#67 in Arts & photography books
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Reddit mentions of Mastering Audio: The Art and the Science
Sentiment score: 18
Reddit mentions: 30
We found 30 Reddit mentions of Mastering Audio: The Art and the Science. Here are the top ones.
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First of all, you have to decide what you want the focus of the track to be on. You talk about bass a lot, so I guess that's your focus. So start by lowering all faders to the bottom (start with silence).
>When mixing, what are my goals to get my levels at?
Skip to the main part of your song, a part where everything is playing. Raise the fader on your bass channel so that it peaks at about -12dB on your Master channel meter. Now, without looking at any meters, raise the fader of your next most important channel (in EDM, usually the kick) until it sounds good alongside the bass. Then do the same with the next most important channel until all three sound good together and repeat until you've raised all faders by whatever amount.
By the time you're done, you will probably be peaking at -6dB. Don't worry if you aren't, so long as you're not clipping.
Not every part of your song will fit into this mix, but it's a pretty good place to start. Now you get busy with automation in parts like your intro/outro and breakdowns.
>To make my track professional sounding, I'm using a spectrum analyzer, so what do I want the shape of all the levels to be?
Forget about the spectrum analyser. They have their uses, but real men mix with their ears. Professionals mix with their ears. Stop worrying about the numbers (so long as you're not clipping!)
>Is bass supposed to be higher than the rest because it's perceived as lower?
Not necessarily. You might find that your bass fader is higher than the rest, but that's because you made it your focus. It would be different if you were making a rock track, where the guitar or vocals would be the focus of the mix.
>How do I get things like my lead to stand out without squashing hats and other sounds?
We call this "separation," and you do it with EQ. If your leads are interfering with your hats, chances are that they are sharing some of the same frequencies. What you have to do with EQ is separate the frequencies of each channel so that they don't clash. This is where you would use that spectrum analyser, at least until you develop a good sense of frequency with your ears alone. Solo the hats and look at where they peak on the spectrum. Now cut that frequency from your lead with EQ. Don't go nuts, a cut of 5-6dB is more than enough. Now do the same in reverse - look at where the lead peaks and cut that from the hats. The two tracks should now play nicely together without clashing.
By the way, I'm of the opinion that with EDM, where the producer is in full control of the sound design of all the elements of a track, if you need to drastically EQ any track, then it's better to just rethink the sound selection. Why bother trying to force a lead to fit a hi-hat when you have many GB of other hi-hats on your hard drive, or when you have a synth with total control of the frequencies in your lead? It's true, you can't polish a turd, and you can't make two polished turds look good together either.
>Often I test it in my car with a subwoofer and my levels for bass are low but I'm already almost clipping.
It's probably just that other channels have bass information that doesn't need to be there, leaving no room for your actual bass. Since you're now mixing to focus on your bass, this should be less of a problem. To go along with what I was saying about frequency separation it's common to just high-pass filter every channel to about 120Hz except the bass and kick, so that they are the only thing heard in that whole frequency band (which is what your subs are playing).
>I just need like an in depth text resource
My recommendations are The Art of Mixing and Mastering Audio.
Hi there!
I've been producing Electronic Music as a hobby for almost 10 years.
Here's a quick guide to help you get started:
1.
you will need a DAW (Digita Audio Workstation), this is your tool and work environment in which you will create and mix your beats.
Depending on if you are on Windows or Mac you have a few different options.
FL Studio - This is the DAW I started producing in, back in version 8.something. It is widely considered one of the best starter DAW's because of the very intuitive user interface and HUGE library of native samples and plugins. FL Studio is sometimes looked down upon by some producers, who don't seem to take it seriously as a professional DAW. In my experience these producers often lack experience themselves, FL is a great DAW and in the end it is what you do with the tool that matters ;).
Ableton Live - This is the DAW I currently use, I switched from FL to Ableton for the simple reason that it was easier to collaborate with a friend of mine who also used Ableton at the time. I feel that FL Studio's native plugins and instruments are a bit better than Ableton's, but I personally like Ableton's interface and workflow better than FL's.
What is very specific about Ableton is the "Live Session mode", where you can arrange your sounds and loops in groups that you can trigger live with a midi controller, which is very handy for live performances (obviously) but also often used as a song writing tool, especially in hip-hop and futurebeat genres. - famous artists that use Ableton: Skrillex, Flume, Netsky, Dada Life, ...
These are the two DAW's I have personal experience with, but there are other options as well: Steinberg Cubase, PreSonus Studio One, Apple Logic Pro, and many more. Best to do your own research and download a few trial versions to see which one you like best.
2. After you decided on a DAW and "legally" obtained one, it's time to start making music. By that I mean "time to start making very shit music that you will look back on with huge cringe a few years from now" because that's exactly what it is like.
I don't mean this in a discouraging way, on the contrary! It takes loads of time and effort before you'll start noticing you're improving. One of the most important things to keep in mind is to be self-critical and open to criticism. Don't assume you know better when you're just starting out, be an empty cup because it's impossible to fill one that's already full.
Here's a very inspiring monologue on the subject by Ira Glass
3. Tutorials and books. Here are some books and tutorials that helped me out a lot, and hopefully will help you too!
books:
Mastering Audio: The Art and Science - Bob Katz widely considered to be the producer's bible.
The Mixing Engineers Handbook - Bobby Owsinski
tutorials:
Sadowick's ultimate Ableton Guide a full beginner to intermediate guide of Ableton Live, purely for this tutorial series alone I'd reccommend using Ableton. It's very comprehensive. Sadowick also has lots of other very useful tutorials on his channel, but is currently on hiatus because of his battle with cancer :(
SeamlessR this entire channel is gold. Seamless uses FL Studio but what he teaches is applicable to most DAW's. Lots of great tutorials on synthesis, mostly Drum and Bass focused but very interesting.
ADSR Tutorials very informative tutorials ranging from mixing to synthesis. Often about House and Techno, but most techniques are really applicable to every genre.
____
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if you start with these you'll come a long way, if you have any questions; pm me.
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EDIT here are some subreddits you might be interested in as well:
/r/makinghiphop
/r/WeAreTheMusicMakers
/r/edmproduction
Whenever it seems that all my time I invested in making a track is on a verge of being thrown down the drain, I just stop and do one of the following:
After that I come back and usually things go really well.
Sorry to be that guy, but you should be relying on your ears, not your eyes, to judge the loudness of a track.
If you need visual aids, you should get a loudness level meter, such as iZotope Insight, Waves Level Meter, or the free MLoudnessAnalyzer. For most music, a target of -16LUFS is standard, however, many pop albums hit -9LUFS.
If you want to read up more on it, the best book, IMO, is Bob Katz's "Mastering Audio: The Art and the Science".
https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Audio-Science-Bob-Katz/dp/0240808371
http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Audio-The-Art-Science/dp/0240808371
Without a doubt I'd recommend Mastering Audio if you want to learn the very basics, although be aware it's not easy and will take lots of practice. PM me if you have any questions.
EDIT: added lowest available prices on Amazon, shipping (which may or may not be free) not included
Mastering is more than just about applying compression, effects, etc...
Back in the days where people listened to albums as opposed to singles the mastering engineer usually was responsible for fade outs, fade ins, track ordering, space between tracks, etc...
Then there is the whole host of tasks related to digital managment, water marking and tagging, producing a DPP file to deliver to the repro house, generating cue sheets for a cd replicator, etc. I would highly suggest you read Bob Katz's book:
http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Audio-The-Art-Science/dp/0240808371/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1407885142&sr=8-1&keywords=Bob+katz
It can tell you far more about mastering than most other people on the planet.
Bob Katz's mastering book is pretty much the Bible of mastering techniques.
I have spent some time in mastering studios, and I can try to shed some light on this to the best of my knowledge. As a precursor, master recordings usually exist on stereo analog tape whose mix has been bounced from the multitrack mix. That is, until you get somewhere into the 90's when elements started to be recorded either partially or fully in digital. That's why on eariler era CD's, you'll sometimes see "A/A/D" or "D/D/D" etc. on the back of CDs to signify whether it was recorded, mixed, or mastered via digital or analog means.
Generally speaking, I have found that a remaster sounds cleaner and brighter, which I think is a combination of both the improved conversion, and processing to fit our modern sensibilities, since today's listeners are more used to a slightly "louder" (more compressed/ peak limited) sound, as well as added openness to the high end of mixes.
Edit: For further reading, this book by Bob Katz is a bible on the process of mastering.
The guide I just linked, despite being written for a specific commercial product, has lots of good conceptional information that be applied to whatever tools you have at your disposal to work with. It is a widely recommended resource for learning the fundamentals of mastering techniques.
Besides, I think your expectations for what people will put into reddit posts is a little screwy. Mastering is a huge topic. Its is an art form in and of itself, not a simple procedure like side-chain compression or programming a specific synth patch. Introductions to the art of mastering take up hundreds of pages. If you want to understand a huge topic, read a book. If you want a few pointers, tips, or tricks, ask people on sites like reddit.
If you haven't made much music in the past, I would recommend learning how to DJ while also studying the principles of audio synthesis and music theory.
DJing is a really good way of understanding what elements of a tune make it danceable and exciting - particularly as far as rhythm and harmony are concerned. Digital music production requires a pretty solid understanding of not just computer software but also a few fundamentals, including the physics of sound, the science behind audio synthesis, and then technique things such as editing, signal flow, etc.
A few books I would recommend for getting started are The Computer Music Tutorial and Musicmathics. As far as mixing and mastering is concerned, which are other essential aspects of the production process, I would recommend checking out Robert Katz's Mastering Audio.
Psychoacoustical considerations are probably what most blatantly separate the men from the boys. My recommended starter for this is Music, Cognition, and Computerized Sound by Perry Cook, who is a professor of Computer Music at Princeton.
EDIT: Also, if you don't already, start listening to and appreciating classical music - particularly stuff made after the Renaissance - in order to get an understanding of the emotional impact things such as dynamics and voicing have on the listening experience. Electronic music heavily borrows from the classical music tradition in this context. Digital music production essentially makes you a computerized Mozart, in that you can control dozens of musical voices, but with even more micromanagement potential than the typical classical music conductor can offer. You will not have a complete understanding of these musical concepts from pop/rock music alone, or even from more 'sophisticated' musical practices such as jazz.
Link for the lazy
> You are wildly incorrect. Never before has a compression plugin been too fast for the sampling rate. A compressor would have to have an attack time of 0.00002267573 seconds for this to even make sense.
Compressors multiply the incoming signal by a time-varying gain signal; the total bandwidth of the ideal output signal is approximately the sum of the two. So if you have an input signal at 10kHz, any compression gain signal with a bandwidth over 12.05kHz will alias without additional oversampling in the compressor plugin, which not all plugin manufacturers implement. For any attack time below 1 millisecond, a 12.05kHz-bandlimited approximation of the compressor gain signal will look pretty terrible, but without bandlimiting of the gain signal, you'll get aliasing. Hence, the need for oversampling.
> Furthermore, there is plenty anti-aliasing filters built into DAWs and converters to prevent just the type of distortion you describe.
Anti-aliasing filters are used to prevent aliasing when you start from a higher sampling rate, whether that's infinity (analog) or for an oversampled signal. I don't see how building them into the DAW or an ADC/DAC do anything for the aliasing that occurs inside a plugin.
> You get no advantage bouncing at a higher sampling rate if your plugins over-sample.
And I heartily agree with you on this as can be seen in my original reply. Unfortunately, not all plugins over-sample.
> You have a very incorrect view of how digital audio functions. I highly recommend this book:
> https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Audio-Science-Bob-Katz/dp/0240808371
> It goes into great detail about just how this sort of things work.
Thanks for the recommendation, but for the basics of digital audio, I instead recommend Oppenheim and Schafer's Discrete-Time Signal Processing for the mathematical theory as well as JOS's series of digital audio processing online books for more application-oriented concepts.
Awesome article. Thanks, very clearly written.
If anyone needs more info on gain staging, read the SOS article link he provided.
Below is link if you missed it. I recommend reading the article above first, as it does a good job summarizing the topic.
http://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/gain-staging-your-daw-software
Also see - Bob Katz
https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Audio-Science-Bob-Katz/dp/0240808371
Mastering is a mysterious art form that takes practice and a good ear to be able to do well. The only plugins I would recommend for doing this you've already tried so I doubt you're gonna get anything better. A few things you could try though is mixing the track at a higher volume before using ozone or an L2 on the track or make a new session in your DAW import your mixed track on one channel and then a commercial track on another that is at the volume you want your track to be and then tweak the settings on the L2 or Ozone while doing an a/b comparison with the commercial track to try and get it sounding similar.
If you want to learn more about mastering though this is a fantastic book on the subject.
I realize you said mixing, and this is for mastering, but I figured it might be relevant as well. By Bob Katz http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Audio-The-Art-Science/dp/0240808371
A pdf is easy to find online, or you can support by buying the paperback
From memory, I believe that is The Mixing Engineer's Handbook by Bobby Owsinski.
Another staple read about this is Mastering Audio: The art and the science by Bob Katz
guessing this https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Audio-Science-Bob-Katz/dp/0240808371
Have you read Mastering Audio by Bob Katz?
This would be the best place to start learning about mastering, in my opinion: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mastering-Audio-Science-Bob-Katz/dp/0240808371/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
For videos, Streaky's channel on YouTube is the best I've seen (although I don't necessarily agree with 100% of his opinions): https://www.youtube.com/user/StreakyMasteringTV
I can recommend these video tutorials, which are also available as book.
LINK
Also:
LINK
Bob Katz - Mastering Audio is a fantastic book on this subject. Content ranges from audio fundamentals to advanced technical material, but is never overwhelming.
I would recommend Bob Katz book on mastering. It covers all the main techniques and has beautiful diagrams. http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Audio-The-Art-Science/dp/0240808371
Learn your DAW, the built-in ableton tutorials are an excellent place to start. Then start learning from the masters. These books are pretty good.
http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Audio-The-Art-Science/dp/0240808371
http://www.amazon.com/Mixing-Engineers-Handbook-Second-Edition/dp/1598632515/ref=pd_sim_b_4
I read Katz's "Mastering Digital Audio". Great book with lots of really good info about properly using a computer for mastering. http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Audio-Second-Edition-Science/dp/0240808371/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1334684096&sr=8-3 If you haven't read it and you're trying to learn how to master, this is a great place to start.
I watched this video - the music is cheesy sorry - a few months back and applied the advice. After hunting down the free VST counterparts to the plug-ins used in the video, I tried the techniques out and feel that I have had some success with my amateur mastering techniques. I know I will never master as well as Bob Katz like this, but considering this technique is free the results seems pretty solid.
Speaking of Bob Katz if you want to really dive deep into the art of mastering this book is really nice on the whole topic.
best book:
http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Audio-The-Art-Science/dp/0240808371/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1414103096&sr=8-2&keywords=bob+katz
decent guide, ozone specific:
https://www.izotope.com/en/support/support-resources/guides/ozone-5/
Mastering Audio By Bob Katz. It's the most informative and accurate book on audio I've ever came upon.
http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Audio-The-Art-Science/dp/0240808371 is a pretty good resource. But the best way to learn is working together with someone who knows the tools and uses them well.
That's why MEs are important, but I would say "master" one, then compare the rest to the first one. That is simplistic, assuming all songs sound the same (all songs are the same exact song)
Psychoacoustics take a more prominent role here, since, for example, you can have a song "mastered" at XYZ, and the following at the same XYZ, but if the intro of the next song is not cohesive (starts with the same magnitude), song B will sound less loud than song A, even thought they have the same "mastering" settings.
"Mastering Audio" is a good investment, if you are going to forgo an ME and have someone else take a look at your tracks.