique I used on a mix recently was a brick wall limiter (such as an L1, L3 or UAD Precision Limiter) set to an extreme threshold setting but with the output pulled down. You can then feed important parts of you mix to this parallel bus so they are decimated through the limiter. Then make sure your parallel aux channel is metering a good 20-30db lower than your master fader. This technique brings in the distortion that many producers find appealing when they heavily limit their master bus without killing the dynamics of your track.
Another technique for parallel compression, especially for drums, is with any 1176 emulation (my favourite at the moment is the Revision-A in the new UAD 1176 series). Set both the input and output to around 18, the attack to the fastest setting, the release around 5 (2 o’clock) and the ratio to something soft like 4/8. Then just feed a touch of your kick and snare to the parallel channel, you should be seeing about -7/-10 db of gain reduction. Then dial back the attack control to get the level of transient snap you like. You might also want to play with the release time to get it breathing with your track. Then bring down the volume fader on the parallel channel and bring it back up slowly stopping at the point where you start to hear the compressed signal. This technique also works well on staccato bass parts, especially synths.
One more helpful technique is to use multi band compressors or EQ post compression to sculpt the area of the sound you want to add emphasis too. This is great for adding mid-range knock to kicks, low mid weight to snares and controlled subs to bass.
Enjoy!
Jack Prest is an In-house Producer/Engineer at Studios 301
As I tour people through our recording facilities in Sydney, I usually refer to our Neve 88R and SSL 9000k consoles as the “Ferrari and Lamborghini of mixing consoles”…. They are both the best cars that money can buy, but it’s up to the driver as to which one they prefer to drive.
Occasionally that remark satisfies my visitor and we move onto seeing something else, but more often than not, they ask what on earth do I actually mean – how do the two consoles actually compare?
So, as a manager I can talk about the practical and technical differences, however I polled some of the engineers and producers at 301 as to their thoughts on the “sound” of the two consoles.
Leon Zervos was very quick to comment that the Neve 88R’s sound is “warm and thick”, with a nice element of presence when the EQ is enabled. The SSL is less coloured, but does have a certain “edge” to the sound.
Mitch Kenny comments that when mixing, the SSL has more bandwidth and is more forgiving which allows more to be “fit in” to a mix run through this board. However, when recording, the Neve’s pre-amps have a very fast slew rate and as such respond incredibly quickly, which captures transients very openly.
Jono Baker has recently had an experience where he ended up doing the same session on both the Neve and the SSL, and found that the SSL’s pre-amps are muddy compared to the Neve Pre’s – which are cleaner, detailed, and better suited to recordings where the sound needs to be as “open” as possible (such as orchestral music)
“Track on Neve, mix on SSL.”
Ivan Gough, Musician/Producer (TV Rock)
“Tracking on a Neve is nice and creative, SSL for mixing. Having spent many years working with Spike Stent on his G-Series with non-linear summing, it’s a revelation!”
Lee Groves, Producer/Mix Engineer
At the end of the day, both these flagship consoles remain to have a highly desirable sound that continues to be emulated by the very best of plug-in manufacturers. While the digital versions may bring their sound accessible to a wider audience, it is hard to dismiss the real thing.
As Mr. Ferris Bueller once said, “It is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.” or at the very least, using one!
Want to record or mix in one of our studios? Contact us today
written by Anthony Garvin
Now this one isn’t exactly my tip, I get this one from watching Pensado’s Place, but it’s great so I wanted to share. Basically it’s a way to get that uber brick wall L1 limiting, without getting all the distortion that this plug-in can create.
Insert an instance of the L1 on your channel and bring the threshold/out ceiling down till you just start to see the smallest amount of gain reduction. Then push the out ceiling up to between -0.5dB & -1dB. Then tweak the release time to suit your sound source.
Finally, copy this L1 instance two or three times in serial, and there you go.
Epic brick wall, minimal distortion!
Jack Prest is an In-house Producer/Engineer at Studios 301
This is one of my favourite distortion units and its amazingly cheap (get it here http://www.dadalife.com/sausage-fattener-plugin/). It’s great for creating super gnarly crunched up distortions, but one of my favourite things to do with this plug-in is to use it on the master bus, or even in mastering itself.
If you have a mix that is overall a little bit dull, stick this little bad boy over the stereo mix leaving the Colour at 0 – then bring the Fatness up to between 1-4%. This will had some extra harmonic content giving your track life without noticeably changing the tone of your mix.
Something to be aware of – the gain indicator is actually for the INPUT Signal level into the plug-in. If it’s going red, it means you are digitally distorting the plug-in’s input, which is (generally) a bad idea, so back it off till it’s not clipping.
Jack Prest is an Inhouse Producer/Engineer at Studios 301.
So what is “Vibe”?
This time, our Studio Philosopher talks about a word that you will probably hear more than any other in a studio session, “vibe”. Very much an abstract concept, and one that some engineers avoid like the plague, it basically means that the energy and feeling in the room will influence the quality of the recording, in particular the performance. For some engineers this also extends to the mixdown.
Some studios and engineers use coloured or low lighting and special furnishings to create a vibe in their rooms. Studios are occasionally built in lush natural surrounds and have extra facilities like, housing, swimming pools, games etc that can all help to create a particular atmosphere for the recording environment (check out Real World Studios). Even in a small setup it’s a great idea to have some different lighting options (lamps, fairy lights etc) and a comfortable couch/seat for you client.
All of these superficial things aside, the concept of vibe, goes a little deeper… Most important is to create a fun, relaxed and comfortable environment for the talent. Key to doing this is not necessarily cool lighting (although it doesn’t hurt) but your manner as an engineer. Always be friendly and welcoming, make the client feel like a guest in your home and that if they need something they can feel free to ask.
Secondly, know your stuff! Nothing kills the vibe in a room more than you messing around because something has gone wrong and you don’t know what it is. Further to this if there is a problem that you can’t fix, be honest, the client will appreciate you being up front and can relax while you get the issue sorted, rather than standing around while you mess about. Third, be positive. Especially on long sessions, the ability to keep the mood up is essential.
If you are asked for feedback, make sure it is honest, but looks towards what is good and what can be improved, as opposed to what was done wrong. Lastly don’t be afraid to take a break. Even if you are on a tight schedule, often the best remedy for a trouble take or mix is to step back.
The Waves C1 Compressor.
Here’s a little trick I found the other day with one of my favourite swiss army knife compressors, the Waves C1. It’s especially good for snare drums and toms. If you find your drums are a little bit too snappy, especially with a really hard stick sound, this setting can work a treat to control that snap while retaining the drum sound’s dynamics.
First, you want to set the attack and release settings as fast as possible (one of the best features of this compressor is the wide scope for adjusting attack and release times), then crank up the ratio to at least 30:1 leaving the threshold and the makeup gain at 0. If you feel the need you can play with the ratio and release time, but pretty much it’s a set and forget.
Jack Prest is an Inhouse Producer/Engineer at Studios 301
I am the Studio Philosopher and I have been enlisted by Studios 301 to share some of my thoughts and knowledge about all aspects of studio life. Much of what we do in the studio is technical, but these technical aspects are influenced and informed by less tangible qualities. Over the coming months I will provide insight into ways have thinking that may influence your studio practice or at the very least make you analyse how you work.
To begin we will appropriately start before we even get into a studio session with Preparation.
In many ways preparation is at once one of the most important and overlooked aspects of a recording or mixdown session. An engineer (or assistant) who is across all aspects of an upcoming session and has the necessary setup in place before a session starts will almost always provide for a stress-free (or at least less) and productive session.
The first key in preparation is knowing your equipment. This means before you even have a conversation with a potential client you should have an intricate knowledge of the operation of your setup, hardware and software. From a large studio to a basic laptop rig be aware of possible eventualities and troubleshoot them long before you bring anyone else into the room. This means spending the hours with your equipment and software, watching tutorials, and READING THE MANUAL!
Now that you know your setup, you’ve got a client booked and a session approaching. It is essential for you to make contact via email and/or phone to clarify exactly what the client requires. In larger environments request a tech list and room setup sheet. Even if your recording a mate in your bedroom having a clear idea of exactly what and how the want to record/mix is going to make your life easier on the day and also make you look super professional.
Once you’ve received all the technical specs and info for the session the next step is to set up your session the day/night before. This means you can troubleshoot any last minute issues (of which there is almost always at least one) without a client over you shoulder. It also means on the morning or the session, when things can get a little chaotic, you can be in a position to make minor adjustments and handle new client requests rather than doing basic setup.
This level of preparation is a bare minimum for anyone working in a large studio environment and I believe is essential no matter the size of your setup. This hard work beforehand enables you to focus on creativity and magic making during a session.
Till next time…
We have learnt that You, our audience, comprises of a very broad range of musicians and music lovers, from seasoned professionals, to those just beginning to exercise their passions and wanting to learn more about it all. This post aims to clear up some mysteries about the purpose of Audio Mastering for those less familiar with this process.
At Studios 301, our mastering engineers work on diverse material, from classical, acoustic, electric and electronic music. More importantly, this work is produced in an increasingly wide variety of studios, from large scale recording complexes (not unlike Studios 301) and bedroom studios, to laptops and iPhones sitting on a beach.
As you can imagine, the end results also sound quite diverse in their “fidelity”. The mastering process aims to provide the finished recordings with a “polish” so that they sound as balanced and consistent as possible when played back on any sound system. It is the last step that’s done before playback, broadcast, replication and distribution.
Having an impartial set of ears on a recording also never hurts.
Here’s one way to think of mastering: When a farmer takes a fresh apple to the grocer, mastering can be seen as the process of cleaning that apple to a shine and wrapping it in vacuum packaging so that it remains fresh, leaving an attractive appearance to the shopper.
For those more familiar with film & video production, it is the audio equivalent of ‘grading’.
There are many reasons that we need mastering. For example, when an album is made, it’s quite common for each song to have it’s own “sonic palette” or sound design. Similarly, groups of songs might have been recorded or mixed in different studios, and quite possibly by different producers – each with their own set of “ears”.
A side effect of a using different studios for recording and/or mixing is that irrespective of the equipment, every room has it’s own acoustic “sound”, and a mix engineer will make decisions based on what they hear. This could result in ‘resonances’ or ‘troughs’ in the frequency spectrum, causing the engineer to inadvertently boost or cut a particular frequency to compensate due to what they’re hearing.
When grouped together as a single body of work, the album may sound disjointed and inconsistent due to each song’s disparate creation environments. Plus, they might also have vastly differing levels of “apparent loudness” depending on the style or genre of each song.
The ultimate aim of mastering is to give the body of work a cohesive listening experience – while always maintaining the mix’s original integrity.
Mastering is a process that involves both objective and subjective listening.
Every mastering engineer has their own “style” and personality that they’re renowned for. However, an objective point of view is generally taken before any subjective processing is applied.
Objective issues relate to aspects of the mix that are seen as imperfections. In most cases, these are not down to personal opinion, but rather, unmistakable blemishes that weren’t apparent or intended at the time of recording/mixing such as signal or data corruption. They could also be things that were caused as a result of the recording/mixing environment, such as poor monitoring.
This objective treatment can be thought of as the corrective stage.
EQ, compression, multi-band compression, parallel compression, exciting, stereo widening/narrowing, and limiting are amongst the tools used here, some very sparingly, others not at all. The thinking here is to use these tools only if absolutely required, and when so, with a most delicate of touch. Again, this is not the time for aggressive processing – what you want to do here is to add some *sparkle*, but NOT alter the mix – one must always keep that in mind.
There are rare instances however, where mastering is needed to rescue a poor mixdown, or restore old mixes, in which case more heavy handed treatment is called for.
The is the part where the mastering engineer’s personality comes into play. It is where they will apply their personal judgement to the colouration and balance of the audio.
Much like a songwriter’s style – what a mastering engineer “hears”, is what defines their character.
This is where the mastering engineer adds their value – and that value is entirely a matter of opinion – you may either like it, or you may not.
I believe this process should always be two-way conversation between artist and engineer, but sometimes creative opinions can differ, and may not always resolve. It is for this reason that some artists/producers/labels will take the time to seek a mastering engineer that understands their style and ‘fits’ their music – and then nurture that relationship.
After all sound processing has been applied, the final step is to optimise the audio signal for the intended output format.
This largely objective process, is to ensure that the mix sounds as close to the intended recording, compensating for any added colouration that the medium it is being rendered to may impose on the recording, due to its own physical limitations.
For example, low bit-rate mp3s add a certain “sizzle” in the top end, so if the recording has a lot of high frequencies present, this will exacerbate that sizzle effect, so you may choose to compensate accordingly before rendering to that format.
Similarly, vinyl has a lot of physical issues one must consider. For example, anything below 300Hz should generally be in mono to ensure the cutting needle is able to cut the necessary groove. Any bottom end that is panned left or right, or even out-of-phase, will cause problems and not be able to be transferred to vinyl. Each side of vinyl also has limited duration, and if mastering for a long side, you may consider gently increasing the top-end towards the end of the recording, to compensate for the decreasing high frequencies you’ll hear on the inside tracks of most vinyl albums.
Another element that is oft debated by mastering engineers everywhere, is the stage that ensures your recording will sound as good as, if not better than (read: loud), other music played alongside it. This involves what is called “apparent loudness”.
This desire to sound louder than other recordings, started what is now known as the “Loudness War”.
To pinpoint its exact beginning is difficult, but it was around the time recordings became widely available for purchase – around the days of vinyl. The war element of this is achieved through active participants performing in competition with each other trying to make recordings sound as loud as possible, and is the musical equivalent of an evolutionary arms race. It was borne out of the psycho acoustic phenomenon that occurs when you listen to two or more pieces of music that have different volumes compared to each other. The phenomenon is that the louder piece of music always sounds better than the quieter one (up until the threshold of pain).
New methods of imprinting a hotter signal on analog mediums kept evolving. Digital recording technology didn’t have the physical limitations of vinyl and tape, and could offer louder and brighter recordings from start to finish.
This process however, has it’s drawbacks, in that it can cause the music to sound “squashed”. The easiest way to explain this to think of the apple in vacuum packaging. If too high a vacuum is applied, the apple will simply crush , and while it’s still inside this neat little package, the apple no longer resembles the initial recordings. This is a personal choice – and every mastering engineer will have their own personal philosophy on it.
Before sending your finished works off to be mastered, there are a few very important things you should do.
It’s important not to forget these crucial steps, as it can easily undo all the hard work spent on the track in a matter of minutes.
Once you’ve bounced it out, take a quick look at the final waveform.
** You want your waveform to resemble this, with visible peaks and troughs in the waveform:
**And NOT this, which resembles a brick:
The reason is that a clipped or limited signal such as this, leaves very little room for the mastering process to be applied to your mix.
There is a lot of pressure from record labels, DJs and radio stations to provide mixes that are as loud as possible. While that is understandable, it is also important to note that the best way to do this is actually in the mastering process, not necessarily at mixdown.
The reason is this: a mix that has had the life squeezed out of it, like the above image, will have very little dynamics left, and may sound overly saturated. The signal will not benefit greatly from additional EQ that may be needed to balance the mix (the objective process) or apply any subjective treatment in order to make the track ‘sparkle’. The track will be muffled and already overtly loud, and may disappoint you when the master returns no louder, or even possibly a little quieter.
Going back to my previous analogy, another way to think of it is this: An overtly limited mix is like the farmer giving the grocer an apple, covered in spots of dirt but already sealed in vacuum packaging. The grocer now has what looks to be a dirty apple, and is unable to clean it due to the tight packaging, and no amount of cleaning the outside, will actually clean the apple inside.
While a grocer could remove the packing, clean it, and re-pack it, in the audio terms, once this packaging or ‘limiting’ has been applied, one cannot remove the packaging, or reverse the process. The audio is forever squashed, and anything the mastering engineer does, will only ever be on top of what has already been applied. Therefore, a dirty apple, within several layers of packaging.
Ultimately, the mastering process, as minor as it is, can also make or break your final recording. It is a crucial and important process that a mix can often benefit from when placed in the right hands.
If you are a musician, engineer or producer and you seek to know more about this process , you are welcome to send tracks for a free assessment to Studios 301 for feedback on the mix, should you be unsure of when a mix is ready for mastering.
While a lot of what is written here covers the general principles of mastering, I must stress that there is also a significant amount here that covers my own personal approach to mastering. Every engineer has their way of doing things, and that is why I personally find this area so fascinating!