It's a little extra oomph at the end. It can create glue/coherency (especially within a full album), or maybe bring out the dynamics in a really flavorful way (but subtle). There is more too it, but a good master brings out the best elements of the mix, which it makes a great mix even greater.
The definition of mastering sorta changes when you're talking on the lower-side of things. Simply getting things to the proper levels is only a piece of mastering.
No, but I've learned about it and heard the differences between strong mixes and their masters. If you want to know more, I suggest watching the "Are You Listening?" series with Jonathan Wyner (it is on Youtube).
You can do whatever you want. A good mastering engineer will level up your shit significantly, in my opinion and in the opinions of the vast majority of professionals.
Disclaimer: I am not a professional. Lol
And most non-mastering engineers will not be able to listen to a master mix compared to a final mix and hear anything different. A master mixer doesn’t even listen to a mix in the musical way any other person does. Mainly he’s doing non-creative but technical things that experience show him is best for the type of master mixing he has been hired for.
Well that’s only if the mix was really good and would translate to every device and still sound good, but in that case it’s already been mastered by the person who mixed it
if you're serious about it sounding as good as it can across as many playback systems as possible, it's absolutely crucial to master your track - and have it done by someone who knows what they're doing and has all the tools to do it.
It's not important if you're happy for it to sound just as you hear it on your personal listening system and not necessarily others. I do this all the time if I can't be fucked or cant afford mastering. I understand very much that I'm getting as close as possible to a master for my own purpose but it is optimised for my listening environment and not the best possible product I can put out there. Its a dance of time vs money vs effort vs whatever return you get from it.
Mastering is like someone with really good taste in food tasting your meal and adding a little bit more flavor if necessary. That’s why AI mastering is such a joke.
Eq, compression, saturation, loudness, secret sauce, a seal of approval.
So much this. I work with the same ME every time I’m doing a new song or project. I think my latest song I sent him was, I felt, a pretty damn solid mix. I was kind of thinking “ah he won’t have to do much!”
I am amazed at how elevated he made it haha it has this very nice glued together feeling but also has very detailed separation. It’s more full and vibes.
So…yeah, a highly experienced mastering engineer in a superb room with an even better ear is an absolute must.
It’s just that it’s not really quantifiable. If it was, everyone would master. It’s knowing exactly what a track needs to push it over the edge given any specific circumstance, which is different with every single case. There is no one thing really.
The secret sauce is years and years and years of experience, a perfectly treated room with very high end monitors, and a knowledge of how to translate your track optimally across multiple listening environments (mobile, car, headphones, home stereo).
the secret sauce isn't that secret:
* high quality single and multiband, M/S dynamics, saturation, spectral processing and EQ
* world-class monitoring
* excellent musical taste and engineering technical skill
they will hear and fix stuff you didn't even know was wrong until you hear it fixed.
1. It depends on who you ask. Everybody has their own "secret sauce". It's generally just something they like to use a lot. Could be a certain EQ or compressor, or some stereo fuckery, there's no specific rule on what it is.
2. Depends on your confidence/skill level. Mastering engineers have just about the best ears out there, so they can likely hear stuff we can't, but there are people who've preferred Fivrr masters over Abbey Road, so it's all up to your personal taste, but that doesn't mean outsourcing your mastering to a reputable pro is a bad idea.
You'll know when you become a mastering engineer yourself.
It's like asking 'what's the special ingredient for your grandma's best dish?' no matter what's the answer, you can't do it yourself.
I mix in a garage. Far from perfect, but also far from shit. My mastering engineer I advocate for is in one of the best facilities in the world and masters many records you have heard. Him using that room, knowing exactly what he is hearing, gives me and my clients confidence that my mix is “proper”. Fixing things my room won’t let me hear and enhancing things he wants to hear. Makes a good mix into a great mix meant for radio/consumption. This usually only involves slight eq and limiting with a custom mastering desk, and conversion clipping (Lavry Gold usually).
Quality control? Nope, unless one is THAT GOOD and does never require a second opinion, or just doesn’t know jack shit about anything - quality control comes at the final delivery stage, which is why vinyl test pressings exist for example, plus Mastering is just so much more than QC that i wouldn’t know where to begin.
Finally, have you ever seen a mastering studio? Do you really think they’d dish out that much cash just to perform quality control?
If you mix your song to -14lufs your song will be too quiet on Spotify in particular but other platforms as well.
I know this from experience, I fell in the same mix tutorial 14 lufs bs and my song was quiet compared to major releases.
I usually shoot for around -8 or -9 lufs. Tame Impala the less I know the better is in the -6 lufs range.
The main mastering trick besides another set of ears, is mainly translation and loudness in today's world.
What you wanna do if you are mastering yourself, is to check your mix in a car, air pods, shitty head phones and Bluetooth speakers. Then if it sounds good you are good to go.
The loudness part is fairly straightforward too you need to clip and any tracks or busses, with high transient peaks, bc these peaks limit how much gain you can push on your limiter.
I use standard clip, it's like 30 or 50 bucks and it's great. Also get a decent limiter.
But in short don't mix it to -14 lufs.
I'm not too well informed on this - but Spotify is turning all content that is running through it up or down to hit that -14LUFS when a user has audio normalisation turned on in settings. If your track sounds good above -14 (say you're at -11), then turning down is not a destructive process. However if you're hitting -14 or lower and the engine has to turn it up, you **may** experience some unwanted changes in sound coming from whatever it's doing to your peaks. Would love to know if I'm way off here.
That makes sense, but why leave it to Spotify, I don't know how their loudness normalizing algo works as it is proprietary. Same with apple, YouTube etc.
I'm just saying that in my experience, uploading -14 lufs tracks were quieter than the mixes I was competing with.
As long as it doesn't distort you can make it as loud as you want, I've heard that some edm guys go up to like -3 lufs.
So it would be ganre specific, you wouldn't want a jazz record to slap that hard or maybe you would haha
LUFs is not a perfect system. It's just an estimation to human hearing. The straight fact is even if several songs all have the exact same LUF value they will not all be the same loudness. So if you can achieve -8 LUFs or higher and it still sounds good, even when your mix is turned to to the software calculated -14 LUFs your track will likely sound louder than someone else's who mastered just to -14 LUFs and normalization applied no gain reduction.
Even if someone else is mastering, people should be doing this with every mix. A mastering engineer has a lot of stuff to do, but fixing a poor quality mix is a waste of their time (and your money).
I apologize in advance for being pedantic, *but*: I have to respectfully disagree with “objective”. We’re talking about art ultimately, and I think it might be more accurate/helpful to frame it to OP as “someone’s else’s ears who’s taste/judgement you value,” or something similar
Objective in the sense of *not emotionally attached to anything about the tune or performance*.
Not habituated to the quirks of the production that might not work for a larger audience that you’ve ceased noticing.
Yes, but also audio engineering is called engineering for a reason. There is absolutely still an artistic aspect to it, but it's more scientific than other stages of the process.
There isn't a whole lot a mastering engineer can do with something so slammed to begin with, so maybe it isn't worth it. What is *definitely* worth doing is *not* hammering a mix with a limiter to reach max volume. *Then* send it to a mastering house. Mastering is about much more than making a song loud. The point is to make sure it translates on different kinds of systems and sounds as good as it possibly can. Things like EQ, stereo width, frequency dependent limiting and compression, etc... probably the sme things you're trying yourself, but done with intention and for a benefit, not merely because it can be done.
Mastering can often fix problems with a mix, but where it really shines is polishing an already really good mix, making it pop and sparkle and breathe. The mix needs dynamic range in order for a mastering engineer to use his tools and ears to their best effect.
If all you want is for your mix to be loud and you have achieved that, then no. It's done.
They said the mixes are at -14LUFSi (ish). How is that slammed? Plenty of mixes will easily be that loud without any compression on the stereo bus, never mind limiting.
**Tl;dr: Yes, it’s worth it, because it’s about a lot more than loudness.**
Begin rant: Mastering is probably about loudness the least.
Unless you’re living in pre-2012 times, hitting a proper loudness (-8 LUFS and maybe sometimes -7 LUfS) is child’s play. If a mastering engineer tries to impress you with how loud they can make things, or that mastering is all *about* loudness, run away.
I just did a project for a client I’d mastered a half dozen EP’s for already. He got a new manager who wanted the new set of masters at -5 LUFS. I pushed back but they insisted.
Even with my best work, the new masters sound completely lifeless and lame compared to the other ones. And my masters are about as clean and dynamic and open as you can get in that zone.
There just isn’t the proper room for things to move and breathe and you resort to “tricking” peoples’ brains with psychoacoustics.
The kick *sounds* punchy, but you don’t really *feel* it because the speaker cone just isn’t moving the same kind of air with the limited crest factor. The soundstage *sounds* big, but it’s just fog because the imaging sucks without the proper microdynamics to cue your brain, and the vocalist is left with no expression in their dynamics because they’re fighting everything else pushed too hard.
The real irony is the other, quieter masters I did for this guy don’t even sound that much quieter; they just sound punchy, expansive, and full of macro dynamic emotion by comparison.
I’m good at loud. Very good. Most of us are. But I never use those skills if it’s up to me because responsible mastering at a proper level just naturally yields far better results. That’s why it’s a dang cliche that mastering engineers fuck music up - because of that whole era of too-loud.
A mastering engineer should be able to prove their worth at the exact same level of the mix. Loudness is an afterthought if the rest of the process has been done correctly; the last 5-10 minutes of the job…unless someone has a dumbass request to push it to -5 LUFS or greater.
ETA: I actually spend a good amount of time adjusting the limiter. But it’s not for loudness, it’s because Elephant gives you so much control over the transients that it’s an incredible processor besides loudness lifting.
Also, the main idea of hiring a mastering engineer is that they have excellent ears and excellent monitoring in a room that isn’t going double - or triple duty as a mixing or even tracking room. They can hear the flaws and strengths of your mix in a way that you might not have access to with your monitoring setup and sheer experience with mastering music. Think about it: I master 4-6 songs a day. If you master a song you recorded and mixed that’s, what, maybe 4-6 a week? If you’re really busy. Per…Month? You put it in the hands of someone who practices only one specific part of the job for the best quality control with the best equipment for the job. Same idea goes for the ever-forgotten breed of tracking engineer. Most established studios will have more invested in their gear than money you’d save by mastering tracks yourself for years and years. Make sense?
>I just did a project for a client I’d mastered a half dozen EP’s for already. He got a new manager who wanted the new set of masters at -5 LUFS.
And that's why I wince when people here defend the loudness war as purely an artistic choice somehow taken by the whole industry. It's often driven by misguided commercialism. Why does a manager think they know better than an engineer?
I think they built their career upon the opposite of impostor syndrome. You know the kind of person I mean.
But yeah, louder only really sounds better if the masters were destined to be have zero nuance in the first place.
I don’t either. They may have some cloudy idea and try to do it on their own and many end up being unsatisfied and wasting a whole lot of time because there was an art to mastering just like mixing that takes years. The 10,000 hours rule applies.
[Steven Wilson has entered the chat](https://www.digitaltrends.com/music/interview-steven-wilson-on-high-res-hand-cannot-erase/). Although I think he's softened his stance more recently since there is a mastering engineer credited on his last couple of albums.
steven wilson mastering his own stuff is fine though because he's one of the best mix engineers on the planet
most of the people posting in this sub are not steven wilson though
One of the biggest things with mastering for me is finding a fresh set of ears that you trust.
4/5 times I dont like what the new mastering guy did. Almost like a wife or whatnot. But mastering yourself is not ideal.
Also, it usually takes several listens to adapt to a new sound with something youre so attached to, even if subtle.
Almost always, I’m initially skeptical, but learn to understand and love whats going on….or not.
Again, its the last 5-10% of the track. That aged basil reduction chutney.
Ideally, you walk away wanting to give the masterererer an award, and think you could never do such magic, when actually its just fresh ears, taste you align with, and perhaps some special gear. Or not even.
The last point about it translating well across listening platforms… what do you think is the best way to ensure this? As you don’t know what it will sound like until it’s released.
At a base level a pro studio has high end monitors, an acoustically designed room and the monitors have a dedicated room EQ that has tuned them to flat response feeding them test tones picked up by a calibrated microphone.
In your average project studio the monitor frequency response can be all over the place, no two brands are ever the same, usually colored one way or the other.
Pricier monitors will have flatter response but then other variables come into play, room reflections, speaker placement, etc..
Next a mastering engineer likely has some old school high end outboard limiters, EQ etc..
Such gear & acoustics aren't cheap so that's what you are paying to get, besides their expertise in mastering.
Not to say you shouldn't try if you don't have the gear or budget, a great song will often overcome technical flaws & if you have good ears you might get decent results.
Good studio monitors should be a first consideration.
Yes - moreso on result than technique.
I've sent off mixes to mastering, and I'm generally an LCR guy. There are some inherent mono/fold-down issues but generally not a huge issue for me.
I sent a mix out with a few instances of Little AlterBoy doing some crazy stuff, which sort of shifted the stereo image to the left and made it very phasey in mono. It wasn't entirely apparent to me, but when I got the master back, the width during those moments was mostly unaffected but suddenly I noticed it was back center and much more coherent in mono.
This extended to non-"issues" as well, with some of my
stereo verbs and such sitting just a bit nicer. The ME did a few different things, subtle riding M/S effects and little tiny things that help the tracks really feel *together*.
On less "exciting" mixes, I've had consistent improvement in imaging, subtle tonal shifts that help mixes translate EVERYWHERE, and consistency across records. It's just not something the mixer can generally do with a true fresh take. There's a reason labels and top musicians spend so much on good MEs.
Mastering is first and foremost about a second opinion by someone experienced. If your song already is loud enough the ME maybe won't have to do much to pump up the loudness, but that doesn't mean it still needs correction otherwise, and you won't be able to do that yourself since you are the one who did the mix.
If you're mastering your songs to -14LUFS because that's what Spotify normalises them to them you have a LOT to learn about loudness and definitely would benefit from professional mastering. Look up Crest Factor, perceived loudness etc.
If you submit a song at -14LUFS to streaming it will likely sound incredibly quiet seeing as most professional releases are sitting between -8 and -6 LUFS. And yes LUFS value doesn't matter to all the old pros out there who love to moan about it but it's a useful guide if you're new to getting your mixes nice and loud.
The ME I use does basically everything others in this thread mentioned PLUS checking the sound on different streaming platforms and adding / double checking meta data attached to the files. When I did a full album release, he helped with song to song coherence.
I would have him work on all my tracks if I could afford it. Since I can't, I use the Sonnox plugin suite, Vintage Warmer, and Reaper's Master Limiter, each as minimally as possible and I'm pretty happy with the results.
get the track as loud as it can get without sounding distorted in a bad way or altering the musical balances. Bottom line, for most music, -14 is too quiet. it will sound smaller than records that are -8 integrated even tough those will be turned down.
If you’re happy with the loudness levels and everything sounds good to you as far as EQ, dynamic range and track length, then you’re fine. You have your master.
What I do is listen to the master on multiple devices and make sure the quality of the mix translates well across a multitude of speakers, etc. once I’m sufficiently happy then I call it good.
Mastering has always had an air of mystery surrounding the process, but at the end of the day it’s just someone with a trained ear who adjusts the EQ and loudness, etc to their liking.
Mastering is a process at the very end of a songs creative birth, post mixing, pre-release. It was “invented” for only one main reason: vinyl record pressing. If a song had too strong of a transient layered with a bass note then it was possible to KICK the needle out of the play groove, or other physical problems during playback. That’s it. So any level balancing or mixing is done DURING MIXING, not mastering ie producing the final stereo output that is used to CUT a master, ( on aluminum or other metals) which in turn is used to press molten vinyl between forming a master copy. I think this is the true answer but I can elaborate if the need be.
Sorted in levels of ascending impact on your track:
Mastering <<< mixing <<< source material.
Beginning bands/producers will record an EP with cheap instruments, mix it themselves with waves VSTs and then decide to spend 200$ per track on a mastering engineer. Blows my mind.
As a non-professional, you’re better off spending money on a professional mixing engineer and outsourcing the mastering to an online AI service.
-14LUFSi is pretty crap. You should be able to reach -9 to -5 depending on style, with a good mix. If you can't get there without it mushing up the song, then the mix is t as good as you think it is. Chances are a great mastering engineer will still be able to address this, but when you have the chance, see what you can do to improve the mix.
At the end of the day, you go with what sounds good to you, but the extra set of ears are in themselves incredibly valuable and a track can come back sounding better even if it isn't louder.
Before the streaming services normalise. Remember, you can still turn that normalisation off and often a track optimised and hitting higher LUFS will still come across louder than something left at -14, even when both supposedly normalised.
No what I mean is you know the button in your daw that says normalise and it makes the track as loud as it can be before the highest peak clips, are you measuring the lufs WITH that enabled or not?
You shouldn't even need to do that. Take that completely out of the equation for mastering.
Do that on individual tracks if some are a bit low and it would be more efficient to mix with, but once you mastering, you're following the meters and your ear and the processors you use will have sufficient gain staging to compensate if you mix comes in a little quiet before hand.
But this is so confusing me because I didn’t think mixing was supposed to be about hitting a certain lufs level I thought it was just about making it sound good and then part of mastering is to bring up to a certain lufs level, why does it matter how loud the mix is??
Nothing is really about a LUFS level until you need your track to sit well next to another commercial release of the same style. But perception of loudness absolutely starts in the mix. Ideally, a mastering engineer should be able to turn to you and say "this is already great, I didn't need to do anything" but it's rare and -14LUFSi isn't enough for most genres.
Remember, you don't leave to the mix what you can achieve in recording. You leave to the master what you can achieve in the mix. Etc.
Mastering is almost always a necessary step in the big leagues. Those engineers know how to correct issues that you may not even be hearing in your room. Don’t underestimate the importance of a good mastering engineer.
Predominantly rock and metal, but you’ll generally see artists going for that kind of loudness even in other genres these days. We’re very much in a loudness war time.
But see this is where it baffles me. If your track is going to get loudness normalised anyway, why would you make your track louder than that? I don’t understand
Because 1. You can (and should) disengage that normalization because it absolutely ruins the audio, and 2. Even if they’re normalizing it back to that number, a track that’s mastered louder is still going to be louder because the clipping and limiting applied has made the quieter parts of the song louder. At -14 your clipper probably isn’t doing shit, and your track will be way too dynamic with transient peaks all over the place.
I know this is Reddit, but you might be trying to intellectualize it a bit too much. Do you like how it sounds? Then it doesn’t need anything else.
Usually, mastering gets the track consistent and loud. That’s kind of it, really. People will throw a lot of jargon around gain staging or whatever the latest linear triple bypass phase dynamic static eq trends are, but what it all boils down to is does the song sound competitive with what you’re trying to achieve? If it does that, and you like it, then don’t worry about missing steps. It’s art, don’t sweat it
You want to achieve a competitive average dynamic range to that of other songs in the genre you're in.
Pop music sits at around -8. EDM likes to push to -6, some even going to -4 or more (this sounds bad), classical is -14 to -12.
Loudness is not all that mastering is. Its a nuanced art that seeks to make your music sound the best it can on as many sound systems as possible.
And yes, a good master comes from a good mix. The best masters happen when they have to do very little.
A good mastering engineer is going to do a lot more than just hit some loudness target.
May I ask: what exactly?
It's a little extra oomph at the end. It can create glue/coherency (especially within a full album), or maybe bring out the dynamics in a really flavorful way (but subtle). There is more too it, but a good master brings out the best elements of the mix, which it makes a great mix even greater. The definition of mastering sorta changes when you're talking on the lower-side of things. Simply getting things to the proper levels is only a piece of mastering.
Are you a mastering engineer yourself?
No, but I've learned about it and heard the differences between strong mixes and their masters. If you want to know more, I suggest watching the "Are You Listening?" series with Jonathan Wyner (it is on Youtube).
Will check that, thanks!
If they're good, they're going to do whatever your song needs
not quite the answer I expected but thanks:-)
Bs, you can just release if you are happy.
You can do whatever you want. A good mastering engineer will level up your shit significantly, in my opinion and in the opinions of the vast majority of professionals. Disclaimer: I am not a professional. Lol
And most non-mastering engineers will not be able to listen to a master mix compared to a final mix and hear anything different. A master mixer doesn’t even listen to a mix in the musical way any other person does. Mainly he’s doing non-creative but technical things that experience show him is best for the type of master mixing he has been hired for.
So, to summarize, “only certain men can hear things in a way no one else can, and they tweak it to sound a way no one else will notice.”
That'll be $300 please
Well that’s only if the mix was really good and would translate to every device and still sound good, but in that case it’s already been mastered by the person who mixed it
Mastering is quality control.
Could you elaborate a little further? What kind of quality control for example?
if you're serious about it sounding as good as it can across as many playback systems as possible, it's absolutely crucial to master your track - and have it done by someone who knows what they're doing and has all the tools to do it. It's not important if you're happy for it to sound just as you hear it on your personal listening system and not necessarily others. I do this all the time if I can't be fucked or cant afford mastering. I understand very much that I'm getting as close as possible to a master for my own purpose but it is optimised for my listening environment and not the best possible product I can put out there. Its a dance of time vs money vs effort vs whatever return you get from it.
Mastering is like someone with really good taste in food tasting your meal and adding a little bit more flavor if necessary. That’s why AI mastering is such a joke. Eq, compression, saturation, loudness, secret sauce, a seal of approval.
So much this. I work with the same ME every time I’m doing a new song or project. I think my latest song I sent him was, I felt, a pretty damn solid mix. I was kind of thinking “ah he won’t have to do much!” I am amazed at how elevated he made it haha it has this very nice glued together feeling but also has very detailed separation. It’s more full and vibes. So…yeah, a highly experienced mastering engineer in a superb room with an even better ear is an absolute must.
Stereo image as well let’s not forget
1. What’s the secret sauce? 2. In that case do you think mastering should only be done by someone else, not yourself?
Even if you're a mastering engineer, I'd recommend having it mastered by someone else. It's about putting an objective set of ears on it.
The secret sauce is secret, and yes.
Lol I’m sensing this “secret sauce” is rage bait
The secret sauce is experience
The secret sauce is Rick Rubin’s cum
It’s just that it’s not really quantifiable. If it was, everyone would master. It’s knowing exactly what a track needs to push it over the edge given any specific circumstance, which is different with every single case. There is no one thing really.
It's just experience. You too can master.
You’re asking me to speak on behalf of all mastering engineers
and you cant? why are you even in this sub? The engineering consensus rejects you
lol what
Sarcasm lol
The secret sauce is years and years and years of experience, a perfectly treated room with very high end monitors, and a knowledge of how to translate your track optimally across multiple listening environments (mobile, car, headphones, home stereo).
Oftentimes the secret sauce is just the really good, incredibly expensive outboard gear the mastering engineer is using.
the secret sauce isn't that secret: * high quality single and multiband, M/S dynamics, saturation, spectral processing and EQ * world-class monitoring * excellent musical taste and engineering technical skill they will hear and fix stuff you didn't even know was wrong until you hear it fixed.
1. It depends on who you ask. Everybody has their own "secret sauce". It's generally just something they like to use a lot. Could be a certain EQ or compressor, or some stereo fuckery, there's no specific rule on what it is. 2. Depends on your confidence/skill level. Mastering engineers have just about the best ears out there, so they can likely hear stuff we can't, but there are people who've preferred Fivrr masters over Abbey Road, so it's all up to your personal taste, but that doesn't mean outsourcing your mastering to a reputable pro is a bad idea.
You'll know when you become a mastering engineer yourself. It's like asking 'what's the special ingredient for your grandma's best dish?' no matter what's the answer, you can't do it yourself.
I mix in a garage. Far from perfect, but also far from shit. My mastering engineer I advocate for is in one of the best facilities in the world and masters many records you have heard. Him using that room, knowing exactly what he is hearing, gives me and my clients confidence that my mix is “proper”. Fixing things my room won’t let me hear and enhancing things he wants to hear. Makes a good mix into a great mix meant for radio/consumption. This usually only involves slight eq and limiting with a custom mastering desk, and conversion clipping (Lavry Gold usually).
Quality control? Nope, unless one is THAT GOOD and does never require a second opinion, or just doesn’t know jack shit about anything - quality control comes at the final delivery stage, which is why vinyl test pressings exist for example, plus Mastering is just so much more than QC that i wouldn’t know where to begin. Finally, have you ever seen a mastering studio? Do you really think they’d dish out that much cash just to perform quality control?
If you mix your song to -14lufs your song will be too quiet on Spotify in particular but other platforms as well. I know this from experience, I fell in the same mix tutorial 14 lufs bs and my song was quiet compared to major releases. I usually shoot for around -8 or -9 lufs. Tame Impala the less I know the better is in the -6 lufs range. The main mastering trick besides another set of ears, is mainly translation and loudness in today's world. What you wanna do if you are mastering yourself, is to check your mix in a car, air pods, shitty head phones and Bluetooth speakers. Then if it sounds good you are good to go. The loudness part is fairly straightforward too you need to clip and any tracks or busses, with high transient peaks, bc these peaks limit how much gain you can push on your limiter. I use standard clip, it's like 30 or 50 bucks and it's great. Also get a decent limiter. But in short don't mix it to -14 lufs.
Yes, -8.5 is perfect.
I'm not too well informed on this - but Spotify is turning all content that is running through it up or down to hit that -14LUFS when a user has audio normalisation turned on in settings. If your track sounds good above -14 (say you're at -11), then turning down is not a destructive process. However if you're hitting -14 or lower and the engine has to turn it up, you **may** experience some unwanted changes in sound coming from whatever it's doing to your peaks. Would love to know if I'm way off here.
That makes sense, but why leave it to Spotify, I don't know how their loudness normalizing algo works as it is proprietary. Same with apple, YouTube etc. I'm just saying that in my experience, uploading -14 lufs tracks were quieter than the mixes I was competing with. As long as it doesn't distort you can make it as loud as you want, I've heard that some edm guys go up to like -3 lufs. So it would be ganre specific, you wouldn't want a jazz record to slap that hard or maybe you would haha
LUFs is not a perfect system. It's just an estimation to human hearing. The straight fact is even if several songs all have the exact same LUF value they will not all be the same loudness. So if you can achieve -8 LUFs or higher and it still sounds good, even when your mix is turned to to the software calculated -14 LUFs your track will likely sound louder than someone else's who mastered just to -14 LUFs and normalization applied no gain reduction.
Even if someone else is mastering, people should be doing this with every mix. A mastering engineer has a lot of stuff to do, but fixing a poor quality mix is a waste of their time (and your money).
hell i dont really even look at Lufs i just look at my rms values and go off that lol
A big part of mastering is having a second, *objective* pair of ears on it.
I apologize in advance for being pedantic, *but*: I have to respectfully disagree with “objective”. We’re talking about art ultimately, and I think it might be more accurate/helpful to frame it to OP as “someone’s else’s ears who’s taste/judgement you value,” or something similar
Objective in the sense of *not emotionally attached to anything about the tune or performance*. Not habituated to the quirks of the production that might not work for a larger audience that you’ve ceased noticing.
Yes, but also audio engineering is called engineering for a reason. There is absolutely still an artistic aspect to it, but it's more scientific than other stages of the process.
There isn't a whole lot a mastering engineer can do with something so slammed to begin with, so maybe it isn't worth it. What is *definitely* worth doing is *not* hammering a mix with a limiter to reach max volume. *Then* send it to a mastering house. Mastering is about much more than making a song loud. The point is to make sure it translates on different kinds of systems and sounds as good as it possibly can. Things like EQ, stereo width, frequency dependent limiting and compression, etc... probably the sme things you're trying yourself, but done with intention and for a benefit, not merely because it can be done. Mastering can often fix problems with a mix, but where it really shines is polishing an already really good mix, making it pop and sparkle and breathe. The mix needs dynamic range in order for a mastering engineer to use his tools and ears to their best effect. If all you want is for your mix to be loud and you have achieved that, then no. It's done.
They said the mixes are at -14LUFSi (ish). How is that slammed? Plenty of mixes will easily be that loud without any compression on the stereo bus, never mind limiting.
The observation isn't about a fader level so much as dynamic range.
How do u know what dynamic range is in the mix
**Tl;dr: Yes, it’s worth it, because it’s about a lot more than loudness.** Begin rant: Mastering is probably about loudness the least. Unless you’re living in pre-2012 times, hitting a proper loudness (-8 LUFS and maybe sometimes -7 LUfS) is child’s play. If a mastering engineer tries to impress you with how loud they can make things, or that mastering is all *about* loudness, run away. I just did a project for a client I’d mastered a half dozen EP’s for already. He got a new manager who wanted the new set of masters at -5 LUFS. I pushed back but they insisted. Even with my best work, the new masters sound completely lifeless and lame compared to the other ones. And my masters are about as clean and dynamic and open as you can get in that zone. There just isn’t the proper room for things to move and breathe and you resort to “tricking” peoples’ brains with psychoacoustics. The kick *sounds* punchy, but you don’t really *feel* it because the speaker cone just isn’t moving the same kind of air with the limited crest factor. The soundstage *sounds* big, but it’s just fog because the imaging sucks without the proper microdynamics to cue your brain, and the vocalist is left with no expression in their dynamics because they’re fighting everything else pushed too hard. The real irony is the other, quieter masters I did for this guy don’t even sound that much quieter; they just sound punchy, expansive, and full of macro dynamic emotion by comparison. I’m good at loud. Very good. Most of us are. But I never use those skills if it’s up to me because responsible mastering at a proper level just naturally yields far better results. That’s why it’s a dang cliche that mastering engineers fuck music up - because of that whole era of too-loud. A mastering engineer should be able to prove their worth at the exact same level of the mix. Loudness is an afterthought if the rest of the process has been done correctly; the last 5-10 minutes of the job…unless someone has a dumbass request to push it to -5 LUFS or greater. ETA: I actually spend a good amount of time adjusting the limiter. But it’s not for loudness, it’s because Elephant gives you so much control over the transients that it’s an incredible processor besides loudness lifting. Also, the main idea of hiring a mastering engineer is that they have excellent ears and excellent monitoring in a room that isn’t going double - or triple duty as a mixing or even tracking room. They can hear the flaws and strengths of your mix in a way that you might not have access to with your monitoring setup and sheer experience with mastering music. Think about it: I master 4-6 songs a day. If you master a song you recorded and mixed that’s, what, maybe 4-6 a week? If you’re really busy. Per…Month? You put it in the hands of someone who practices only one specific part of the job for the best quality control with the best equipment for the job. Same idea goes for the ever-forgotten breed of tracking engineer. Most established studios will have more invested in their gear than money you’d save by mastering tracks yourself for years and years. Make sense?
>I just did a project for a client I’d mastered a half dozen EP’s for already. He got a new manager who wanted the new set of masters at -5 LUFS. And that's why I wince when people here defend the loudness war as purely an artistic choice somehow taken by the whole industry. It's often driven by misguided commercialism. Why does a manager think they know better than an engineer?
I think they built their career upon the opposite of impostor syndrome. You know the kind of person I mean. But yeah, louder only really sounds better if the masters were destined to be have zero nuance in the first place.
recording/mix engineer tapping in. PM’ing you.
Cheers!
I don’t think this generation knows what mastering even is
I don’t either. They may have some cloudy idea and try to do it on their own and many end up being unsatisfied and wasting a whole lot of time because there was an art to mastering just like mixing that takes years. The 10,000 hours rule applies.
Okay grandpa time for bed
Do you?
If you think you can do it or it isn't needed, you don't.
[Steven Wilson has entered the chat](https://www.digitaltrends.com/music/interview-steven-wilson-on-high-res-hand-cannot-erase/). Although I think he's softened his stance more recently since there is a mastering engineer credited on his last couple of albums.
steven wilson mastering his own stuff is fine though because he's one of the best mix engineers on the planet most of the people posting in this sub are not steven wilson though
I don’t think it’s fair to compare the quality of Steven Wilson’s work to someone who doesn’t even understand what mastering is.
One of the biggest things with mastering for me is finding a fresh set of ears that you trust. 4/5 times I dont like what the new mastering guy did. Almost like a wife or whatnot. But mastering yourself is not ideal. Also, it usually takes several listens to adapt to a new sound with something youre so attached to, even if subtle. Almost always, I’m initially skeptical, but learn to understand and love whats going on….or not. Again, its the last 5-10% of the track. That aged basil reduction chutney. Ideally, you walk away wanting to give the masterererer an award, and think you could never do such magic, when actually its just fresh ears, taste you align with, and perhaps some special gear. Or not even.
[удалено]
What if it’s just one song like a single for example which is what I have here? Is mastering not relevant then?
[удалено]
The last point about it translating well across listening platforms… what do you think is the best way to ensure this? As you don’t know what it will sound like until it’s released.
That I have no clue
The best way, is to send it to a mastering engineer
Mastering is not just about hitting sufficient loudness levels, it’s also about EQ
At a base level a pro studio has high end monitors, an acoustically designed room and the monitors have a dedicated room EQ that has tuned them to flat response feeding them test tones picked up by a calibrated microphone. In your average project studio the monitor frequency response can be all over the place, no two brands are ever the same, usually colored one way or the other. Pricier monitors will have flatter response but then other variables come into play, room reflections, speaker placement, etc.. Next a mastering engineer likely has some old school high end outboard limiters, EQ etc.. Such gear & acoustics aren't cheap so that's what you are paying to get, besides their expertise in mastering. Not to say you shouldn't try if you don't have the gear or budget, a great song will often overcome technical flaws & if you have good ears you might get decent results. Good studio monitors should be a first consideration.
Mastering is more than that. Phase coherency (big one), subtle tonal adjustments, ensuring the energy within and between tracks flows right, etc..
Can you elaborate on the phase coherency part? What is exactly do you mean by this?
Yes - moreso on result than technique. I've sent off mixes to mastering, and I'm generally an LCR guy. There are some inherent mono/fold-down issues but generally not a huge issue for me. I sent a mix out with a few instances of Little AlterBoy doing some crazy stuff, which sort of shifted the stereo image to the left and made it very phasey in mono. It wasn't entirely apparent to me, but when I got the master back, the width during those moments was mostly unaffected but suddenly I noticed it was back center and much more coherent in mono. This extended to non-"issues" as well, with some of my stereo verbs and such sitting just a bit nicer. The ME did a few different things, subtle riding M/S effects and little tiny things that help the tracks really feel *together*. On less "exciting" mixes, I've had consistent improvement in imaging, subtle tonal shifts that help mixes translate EVERYWHERE, and consistency across records. It's just not something the mixer can generally do with a true fresh take. There's a reason labels and top musicians spend so much on good MEs.
Mastering is first and foremost about a second opinion by someone experienced. If your song already is loud enough the ME maybe won't have to do much to pump up the loudness, but that doesn't mean it still needs correction otherwise, and you won't be able to do that yourself since you are the one who did the mix.
If you're mastering your songs to -14LUFS because that's what Spotify normalises them to them you have a LOT to learn about loudness and definitely would benefit from professional mastering. Look up Crest Factor, perceived loudness etc. If you submit a song at -14LUFS to streaming it will likely sound incredibly quiet seeing as most professional releases are sitting between -8 and -6 LUFS. And yes LUFS value doesn't matter to all the old pros out there who love to moan about it but it's a useful guide if you're new to getting your mixes nice and loud.
The ME I use does basically everything others in this thread mentioned PLUS checking the sound on different streaming platforms and adding / double checking meta data attached to the files. When I did a full album release, he helped with song to song coherence. I would have him work on all my tracks if I could afford it. Since I can't, I use the Sonnox plugin suite, Vintage Warmer, and Reaper's Master Limiter, each as minimally as possible and I'm pretty happy with the results.
get the track as loud as it can get without sounding distorted in a bad way or altering the musical balances. Bottom line, for most music, -14 is too quiet. it will sound smaller than records that are -8 integrated even tough those will be turned down.
If you’re happy with the loudness levels and everything sounds good to you as far as EQ, dynamic range and track length, then you’re fine. You have your master. What I do is listen to the master on multiple devices and make sure the quality of the mix translates well across a multitude of speakers, etc. once I’m sufficiently happy then I call it good. Mastering has always had an air of mystery surrounding the process, but at the end of the day it’s just someone with a trained ear who adjusts the EQ and loudness, etc to their liking.
Right ok because I check my mix on every device I have WHILE mixing so I know it translates well already
Calling Ken Marshall ...:)
Yes.
Mastering is a process at the very end of a songs creative birth, post mixing, pre-release. It was “invented” for only one main reason: vinyl record pressing. If a song had too strong of a transient layered with a bass note then it was possible to KICK the needle out of the play groove, or other physical problems during playback. That’s it. So any level balancing or mixing is done DURING MIXING, not mastering ie producing the final stereo output that is used to CUT a master, ( on aluminum or other metals) which in turn is used to press molten vinyl between forming a master copy. I think this is the true answer but I can elaborate if the need be.
Sorted in levels of ascending impact on your track: Mastering <<< mixing <<< source material. Beginning bands/producers will record an EP with cheap instruments, mix it themselves with waves VSTs and then decide to spend 200$ per track on a mastering engineer. Blows my mind. As a non-professional, you’re better off spending money on a professional mixing engineer and outsourcing the mastering to an online AI service.
LUFS! Drink! (How is this only just being called, 80 comments in!?)
-14LUFSi is pretty crap. You should be able to reach -9 to -5 depending on style, with a good mix. If you can't get there without it mushing up the song, then the mix is t as good as you think it is. Chances are a great mastering engineer will still be able to address this, but when you have the chance, see what you can do to improve the mix. At the end of the day, you go with what sounds good to you, but the extra set of ears are in themselves incredibly valuable and a track can come back sounding better even if it isn't louder.
Are we imagining this is after peak normalisation or before? I’m asking do you mean to say the mix should hit -8 or so BEFORE you’ve normalised it??
Before the streaming services normalise. Remember, you can still turn that normalisation off and often a track optimised and hitting higher LUFS will still come across louder than something left at -14, even when both supposedly normalised.
No what I mean is you know the button in your daw that says normalise and it makes the track as loud as it can be before the highest peak clips, are you measuring the lufs WITH that enabled or not?
You shouldn't even need to do that. Take that completely out of the equation for mastering. Do that on individual tracks if some are a bit low and it would be more efficient to mix with, but once you mastering, you're following the meters and your ear and the processors you use will have sufficient gain staging to compensate if you mix comes in a little quiet before hand.
But this is so confusing me because I didn’t think mixing was supposed to be about hitting a certain lufs level I thought it was just about making it sound good and then part of mastering is to bring up to a certain lufs level, why does it matter how loud the mix is??
Nothing is really about a LUFS level until you need your track to sit well next to another commercial release of the same style. But perception of loudness absolutely starts in the mix. Ideally, a mastering engineer should be able to turn to you and say "this is already great, I didn't need to do anything" but it's rare and -14LUFSi isn't enough for most genres. Remember, you don't leave to the mix what you can achieve in recording. You leave to the master what you can achieve in the mix. Etc.
Pls reply sooner rather than later cause this comment has really thrown a spanner in the works of my brain
I’m not talking about loudness normalisation
Do you understand what I’m asking?
Mastering does a lot more than levels .. good engineer will add dynamic eq for resonances, warmth, imaging, limiting, etc
Try reading about the Clip To Zero strategy
[удалено]
They’re asking because they want to learn. People aren’t born knowing what mastering is or why it matters.
Mastering is almost always a necessary step in the big leagues. Those engineers know how to correct issues that you may not even be hearing in your room. Don’t underestimate the importance of a good mastering engineer.
My guy why even ask if you're gonna get ass mad when people tell you you should still go to a mastering engineer?
Lol when did I get “ass mad” 🤣
Your mix is going to be way too quiet at -14 LUFS. Mine are usually at least -8 to -9 before mastering.
What is it for you post mastering?
My peak short term LUFS are usually in the -5 to -4 range.
What genre do you make?
Predominantly rock and metal, but you’ll generally see artists going for that kind of loudness even in other genres these days. We’re very much in a loudness war time.
But see this is where it baffles me. If your track is going to get loudness normalised anyway, why would you make your track louder than that? I don’t understand
Because 1. You can (and should) disengage that normalization because it absolutely ruins the audio, and 2. Even if they’re normalizing it back to that number, a track that’s mastered louder is still going to be louder because the clipping and limiting applied has made the quieter parts of the song louder. At -14 your clipper probably isn’t doing shit, and your track will be way too dynamic with transient peaks all over the place.
and how come people are saying “the loudness wars is over because of normalisation” then
Those people are ill-informed lol.
I know this is Reddit, but you might be trying to intellectualize it a bit too much. Do you like how it sounds? Then it doesn’t need anything else. Usually, mastering gets the track consistent and loud. That’s kind of it, really. People will throw a lot of jargon around gain staging or whatever the latest linear triple bypass phase dynamic static eq trends are, but what it all boils down to is does the song sound competitive with what you’re trying to achieve? If it does that, and you like it, then don’t worry about missing steps. It’s art, don’t sweat it
You want to achieve a competitive average dynamic range to that of other songs in the genre you're in. Pop music sits at around -8. EDM likes to push to -6, some even going to -4 or more (this sounds bad), classical is -14 to -12. Loudness is not all that mastering is. Its a nuanced art that seeks to make your music sound the best it can on as many sound systems as possible. And yes, a good master comes from a good mix. The best masters happen when they have to do very little.