I was hoping a few of you could give me some pointers with Mastering here. I am working with Nuendo 3 and have every plug-in imaginable, but don't know which the best are for mastering. I have a general idea of what i need to be doing but am having a hard time compressing and getting the volume boosted enough.
I know mastering yourself is rarely advised, but it's my only option today.
InstruMental Member since Nov 10th 2005 12463 posts
Mon Nov-28-05 11:42 AM
1. "It's only to be avoided if you can't detach yourself enough from" In response to Reply # 0
the sound to focus on the mixing and leveling.
If you boost the input on the compressor, level it down some, and set the output as high as possible without clipping out, you should be able to get at least a decent output. Of course you'll want to EQ before the compression, and you could normalize/maximize the final product just to square it right up to -0db.
This is kind of manual mastering where you might very well have some plugins that'll automatically do it with tweakable preset packages.
for the advise. I did try all of this and haven't had much success as of yet. I started putting a few different compressions on and the vocal arrangements that were compressed in the mix started to deteriorate. I normalized it too but it didn't change much. It's real dumb to just gain it up right?
I use some of the presets occasionally as a starting point but in this case the mastering presets were not helpful at all.
As far as Nuendo's interface capabilities, I have no complaints. I run Reason through it (granted I'd love an upgrade from Reason).
InstruMental Member since Nov 10th 2005 12463 posts
Mon Nov-28-05 12:57 PM
3. "You could run a couple of compressions at once" In response to Reply # 2
One for just vocals, one for everything else (a technique I recently discovered was compressing the drums some before even putting them through the main mix).
Then, your bus faders would be easier to manage, and maximizing (again with levels not clipping beforehand) should yield pretty good results.
I'm exploring these same concepts right now, I've got Reason running into Ableton Live. Not bad as it goes and fairly user-friendly (VST-compatible too).
6. "RE: You could run a couple of compressions at once" In response to Reply # 3
"One for just vocals, one for everything else (a technique I recently discovered was compressing the drums some before even putting them through the main mix)
Then, your bus faders would be easier to manage, and maximizing (again with levels not clipping beforehand) should yield pretty good results."
yep. . .I am pretty sure I do all dat. I am talking about mastering the mix after the mix is complete.
InstruMental Member since Nov 10th 2005 12463 posts
Mon Nov-28-05 03:31 PM
7. "Final tape mastering should be pretty subtle IMO" In response to Reply # 6
These days the standard album cut is pretty rich in high frequencies, so a final EQ run might be in order if you want to tweak that further, then just a transparent max/limiting to keep the sound levels even from track to track.
I think we're talking about the same step here....
4. "RE: Mastering & Plug-ins" In response to Reply # 0
>I was hoping a few of you could give me some pointers with >Mastering here. I am working with Nuendo 3 and have every >plug-in imaginable, but don't know which the best are for >mastering. I have a general idea of what i need to be doing >but am having a hard time compressing and getting the volume >boosted enough.
Generally mastering involves: - some form of multi band compression - an eq when needed - maybe a bit of stereo imaging here and there (if you want) - a limiter at the end of your chain
Stay away from normalizing as much as possible. It has nothing to do with mastering and will degrade your sound.
InstruMental Member since Nov 10th 2005 12463 posts
Mon Nov-28-05 02:17 PM
5. "Surely that would be mainly if you were doing a significant" In response to Reply # 4
amount of adjusting with the normalization?
I've done some subtle level boosts with a maximizer with no apparent ill effect. But you know...that would generally involve limiting too so I might be speaking on something moot.
8. "RE: Surely that would be mainly if you were doing a significant" In response to Reply # 5
>amount of adjusting with the normalization?
True. It's not often obvious. The reason that I mentioned it is that when the topic of mastering is brought up, cats start to talk about normalizing as if this is a fundamental part of mastering (you didn't, I know). Considering the detrimental effects it has, I fail to see why. Mastering is about changing the dynamics (and so about the perceived loudness of the final product). When you have a limiter as the final stage of your process there is no need to normalize at all since you can adjust the limiter in such a way that your track peaks at 0 db (or when you want to account for cheap cd players: -0.1 to -0.3 db).
9. "RE: Surely that would be mainly if you were doing a significant" In response to Reply # 8
I thought the normalizing might be a bad idea. Why they invent that normalizing stuff anyway? I have still yet to see.
Thanks for the tips. I have been workin on stereo imaging. I have been trying to include as much in the mix as possible, using imaging on all individual tracks (panning doubled parts and putting autopan, chorus, or delay, etc.). Sometimes even the S1 imager, although not entirely sure I am doing it correctly. Stereospread?
Good lookin out on the limiter too. I'd been playin with that.
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