mastering techniques

8/2/2019 Mastering Techniques

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Youre a hardworking DJ, and have probably started to make a few edits and remixes that sound

great in the studio, but in the club just dont pump like the latest releases. Why is that? What

secrets do the pros know that you dont?

Well in most cases the answer lies in one wordmastering. In order to shed some light on this

often misunderstood art, I caught up with John Cuniberti, one of the worlds leading gurus inmastering, to shed some light on his mystic process. With a discography and client list that readslike a Whos Who of the music world (ranging from Stevie Wonder to DJ Shadow), heavy

involvement in hardware and software development, and countless years of experience, perhapshe can give us a better insight

Q&A WITH MASTERING EXPERT JOHN CUNIBERTI

Can you tell us what mastering actually is?

JC: Mastering is the last creative process in the production chain, and the final technical checkbefore replication. Generally speaking, the goal is to make it as easy as possible for the listenerto get through the CD without needing to adjust playback volume and EQ. This is accomplishedwith equalization, compression, and/or limiting. In the right hands, mastering can transform acollection of good mixes into a great album.

Why is this not achieved at mix-down, and why is mastering the magic ingredient?

JC: Many independent CD projects are being recorded and mixed in less than idealenvironments. Compromises in room acoustics in these project studios prevent the engineer

from realizing the true nature (the balance) of their mix. Inconsistencies from song to song can

also exist if more than one person is mixing the project in different studios using differentengineers and equipment. Mastering helps create consistency within the CD, and assures theartist that their CD will fit within the accepted standards of quality found in most major labelreleases.

With so many single releases in EDM, has the mastering process changed?
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JC:It hasnt changed, but mastering for a single doesnt include many of the steps andconsiderations of an album. The focus is making the single track sound as good as possible, notadjusting it to fit with the other material on the album.

So at what point should artists seek professional dedicated mastering?

JC: If the artist is unsure about the state of their mixes, its advisable to seek advice from atrusted mastering engineer.

For professional mastering, what file type should people use for the tracks they submit?

JC: .wav or .aif in split mono or stereo interleaved. They can be delivered on a disc, hard drive,or uploaded to an FTP.

We now have an understanding of the definition of mastering and, in an ideal world, we wouldall send our tracks off to established, qualified mastering engineers. But, as we know, things are

not that simple. More often than not we have to produce records on spec and, owing tofinancial constraints with no guarantee of release or commercial success, we must usuallyattempt to make the tracks sound as good as possible ourselves. Fortunately, there are plug-insthat can help achieve this. So lets bring Sonny Wharton and Digital Impression into the fray. As

regular lurkers around the top of the Beatport and dance charts, Sonny (recently famous for theinternational smash Brass) and DI are far from strangers to this situation.

AND FROM THE PRO SIDE

How do you guys approach your personal mastering?

SW: I run all my channels quite low, at around the -20db to -30db kinda range, and then boosteverything on the master bus through Logics gain plug-in before routing it into T-rackS Deluxe
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3. On T-rackS I run an EQ into the compressor, then into a limiter, and finally a softclipper. Through the EQ I generally cut the bass slightly and sometimes add a little boost on thetop end, but obviously this can vary depending on the track and the mix.

Here is a shot of Sonnys Screen:

Do you master after the fact, or build a song with mastering on?

SW: Personally, I generally build the track and mix it with everything already on the master bus

due to time constraints and knowing where the track is going, although I do bypass it from timeto time throughout the session just to reference the track.

DI: Yeah, this is a good way of working with the short time frames involved in a lot of moderndance; you just have tobe careful your EQs arent fighting, but I tend mix into a bus compressor,usually The Glue.

Do you do all your own mastering or do you also send tracks to mastering engineers?
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SW:If its a big release or something I feel would benefit from a professional engineer then Illsend it for mastering, but for me it is generally the cost issue that prevents me from doing thiswith every track. The release on Size records I did with Ant & Paul called Brass was masteredby us in the way I described earlier.

DI:For me it simply is the cost issue. Lets not kid ourselves, a lot of tracks released arentgoing to shift the units for it to make financial sense! Sure, if it looks like its going to do welland a label commissions it, I will ALWAYS send it to an engineer to master; they can do it farmore justice than we can!

OK So, back to John, our mastering expert: what can you guys do that the artists cant

do themselves?

JC: Nothing if they are willing develop their hearing, buy the right gear and practice the art.

Lets face it, recording artists started producing their own records in the late 60s, then by the late

80s were recording and mixing their own stuff at home. Now with just a computer, one canmaster a CD and send it off for replication just like the big boys. Here is the problem: in mostcases by the time the mixing is done, the artist is sick of hearing the record and has lostobjectivity. Handing it over to a professional mastering engineer is money well spent and willproduce a better product 99% of the time. I rarely master records I mix.

SW: I agree you can lose objectivity, and sometimes I send stuff to DI to tweak, after all, he hassome nice outboard gear too!

If our readers are mastering their own tracks, what are the pitfalls to watch out for?

JC: They should not overdo the processing. Both radio and, in most cases, clubs have a chain ofcompression and EQ already in place. I would suggest a moderate use of a digital look-aheadpeak limiter to set the output ceiling to .5 dB below full scale (0) to prevent overs, and 34dB ofpeak limiting to get the material relatively loud. Be careful of EQ unless you can really trust

your speakers.

SW: Yeah! Destroying the dynamics of the track by smashing the heck out of it is probably themost obvious thingeveryone seems to be trying to get their stuff the loudest and this can oftenresult in ruining the fundamental depth and warmth that makes electronic music so good.

Sonny, DI, has everything you guys play out to test had some form of mastering?

SW:Yes, everything. I wouldnt like to play something outunless Id mastered it first.

DI: Exactly right! A total no go!

There isnt a single fix-it-up mastering magic plug-in out there, so what individual

elements from companies do you rate?


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JC: This is a difficult question because the price and the platform come into play.

You need a good EQ and a good look-ahead peak limiter for sure. These should be transparent,clean and artifact-free. Then you can then get into EQs and compressors that deliver personality,if that is what the track requires. Personally, I use the Massenburg Design Works EQ and the

Oxford Limiter for 75% of my mastering work.

Yeah, I agreethe Massenburg is a fantastic EQ; for me its better than the Sonnox withthe Massenburg add onI use it as my power EQ when mixing. Unfortunately this brings

us to your platform statement, as it will only work on Pro Toolsand HD at that.

JC: Indeed! For color I might use the UAD-2 Pultec, Neve, Precision EQ or Massive Passive forEQ, and the UAD-2 Fairchild, SSL or Precision limiter. For deep repair work the UAD-2Multiband limiter, WAVES Restoration bundle and their Center plug-in are a must. I also lovethe Massey De-Esser.

SW:Its probably not the best out there, but for the money I really like the results I get from T-rackS 3, so Ive tended to use this consistently over the last 12 months.

DI: T-RackS is great, and lets not forget the obligatory Waves Ultramaximiser.

John, what would the standard signal chain for mastering tools be?

JC: Bus compressionEQpeak limiting

Any other tips about DIY mastering?

JC:A how-to on mastering would be too long to be answered within the scope of this article.There is a book available by Bob Katz [Mastering Audio - The Art and the Science] that will go

a long way to keeping you out of trouble, but at the end of the day, like recording and mixing, itwill take practice and a lot of bad mastering before you will figure it outif ever.

It is clear, then, that there are many tools used for mastering depending on what needs doing tothe track, be it EQ, compression, multi-band compression, limiting, frequency-consciouslimiting, phase coherence and adjustment, stereo spread, gaining, etc. I think you get the ideathere is just too much to get into here. However, knowing that the main tools needed arecompression, EQ, and limiting, after much debate, we have agreed on the following plug-ins as
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our top multi-platform mid-range tools which do not need extra process PCI cards or hardware.There are two winners in each category type:

Bus Compression

Waves SSL G Buss Compressor

Cytomic The Glue compressor

EQ

Sonnox EQ IK Multimedia
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T-RackS 3 Equalizer

Limiting

Waves L2 Ultramaximizer

IK Multimedia T-RackS 3 limiter

I know we said two of each, but this is a gem! An extra, FANTASTIC limiter but only for

Pro Tools:

Massey L2007 mastering limiter
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Many thanks to John Cuniberti, Sonny Wharton, and Digital Impression for their time. In thenext edition of this article, we will provide a step-by-step guide to mastering your tracks and giveyou a chance to win a copy of T-RackS mastering software from IK multimedia.

Before I get into the actual tutorial aspects of this guide, I need to briefly insert the usualdisclaimers. Every time I write a guide, or a How To related to the music making process, Iinevitably get emails from people disputing my ideas or the methods I propose. It's important to

understand that I'm in no way saying that the ideas in this guide are the only way to approach amixdown, nor are they necessarily the 'right' way to do things. I can only share with people myown experiences and the way I learned to do things. Certainly people should always keep anopen mind and try any and all alternatives on their quest to create their own sound.

So then, what is a mixdown? In the simplest sense, it's combining all of the separate elementsyou created while writing your track. But I think it's more than that too. To me, it's about makingthe sum of all parts greater as a whole, about creating something really inspiring based onvarious unique combinations of parts capable in a mixdown. Anyone who's ever tried to redo amix from scratch on one of their songs knows that you can get a vastly different sounding songeach time, using the exact same parts. It's how they all interact together that really gives the song

it's feel and emphasis.

How do we start then? Most likely, you already have. It's not uncommon for people to actual becrafting a rough mix of the song as they write. If one part is too loud and starting to get on yournerves or distract you as you work on others, you turn it down. If you can no longer hear thebassline for instance, you turned it up. A lot of people will not even approach the mixdown as aseparate process, they shape it while they write, and when that phase is done, the song is doneand they send it out for mastering. Certainly nothing wrong with this, many a good a tune hasbeen written this way.

But I'm going to write this article assuming you want to learn how to mix a song from scratch.You listen to your song and while you can hear all the elements, it doesn't have the impact youwant. Or maybe, it just sounds kind of dull and flat compared to other songs you admire, there'sno depth and detail. Sometimes we can fix this just by tweaking a few parts of the roughmixdown you created while writing, other times we need to start totally over with a fresh canvasif you will. Hopefully the ideas below will help you with either method.

Preparation
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Where you start can depend completely on what kind of song it is. I personally don't approach amix this way, the process is largely the same for me regardless of what kind of song it is. But itcan be important to start by recognizing what parts of the track are the focus, what is mostimportant. In a pop tune this is largely the vocal, in a dance tune it's the kick and bassline, in anambient song it could be the textures or pads. So take a second to think about, and to recognize

what the focal point is in your song. I don't think you need to necessarily always pay moreattention to this while mixing, but certainly you want to always make sure something else isn'tover-shadowing it.

To begin with, I tend to follow the school of thought that you should not touch the master faderin your DAW (Digital Audio Workstation, i.e. sequencing/composing software) or yourhardware mixer. I leave this set at 0dB, and adjust the individual track faders if the song starts toclip the master output. This is just my preference, but I think it forces you to work in a moreconsistent fashion, and after time, you can easily learn to avoid this happening as you mix orwrite.

I also believe in leaving approximately 6dB of headroom in my songs once everything is finallydone in the mixdown. This means that once you're done with the mix, the loudest parts of thesong will not be above -6dBFS on the master meter. Since we should always be rendering orexporting our mixdown as a 24bit file, this has no negative impact on the amount of detail wecan capture in the song, and leaves plenty of room for the mastering engineer to do their work.Even if you're going to master your own song, I recommend this practice, if for no other reasonthan it ensures you are not unintentionally clipping your song anywhere. If it sounds quieter thanyou're used to, turn up your monitors or master volume knob on your soundcard some tocompensate. For more details, see my mastering guide here:

Tarekith's Guide to Mastering For Beginners

Leaving 6dB of headroom is something you need to think about often while doing the mixdown,so keep an eye on your master level meter, and turn things down if you start seeing the signal goover this value (assuming you're following my recommendation that is!).

On that note, I personally think it's important to keep your monitors fairly quiet while doing amixdown, for a couple of reasons. First of all, when things are louder, they always sound moreexciting. This is a fundamental aspect of the way our ears work, the way we hear differentfrequencies in relation to others is dependent on the volume we hear them at. (Google Fletcher-Munson curves if you want more info on this phenomenon.) The simple result of this is thatwhile things might sound great at louder volumes, they tend to sound very flat and dull at quietervolumes. However I've found that the reverse is NOT true. If you can make a song sound great atlower volumes, it will only sound that much better when turned up.

Secondly your ears begin to actually get tired when forced to listen to loud music for extendedperiods of time, something referred to as ear fatigue. After awhile you begin to lose the ability tomake accurate decisions based on what you're hearing. Trying harder or forcing yourself to focusmore will not help, your ears just will not convey the proper information to your brain anymore.The only way to fix this, is to take a long break from mixing (we're talking hours here, not
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minutes), and likely you don't want to stop just when things are going well. So keep the volumedown for most of your mixing, and only turn it up once in awhile if you need to listen louder as areference. You should be able to easily talk to another person without raising your voice if youhave the volume set right. I'd bet money that in the end you get a better overall result, even if theprocess might not be as fun as you're used to.

Core Elements

Since most people reading this will largely be in the dance and electronic music crowd, I'll startmy imaginary mixdown for this tutorial with the elements I'd say are 'usually' the mostimportant; the kick, snare, bassline, and lead synth/vocal. Likely the first three are where mostpeople start in any type of tune with a strong rhythm, so the same process might apply to othergenres and forms of music as well.

The purpose of starting with these parts is two-fold. First, they are likely the core of the song,and what will impact people the most. They are the main elements that the song it built around,

so we should focus on the important parts first. Second, there's a practical engineering aspect tothis as well, in that these will probably be the loudest parts of the song. So by starting with these,we can make sure that our overall levels are set properly, and that we're not clipping and possiblyruining all of our hard work. I cover the details of proper level setting in my Leveling guide ifyou want more info:

Leveling for DJ use in Ableton Live

Back to the core elements. Let's start by muting or pulling down the channel faders for everysingle part in the song. If you have have any return channels you're using, you can leave thoseunmuted and at 0dB for now. Unmute the kick, snare and bassline, and raise those until you see

the master meter hitting about -10 to -8dB's when they sound roughly balanced the way youwant. Setting these parts to that level will usually leave us enough room to add the rest of theparts later on, and still achieve that final set point of -6dB on our master fader. These are thestrongest parts of most tunes, or perhaps I should say they usually carry the most energy.

The hardest part of getting a good mixdown for most people is the low end, getting the kick andthe bassline to not compete with each other, and to not drown out any other instruments. This issomething best addressed while writing the track actually. If you know the bassline is really deepand has lots of subs, then likely you'll want to use a kick sound with more beater noise and lesslow end to keep from competing with the bassline. Likewise if the bassline is more distorted oruses a lot of lowpass filter tweaking to give it more bite (and thus is placed higher in thefrequency range), you can get away with deeper kicks, 808 style and all that. But this isn't a hardand fast rule, there's other things we can do to get these two elements working together.

The first thing you should try is just using the volume faders of each to see how well you canblend the two via the simplest means. Sometimes this is all you need to do to get a really greatsounding low end in your song. If your kick is still getting lost when the bassline is playing, youmight try layering another kick drum sample over the original, this one with a brighter beatersound (that clicky aspect caused by the drum beater hitting the skin). Many times this can go a
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long way towards making your bass drum stand out more, and is something to think about whenyou're first writing your drums.

Side-chaining is another viable method, though one that's best used sparingly IMO. With side-chaining, you're triggering a compressor on the bassline line track to basically turn down the

volume of the bassline briefly when the kick drum hits. It doesn't work with all basslines andkick drums, so I don't recommend it for all but a few cases. The specifics of side chainingdepend largely on what plug ins and DAW you're using, so check the manuals of those for moreinfo on how to do this.

Another option is to use EQ to help the two sit well together. I tend to cut frequencies below30Hz in both my bass drum and bassline, this improves how much headroom I have in mostcases, and helps clean up both sounds and make them less muddy sounding on loud clubsystems. This is really useful when you're using synthesized kicks and basses, which can have alot of information down in the lower frequencies that no one will ever hear. Don't do this if youdon't need to though, use a spectrum analyzer to actually see if there's something down there to

cut in the first place. And you don't need to cut a lot many times, only 5-6dB can make all thedifference, don't try and remove these freqs entirely.

What if the opposite is true though, and your bassline or kick lacks a lot of punch and low end?Well, layering a sine wave under the bassline can help this, even if used quietly it can add a lot oflow end to the sound. The key is to not overpower the original bassline sound where all thetexture and interest is, so keep the level low on this. Ditto on the kick drum, try layering a deeperkick underneath it to add more weight to it. Already we can see that some mixdown problems arereally issues with the sounds we choose, and not best addressed in the mixdown!

You can use EQ to cut and boost certain frequencies in each part as well, to help give them their

own sonic territory in the frequency spectrum. Maybe you cut a few dB at 80Hz on the bassline,while cutting some at 120Hz on the kick (for example). Follow your ears, there's no right answer,and for each song you'll often need to try a lot of things before you find the one that works thebest. On that note, don't get too hung up focusing on any one part while doing a mixdown, it's asure fire way to get distracted and lose sight of the overall picture. And besides, you could spenddays getting these two elements right, and then when you add the rest of the parts of the songback in, realize you can't hear all that work anyway. Work fast, and keep the overall song inperspective while you do. You can always come back to these parts later on if they're notworking well with the rest of the song.

Finally I tend to make my basslines and kicks in mono, especially if it's a tune for the dancefloor. This way the core foundation for the song sounds the same out of both speakers, and givesthe stereo imaging of the song a real center which you can play off of later on, when you addother parts. You don't always have to use a mono bassline, but I've rarely found a good use forstereo kicks.

The snare is the next sound I would approach, and often I'll be working on it the same time as thebass and kick. For rock and breaks music, typically the snare will be mixed a little louder thanother forms of music using a 4/4 kick drum. It's more of a focal point, and helps tie together the


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various rhythm elements to a predictable pattern. If you're using samples of snare drums, thensometimes there's very little you actually need to do to a snare in the mix. I find that over-processing a snare often just takes away from the character that led me to choose that snare in thefirst place.

There are times that some EQ can solve some issues or improve things though. A dull snare canoften be fixed by boosting some around 2kHz, though you have to be careful as this is the mainfrequency your lead is likely to sit at as well. Boosting around 8kHz and above can add a bitmore "air" and openness to the sound. I'd use a low Q value and only a couple dB's of boost onthis to keep it as smooth as possible. If the snare sounds flat, like a you're hitting a wetnewspaper (i.e. no punch), then a gentle boost around 400Hz can often solve this. It brings outmore of the drum sound of the snare, and less of the rattle. Again, don't take the frequency andgain recommendation here as gospel, play around and see what sounds best for each situation.

Sometimes I'll put snares in mono, not always though. If it was something I used a drum synth tomake, then likely it was created in mono anyway and it makes no sense to put it in stereo. If it

was a stereo sample, then likely I'll keep it that way. It doesn't hurt to try both options and seewhat you like best. Double check once more that you're master level is not above -6dB whileyou're at it.

The Lead

When I refer to the 'lead' in a song, it could be the vocal, or perhaps you have a synth that has themain focus in different parts of the song. But it could be just as likely that your song doesn't havea defined lead instrument as well, so don't feel the need to create one if there doesn't need to beone. Because there are literally millions of ways of creating a lead sound, and coming up withnew ones is the goal of most producers, I won't go too much into specifics here.

Ideally you want to make sure that the lead is always able to be clearly heard, that it doesn't getburied by other elements of the mixdown. Usually this means that it's slightly louder incomparison (use your ears, not level meters here), but it could just be in it's own frequency rangetoo. If we're talking about vocals, then it's important that people can understand every word. Thiscan be tricky figuring out on your own if you wrote the lyrics or know what they are ahead oftime, so maybe get someone else to take a listen when you're done and get a second opinion.

A lot of time I think it's the lead that seems to end up with the most effects in people's songs, atleast that's how it seems to me. As with everything, make sure that you have a real need for eacheffect, overdoing it can often have the opposite effect of burying the lead or making it tiring tolisten to. Sometimes a completely dry lead can have the most impact of all too! Remember less ismore, especially with something like reverb or delay. Both of these can make a sound seemfurther away in the mix, like it's being played in the distance. This is one more thing that canmake a lead sound dull or unimportant, so use these two effects minimally.

Typically a lead is panned dead center, it's the most important, so you want it coming from bothspeakers equally. That's not a hard and fast rule though, so experiment if you feel the need.


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Panning leads back and forth in the speakers can be an ear catching effect if done sparingly, toomuch and its annoying and can be distracting from other song elements.

By now you should have the main elements of the song working together, the core drums andbass providing a solid foundation, and the lead providing the focal point. Now it's time to add

everything else that completes your tune, just remember you don't want to bury these mainsounds!

Percussion

The role of the ancillary drum sounds is to support the main groove, so don't make these partstoo loud in the mix. Especially hi hats, which I think most beginners tend to make too loud.Sometimes it can be helpful to roll off (gently cut) frequencies below 1kHz when dealing withcymbals, it can make them less intrusive and they sit better with the other drum sounds withoutgetting in the way of any hand or ethnic percussion you might be using. Use your ears, itshouldn't drastically alter the character of the cymbals when you do this, if it does, then think

twice about it. Only a few dB's of cut can be enough to make a large difference, so as with allthings in mixing, follow the less is more principle. Boosting cymbals and hi hats should be donesparingly as well, it's very easy to make them harsh sounding this way.

Toms and hand percussion, like tablas and bongos, often work best when panned a little bit toeach side. Try and split up the instruments so you have an equal number on each side of thestereo field to keep the mix sounding balanced, and not like one side of your drums is louderthan the other. With low toms you might need to cut some of the lower frequencies out to keepfrom clashing with bass drum. With higher toms the opposite is true, except that we're trying tokeep from clashing with the snare. I recommend very low Q values for this kind of work, it keepsthings sounding more natural, gentle shaping is what we're usually after.

Pads, Chords, and Background Vocals

The main function of these elements is usually to support the harmonic or tonal aspects of thesong. The key word being support, so you need to make sure that they do their job in the song,but don't overpower the main elements. These are usually the parts I get a bit more heavy handedwith when it comes to EQ during the mix. Well, actually I tend to just create them with verynarrow frequency ranges in the first place, but you can do the same thing after the fact with EQ.

In general I find that they need very little low end to do the job, and that way they don't clash orbury the main components of the lower end of things, namely the bassline and kick. So youmight roll off everything below 600Hz, as well as maybe some top end too, unless it's a very'airy' pad sound. Usually panning is the best way to make these fit in the song, though things likereverb and stereo delay can also be used to make them sit further back in the mix too. Panningdelays are fun here, but as always don't overdo it to the point that it detracts from the main songelements.

Another trick is to double these tracks, or create a copy of the track in your DAW. Then delayone track by 4-5ms, and pan it all the way left, and the other one all the way right. This spreads


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them out to the far sides of the mix, and gives a neat detuning sort of effect. You can also do thiswith synth pads, but detune the left side by positive 3-7 cents, and the right side by negative 3-7cents.

Once again, double check to make sure that you're not hitting that master meter above -6dBFS. If

you are, the easiest way to fix this is to temporarily group all the tracks (if your DAW supportsthis) and lower the level of all the tracks at once. If you're DAW doesn't support track grouping,then you'll need to go and lower the faders of each track by the same amount. The easiest way isto do this numerically. Look at the dB value readout for each fader position, and type in a newnumber that's say 3dB less than this. The actual value will depend on your song and how high themaster level meter was showing of course. Just be sure you subtract the same amount from eachtrack.

Sound Effects and Ear Candy

Sometimes it's the little things that can make a song really fun to listen to, and that's what I'm

referring to when I say ear candy. Those weird sound effects, fills, and transitional elements thatadd interest and variety to the song. Really not too much specific to do with these sounds, justremember to not have them so loud that they take away from the rest of the song.

This is especially important for sound effects you might use coming out of a drop or breakdown.When the song kicks back in, you want the song elements to have all that impact and focus, notthe sound effect before them. So if the effects are too loud when the drums and bass come back,they might sound wimpy all of a sudden in comparison. EQ can really help with this, if youremove a lot of the lower frequencies, the effects can have a bit more volume, and the mainelements of the song with still hit hard when they come back in.

In general I'd say that it's the sound effects and other small elements that can make a song hard tomixdown. If they clash with other areas of the songs in terms of frequencies, things can justsound messy and cluttered. So use EQ or synthesis to really shape each sound to have it's ownspace in the mix.

Putting It All Together

Hopefully by now your mixdown is 95% of the way there, and everything has it's own place. Allyour tracks should be unmuted and playing back together. I recommend taking a ten minutebreak and going outside for a bit. I find that being out in the 'open' sort of re-calibrates my ears ifyou will, and gives my listening a break from the 'sound of my room'. Vague concepts, I know,but your ears likely need a break and this is a good time to take it. Ideally you'd take an evenlonger break, overnight perhaps, but I know that won't happen so at least take ten minutes.

When you come back to listen to the mix, you'll probably notice one or two parts that sound tooloud or quiet so adjust those as needed, so go ahead and do any little volume corrections youthink the tune needs. Listen and make sure you can hear all the tracks in your song at the righttimes. If not, think about about if you really need them or not after all. Parts that don't really addmuch to the song just add to the clutter, so don't be afraid to remove them. It's not easy I know,


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especially if you've spent a lot of time on them. But you have to keep the SONG in your mind asthe important part, not the individual parts. If nothing else, render out unneeded parts and savethem for use in another song, that makes it easier to delete tracks in my experience.

Listen to the song all the way through a few times. Get up and move around your room as you

listen, or maybe listen from the a hallway or another room nearby. Can you still hear the mainparts of the song? Is there any part that sounds too loud everywhere but your studio? Try playingthe mixdown back at different volumes, from really quiet to really loud (neighbors depending).Try listening on different headphones too. Likely a lot of people will be listening on iPod earbuds these days, so those are good to have to check things on too. Listen to it in your car, or ifyou're really lucky, at a club on a big sound system.

The goal of all this is to adjust the mixdown to obtain the best possible compromise for makingyour song sound good on as many sources as possible. With practice you will eventually knowhow what you hear on your studio monitors will translate elsewhere, and you can skip some ofthese steps. But for now, it's a good idea to listen in as many places as possible. I firmly believe

that you should NEVER find yourself saying "well, it sounds ok, but I can fix that in mastering".No no no, now is the time to get your song sounding exactly the way you want, just a littlequieter at this point compared to other songs (see my mastering link above for more on this).

Don't be discouraged if it still doesn't sound exactly the way you want, you're learning, andexperience only comes by repeatedly doing the same thing over and over. Sometimes it takesmore than one mixdown attempt to get it right. By going through and playing with EQ andspectrum analyzers while doing the first mix, you learn more about each part and how it fits withothers in the song. Don't be afraid to remove all EQ, reset all levels to 0 and start over. Yes, itsucks sometimes, but most of the time doing this a second time works much better. I bet you endup needing to use a lot less EQ on the 2nd try, which can be a case of once again less being

more.

Compression

Some of you will likely have noticed that I haven't mentioned compression yet when talkingabout mixdowns. That's because I personally feel that it's over-used these days, and that it's bestto try and get the mix right without it first. Sometimes however, it can help situations, so if allelse fails, don't be afraid to try it. The subject of compression is one I plan on covering in moredetail in a later guide as it's a subject best discussed with audio examples to listen to, so I won'tgo into much detail here.

However there's a few quick tips I can pass on, such as the so called "New York Trick" foradding compression to drums. Basically you create a send or buss track in your DAW, and placeyour compressor on that with a very fast and hard setting. You're going to really squash things onthis channel, but that's ok. You send a copy of all of the drum sounds to this compressionchannel, and really compress the life out of them, it's one time to go overboard withcompression. The compressor helps merge all the seperate drum sounds into one huge drumsound, and you blend this compressed version of the drums in with the completely uncompressedversion. You're basically doubling the drums, one uncompressed version that retains all it's


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transients, and quieter version of them all heavily squashed together underneath. It's a good wayto give the drum more punch, without destroying all the transients. But again, sometimes it canruin the drums too, so don't think this is something that always sounds better.

A quick and easy way to set up a compressor for other instruments is to set the attack to it's max

amount, and the decay to the fastest setting. Set the ratio to 3 or 5, and lower the threshold untilyou're seeing about 3dB on the gain reduction meter on the plug in. Set the make up gain to autoif the compressor has this, or raise it to the same amount you see on the gain reduction meter if itdoesn't. Now you can play with the attack and release settings to get the sound you're after.Lowering the attack setting will sort of dull the sound a bit, which might be good for say tweakysynth parts or basslines. Raising the release will give things like drums and percussion more'oomph', just be careful not to go too high or you'll get the compressor pumping, which may notbe a sound you're after.

Regardless, compression is one of those things that's entirely dependent on the sound you'refeeding it, so it's pointless to discuss it in too much detail. It's best to teach yourself what all the

controls do, and then spend time experimenting with each one on different source material.

Wrapping Up

Sometimes our ears just don't work right on some days, and nothing you do is going to help it. Ormaybe they're just fatigued from being forced to listen critically in ways you've never donebefore. Don't stress over it, just save the project file and come back to it another day, or even aweek later if you have the patience. The more you do this, the better you get, there's no shortcutto learning the art and skills of mixing, except to do it as much as you can! Look at it as practice,instead of a wasted day if that helps.

Just don't give up! When you're done with the mixdown, ideally the mastering engineer (or you)will have to do nothing but convert it from 24bit to 16bit, add dither, and raise the level a bit.That should be the goal of all producers, to produce a mixdown that doesn't need any otherprocessing done to it!

On a more personal note, if this guide (or any of myother guides) has helped you in your musicmaking, please consider a small $1 donation via pay pal to the email address below. Even adollar here and there really helps me and my family out more than you can realize. Thanks, and Ihope you find this guide useful.

Preface: The original version of this mastering guide was by far the most downloaded and

shared production guide I've ever written, even though it was primarily geared towards

"beginner" musicians. As time went on and I began doing mastering as a full-time profession

however, it also raised a lot of questions from more advanced users. So I figured it was time to

update it and provide some clarifications, as well as cover some new ideas in places. My hope

is that this new version will be as useful as the original, and that musicians and producers of all

skill levels will continue to benefit from it.
http://tarekith.com/tutorials-and-reviews/http://tarekith.com/tutorials-and-reviews/http://tarekith.com/tutorials-and-reviews/http://tarekith.com/tutorials-and-reviews/


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I'm writing this because I have always seen the same questions asked again and again "How do

I master my song?" or "Can anyone recommend some good mastering plug ins?". More and

more people are learning the ins and outs of their home studios, and they eventually start to

finish songs and realize that they don't sound as good, or as 'polished' as what they hear whenthey buy a CD or download tunes online.So, what is mastering? Surprisingly it can be many things, depending on your needs or the

format you intend to release your music on. Some examples of things that commonly are done

during the mastering process include: Making all the songs on a CD sound cohesive.

Preparing the song so that it is not too quiet, and more importantly these days, not too loud.

The final quality control for projects going to a replication house.

An experienced, fresh set of ears to help achieve the overall balance of frequencies in a

song.

And more recently, a chance to interact with an experienced audio engineer and get

feedback on the sonic qualities of your productions as they get close to completion.

In general however, I think what most people want to achieve when it comes to mastering their

own songs is two-fold: Get the overall level of the song right (how loud or quiet it is), and

achieve a good balance of frequencies in the song (making sure it's not too bright or too bass-

heavy for instance).

Of course, as someone who makes their living mastering other people's music, my first

suggestion on the easiest way to achieve this is to let someone with the right gear and the lotsof experience handle these issues. A professional mastering engineer not only has accurate

monitoring and and an acoustically treated studio dedicated to mastering, but more importantly

experience and an unbiased opinion. For many people nowadays, it's the only time from the

start of the song to it's release where they will get to work with someone who can offer a critical

second set of ears to help them shape and present their music in the best way possible.

But, if you're reading this, then chances are you really want to do this on your own, or you can't

afford professional mastering. How then, do you go about mastering your own work, and which

tools do you really need to get the job done? I think it goes without saying that two things will always remain true when it comes to music

mastering:1. Specialized mastering equipment will almost always give you better results than what comes

with your DAW (Digital Audio Work station). Audio processing tools designed for mastering will

likely sound clearer and introduce less artifacts than a free or a bundled plug in. There's always


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exceptions, I'm just saying in general.

2. Experience and trained ears will always get you better results than just the right gear. That is,

an experienced mastering engineer will be able to get very, very good results no matter what

gear they use.

To me, this means one thing. Becoming good at mastering (or anything really) will take practice

and lots of it, and having good quality tools at hand will help as well. Lacking these two things,

there's one final way to approach the situation, and that's through trial and error. To me is a

form of practice as well however, which means ultimately there is no magic tool that will make

your productions shine. If you want your tracks to compete with with professionally produced

songs, then you need to be ready to invest not only in the right tools, but also in TRULY learning

when and how to use them.

Where to start then?The first thing you need to look at is your listening environment. Having good monitors is only

one small part of knowing you are hearing everything in your music, especially with any sort of

accuracy. Good monitors don't just reproduce the the lowest lows and the highest highs

correctly. They also have clean amplifiers able to react instantly and provide the power needed

to replicate the sharpest transients, over the widest dynamic range. They have impeccable

imaging, reveal the true depth of field in music needed to determine when there's too much

reverb, when instruments might be panned too much to one side or the other skewing the mix,

or when there's too much stereo information and not enough in the center of the mix to provide

a solid foundation to the soundstage. Or vice versa.However, in my opinion, far more important is the way in which the sound from your speakers

interacts with the room you're in. The best speakers in the world can sound terrible if your room

is negatively influencing what you hear. I won't go too much into acoustics here, but if you're

working in a small room with no acoustic treatment (i.e. diffusors, bass traps, something to

counteract first order reflections, etc) you're already starting off with things not in your favor.

Given that acoustic issues can be expensive to address, I'll assume that most of you haven't,

which means you need a plan B.The best way to get around acoustic limitations is to make sure that you listen to your song on

as many speakers, and in as many playback locations as possible. Listen to your song in

headphones, on your iPod, your home stereo, in your car, your kitchen radio, your friends'

stereos (they hate this by the 5th or 6th month BTW), etc. Learn how to correlate what you hear

in your home studio, with what it sounds like elsewhere.

For instance, pay attention to things like the bass instruments or kick drum. If it sounds good in

your studio, but you keep noticing it's too bass-heavy elsewhere, then you know you need to

compensate for that at home. So you mix and master with the bass sounding weak at home, so


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that when you test it elsewhere, it sounds good. The goal is to get it not sounding perfect

everywhere per se (though congrats if you can!), but to minimize any negative sounding

problems in as many places as possible. You should be able to hear all of the main instruments

clearly, without anything jumping out at you as sounding too loud or quiet. It's not that simple though, you need to learn this for the whole frequency spread; the mids, thehighs, the low mids, etc. Slowly you'll start to hear what the deficiencies are in your studio and

your monitoring, and learn how to compensate for these. This takes a LONG time. It's not

something you do in a day, over a weekend, or even in a couple months. You need to train your

ears and practice to always listen for the overall balance of what you are hearing, and then test

that against how it sounds in your studio. What's worse, getting better speakers, a new

soundcard, or even finally springing for some acoustic treatment all changes this balance once

more, and you need to start the process all over.

Without the proper room and gear, this is the only way you'll know what's truly going on in your

music: trial and error. The good news is that as you do get better monitoring, or finally can afford

some proper acoustic treatment, this process gets MUCH easier. But in the meantime, while it's

not ideal, the point is that it can be done with enough practice and perseverance. By only

listening to your productions in your home studio however, you will never really know how the

rest of the world is truly hearing your music.

"Yeah yeah", I hear you muttering, "but how do I master my songs in the first place?"

To put it bluntly, you don't.What?Let me say this again, in case you skipped over it. If you are writing and releasing your own

songs, there is no reason to master them per se.

Everything you need to do to make a song sound polished and balanced can be done in the

mixdown, and this is where you should focus 100% of all your attention. There's only one

exception, and that's getting the overall volume of the song more inline with today's standards,

and I'll come back to this later.A truly great-sounding song rarely needs much done to it by a mastering engineer. This is what

you should strive for. Putting things like multi-band compression, heavy-handed EQ, aural

exciters, sonic maximizers and such over your mixed-down song is the WRONG way to fix any

issues you hear. Those tools were created to give mastering engineers more flexibility when

they didn't have the luxury of going back and fixing the individual elements in a song. They were

forced to work on a single stereo file of the song, and couldn't adjust anything in the mixdown.


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So tools like these were created for those RARE instances when they needed to adjust

something beyond what simple EQ or compression might fix. Unfortunately marketing by plug-in

manufacturers, along with some small dose of urban myth, makes it seems like these are critical

to the mastering process. The world's best mastering engineers rarely use things like

"mastering reverb", multi-band compression, aural exciters, or even linear-phase EQ's. They

don't arbitrarily apply a high-pass (or worse, a low-pass) filter to the song. These are tools wehave on hand for for very specific, and usually very rare cases.

It's also important to understand that there is no such thing as a DEFAULT MASTERING

CHAIN. Each song is different, and each song may or may not require different processing tools

to get it to sound it's best. Just because you have the tools, doesn't mean you need to use them

all the time. Listen to the song, and only apply the processing you personally HEAR a need

for. And if you're mastering your own song, you have the luxury to go back into your DAW and

adjust the problems right at the source in the mixdown, so do that first!

For instance, here's some examples where you can more cleaning adjust the mix, instead of

waiting to fix something in the mastering:- If the song is too bass-heavy, then go back and turn down the bassline and kick, or add some

EQ to tame just those parts.- If it sounds too mono and centered, start panning some instruments until you get a wider

sound-stage. Add some chorus or stereo delay to a part to make it seem wider. Be careful to

not overdo this, especially if you only listen to it on headphones. Check your mixdown in mono

if you can, and also make sure none of your main instruments is pulling the mix too much to one

side.- If the song sounds flat and dull, save a copy of the song, then take off all the effects and EQ

you added in your previous mixdown attempt and start over. I'd say 90% of the time this dull

phenomenon is due to people over using tools they don't understand. Contrary to all the

popular magazines and "How To" articles you might read, you don't need compression on every

single track, especially for electronic music. Many times you might only need 1 or 2

compressors total in one of your songs, if even that.

The best way to get a rich-sounding song is to not overdo the effects, and to try and get a

balanced sounding mixdown without using anything but your volume faders at first. It's also

important to realize that this stuff takes lots and lots of practice (and I mean years and years),

so even if you do all the above and then some, productions that compete with your favorite

producers are just not going to happen overnight.

Have patience. Remember that music is not a race. Keep experimenting at home in your free

time, and eventually you'll get the hang of it. You'd never expect to be as good as Jimi Hendrix

on the guitar in a week, and good sounding productions are the exact same. Patience!


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The point of all this is simple, if you're producing your own songs and no one else is going to

work on them, you should focus your efforts on getting it sounding good while working the

mixdown. Burn copies of that and live with them for a week while you play it on as many

systems as possible. Always strive to get the mixdown sounding good first before you think

about the mastering phase. The mixdown should sound exactly how you want your song tosound. There are no magical tools that will make this better in mastering. By far, you have way

more options, not to mention more transparent options, when you address any issues you hear

while in the mixdown phase.

Here's a guide I wrote about mixdowns that might offer some other tips for you:http://tarekith.com/assets/mixdowns.html

When your mixdown is balanced the way you like, then likely the only thing you're going to

notice while listening to your new song everywhere is that it's quieter than you'd like. This is fine

when you're testing the mixdown, just turn up the playback device to compensate for now.DO NOT WORRY ABOUT HOW LOUD THE SONG IS UNTIL YOU ARE COMPLETELY DONE

WITH THE MIXDOWN.Doing so is only distracting you from what's important, and trust me, it's generally so simple to

fix you that don't need to worry about it yet. When you're doing your mixdown, make sure than

the levels on your master channel in your DAW peak around -6dBFS, just so you have some

some headroom to avoid clipping. Then just turn up the playback device to compensate andmake it louder when you're testing the mix.

Here is another guide I wrote that goes more into digital audio levels and metering, for those

that want more info:http://tarekith.com/assets/Leveling.html

Ok, so you're finally happy with the way your song sounds. You've listened to it for a coupleweeks now on multiple systems (yeah, right) and you think it's perfect the way it is. Well, except

for the fact that it's just too quiet still, right? At this point, you just need to use a limiter to gently

raise the overall volume. The key word here is gently. Far too many songs these days are over-

limited purely for the sake of 'apparent' volume, especially dance music. Google "loudness

wars" if you really want to read more about it.There are two approaches for applying this limiting: by using a limiter on the master track in your
http://tarekith.com/assets/mixdowns.htmlhttp://tarekith.com/assets/mixdowns.htmlhttp://tarekith.com/assets/Leveling.htmlhttp://tarekith.com/assets/Leveling.htmlhttp://tarekith.com/assets/Leveling.htmlhttp://tarekith.com/assets/mixdowns.htmlhttp://tarekith.com/assets/mixdowns.html


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DAW and then rendering the final mastered file, or by rendering the mixdown and then applying

limiting in another application like Wave Editor, Soundforge, Peak, Wavelab, or even the same

DAW you used for writing the track. The results should be the same no matter which you use,

so it will mainly come down to your own working preferences. And if you have enough CPU

power left to still use a quality limiter in your DAW. If you're going to use another app for

mastering, render your mixdown as a 24bit file (you should always use 24bit anyway) and makesure any normalizing or dithering functions are off when you do.With your best limiter, set the release to Auto if that's an option, and set the main output to -

0.3dBFS. Then lower the threshold until the very highest peaks of your song are only being

limited by about 3dB's, which you'll see on the gain reduction meter. And I mean only the very

highest peaks of the song. The GR meter should just barely flicker up to 3dB ideally.

If your mixdown was well done and balanced, you should be pretty close to the ballpark you

need to be in. It'll sound fairly competitive with most music out there, at least in terms of volume.

Probably a touch quieter, but that other music is too loud anyway, right? :)

Going beyond this in terms of loudness is where experience really comes to play though.

Sometimes you can transparently go more than 3dB of gain reduction when limiting, but you

need to have an accurate monitoring chain to be able to recognize when you're truly doing more

harm than good. When in doubt, err on the side of caution and use less limiting.If you do want to experiment and try to push the volume up more, here's two further bits of

advice I'd offer:- Be careful of falling into the trap of thinking you are making things better, just because you canhear the sound changing when you turn a knob or raise a fader. It's very easy for people to

change a setting on their dynamics processor (compressor, limiter, etc) and when they hear the

sound of song somehow alter in response to that, they think they've instantly made it sound

better just because it now sounds different than it previously did. Just because the song got

louder somehow, doesn't mean you did it in a way that sounds better. Always try and A/B any

changes you make with the song at roughly the same playback volume if you can, as that can

often reveal which version really sounds better.- Don't practice these techniques when you're trying to prepare a new song for release. It's

better to take a couple hours one day and experiment on some older mixdowns you have, or

maybe even something from a friend. When you're learning this type of thing, you're going to

make mistakes that you don't realize initially, everyone does. So don't use a song you're about

to release to the world to showcase these mistakes. Instead err on the side of caution like I

advocate above, use less limiting and save the learning period for when you know that no one

will hear any mistakes you might make. It takes a long time to learn to do this kind of thing well,

so take it slow and don't feel you need to rush.


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And because people many people ask me this every week, the mastering limiters I like to use

right now are Fabfilter Pro-L, Voxengo Elephant 3, and PSP Xenon. Which of these I use will

depend on the song and what I think it needs, as they all react and sound different.

Ok, so now you've got the overall spectral balance right in your mixdown, and you've sorted the

overall volume of the song, what's next? The very last thing to do when finishing your song is to

apply dither. Dither is used when converting 24bit (or higher) files to 16bit for CD burning or

MP3 conversion. You want to insert the dither plug in AFTER the limiter, it's ALWAYS the very

last process you apply.

If your limiting plug in has dithering built in (and most do now), this will be handled correctly for

you by the plug in. Most plug-ins license their dithering algorithms from the same third party

manufacturers, so you'll often see the same UV22HR, MBIT+, and POW-r dithering options in

various plug-ins. UV22Hr and MBIT+ typically don't have any settings for the user to change,

while POW-r dithering comes in 3 different varieties. For most people, POW-r2 is probably the

version that will work the best over the widest range of musical styles. Keep in mind that while dithering is an important process that can help the conversion from

24bit to 16bit sound better, it's also one of the least audible processes you can apply to an

audio file. So by all means go ahead and apply dither when rendering your master, but don't

stress over which version you choose too much.If you want some audio examples of what dither does, here's some I made: http://tarekith.com/assets/ditherexamples.zip You can hear how the dithered version trails off more smoothly than the truncated version, albeit

at the expense of some added noise. These examples were boosted A LOT to make the effect

more audible, normally this stuff is extremely quiet, around -94dBFS or so. It's very subtle, like I

said.

So, that's more or less it. Render your song as a 16bit/44.1kHz wav file, burn it to CD or convert

to MP3 and you're done! I hope I've made it clear that there's generally no reason to use a

complicated mastering chain, or fancy multi-band tools when mastering your own songs. You

will achieve FAR, FAR better sounding results if you do as little as possible to your song once

the mixdown is done.

Instead focus your efforts on getting everything right in the mixdown first, and treat the

mastering phase simply a chance to get the overall volume of the song increased some. It

doesn't have to be as complicated as people make it when you're prepping your own material,

it's only when people like me (full-time mastering engineers) have to deal with other people's
http://tarekith.com/assets/ditherexamples.ziphttp://tarekith.com/assets/ditherexamples.ziphttp://tarekith.com/assets/ditherexamples.zip


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music that it can get complicated and we need to resort to some these tools.

I hoped this helped some of you, though if you still prefer to have someone else master your

songs, you can of course contact me at:

mastering techniques

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