Mastering

11811

Need some advice on mastering a demo!
Have recorded a few demos on protools,just need to get them sounding a bit fuller, mixing wise i think they're pretty spot on, just need them sound,well,lush! have pro-tools le 7.0, also have bias peak with basic plug-ins just have the basic ignitin pack with P.T.
any advice will be great,cheers

could also do with typing classes,that should say MASTERING!!

squibs

Here's some of the stuff I do. read some of it, some of the other stuff just sounded good to me, so take it with a pinch of salt. I don't use pro tools, but the principles should be the same in any environment.

Put a frequncy analyser vst on your stereo mix and look for any trouble spots (obvious severe peaks and dips). You'll notice that it stops dropping off fairly sharply from about 4kHz on - that's normal. If you aren't mastering for clubs, consider a high pass filter or sharp EQ cut at about 40Hz - below that freq can eat speaker energy (cones are visibly flapping in and out) but contribute nothing good to the signal. Consider an exciter or a few dBs of added EQ with a moderately wide Q around 8kHz to add air/crispness/whatever-you-want-to-call-it. Be gentle - it might seem to sound better with more, but not after repeated listens.

Consider using a decent stereo valve/tape saturation plugin and tweak it until the effect is just barely perceptible - again less is more, but it gives the mix warmth.

Get your hands on a decent multiband compressor and use the frequency analyser to guide your compression profile. Again be gentle - the gui representation of the changes shouldn't end up looking like the New York skyline.

Also look at something like this to put at the end of your signal processing chain:
http://www.yohng.com/w1limit.html
and - yeah you guessed it - be gentle

teamdresch

Get the Massey Limiter : smassey.com

TelePaul

squibs advice rocks. I have the voxengo span as my freq analyser. I think the thing you'll notice most about an unmastered song is a lack of 'loudness' when compared to commercial CDs. This is a controversial issue in itself but generally I use kjaerhus audios classic compressor on the premastering seing and up the volume with their classic master limiter - both free.

artvandulet

T-Racks dude! You don't need to have a clue about mastering (like me ) and this is the program you want. Loads of presets to try out. Give it a go.

11811

ack! the kjaerhus stuff is only for windows, cheers for the help guys, have t-racks alright works well enough just need something to get that cd album like loudness

Frankiestylee

Are all these plug-ins etc just for protools? I'm using cubase le and I'm finding it a bit limited in certain areas, but I'm just assuming I don't know how to do what I want with it yet. Nice plug-ins could be tasty.

11811

well they are all rtas plug-ins so they work with a few different programs,dont know about cubase, the ones i use work with ableton,bias peak anyway......