Mastering question

mordeith

Hi guys,
I was wondering if someone might shed their own opinions/experience on this. I spent some time last night mastering my last track. In particular I was EQ'ing the bassline and kicks as well as a seperate synth line to eliminate clashing frequencies in the lower end of the spectrum. It all sounded fine on my DAW (monitoring in headphones by the way). I exported the finished track as a 320k mp3 and loaded it onto my phone to see if it sounded okay there. However the bassline and the little synth line are almost non existent. Can there be that much of a discrepancy bewteen the track in my DAW and an exported mp3 or is it down to what the track is played on. I would have thought (perhaps naively) that if the sound is being played through headpones there would less of a noticable difference than when played through various speakers i.e. laptops, portable speakers, hi-fi system.
All thoughts appreciated.

Neurojazz

mordeith wrote: »

Hi guys,
I was wondering if someone might shed their own opinions/experience on this. I spent some time last night mastering my last track. In particular I was EQ'ing the bassline and kicks as well as a seperate synth line to eliminate clashing frequencies in the lower end of the spectrum. It all sounded fine on my DAW (monitoring in headphones by the way). I exported the finished track as a 320k mp3 and loaded it onto my phone to see if it sounded okay there. However the bassline and the little synth line are almost non existent. Can there be that much of a discrepancy bewteen the track in my DAW and an exported mp3 or is it down to what the track is played on. I would have thought (perhaps naively) that if the sound is being played through headpones there would less of a noticable difference than when played through various speakers i.e. laptops, portable speakers, hi-fi system.
All thoughts appreciated.

There could be many factors - but the quality going into mp3 won't really affect the bass (it takes the top end off mostly)

Here's a short (and not complete list of possible problems)

(1) Too much energy in other frequencies over taking the bottom end
(2) Your room might have a standing wave/s of bass frequencies that accentuated the bass in one place and not another.
(3) The monitors or headphones might accent the bass more/less

etc....


Feel free to post a link here and can analyse.

mordeith

Neurojazz wrote: »

There could be many factors - but the quality going into mp3 won't really affect the bass (it takes the top end off mostly)

Here's a short (and not complete list of possible problems)

(1) Too much energy in other frequencies over taking the bottom end
(2) Your room might have a standing wave/s of bass frequencies that accentuated the bass in one place and not another.
(3) The monitors or headphones might accent the bass more/less

etc....


Feel free to post a link here and can analyse.

Thanks for that. I'll throw it up on Soundcloud and you can have a listen. I still have a few volume levels that need to be adjusted but you can let me know about the frequencies in the meantime (if you don't mind).

Neurojazz

mordeith wrote: »

Thanks for that. I'll throw it up on Soundcloud and you can have a listen. I still have a few volume levels that need to be adjusted but you can let me know about the frequencies in the meantime (if you don't mind).

Ok, here's an example recently I found when mastering.

The user had a huge saw pad that was 'full range' - It covered pretty much the whole frequency range. This 'masked' other sounds behind it and also added muddiness to the lower mid range (a danger area for sounds as so many share this location)

The person had failed to 'bracket' the sound - This is a process where you should remove the unwanted or conflicting frequencies with a high pass or low pass filter to create space for other sounds in the background.

There are better ways the person could have got that huge stab sound, but did what he could to make it 'bigger' which was to turn it up!

It's good practice to just bracket all sounds where possible without damaging the sounds too much.

Also good to side chain the kick against the bass line so that they both don't stack on top of each other at full volume.

mordeith

Neurojazz wrote: »

Ok, here's an example recently I found when mastering.

The user had a huge saw pad that was 'full range' - It covered pretty much the whole frequency range. This 'masked' other sounds behind it and also added muddiness to the lower mid range (a danger area for sounds as so many share this location)

The person had failed to 'bracket' the sound - This is a process where you should remove the unwanted or conflicting frequencies with a high pass or low pass filter to create space for other sounds in the background.

There are better ways the person could have got that huge stab sound, but did what he could to make it 'bigger' which was to turn it up!

It's good practice to just bracket all sounds where possible without damaging the sounds too much.

Also good to side chain the kick against the bass line so that they both don't stack on top of each other at full volume.

Some nice tips there.
Okay I've uploaded the track there. It actually sounded a bit clearer played on the PC here in work on the same headphones so maybe my phone has some EQ on the music player that effects it. Anyway bear in mind that I still need to tidy things up a bit but I'd appreciate your thoughts on the overall frequency issues that may be inherent in the track.
https://soundcloud.com/subbed/the-colony

Looking at the waveform on Soundcloud it looks a little too flat during the main body of the track do you think?

Neurojazz

mordeith wrote: »

Some nice tips there.
Okay I've uploaded the track there. It actually sounded a bit clearer played on the PC here in work on the same headphones so maybe my phone has some EQ on the music player that effects it. Anyway bear in mind that I still need to tidy things up a bit but I'd appreciate your thoughts on the overall frequency issues that may be inherent in the track.
https://soundcloud.com/subbed/the-colony

Looking at the waveform on Soundcloud it looks a little too flat during the main body of the track do you think?

The 808 bassdrum probably won't come out too well on a phone - and it's probably over powering the mix a little - try some gentle compression on it or eq out the subs a little and turn it back up - maybe even add a little overdrive to it and this would give it more presence in the mix at low volumes and on crappy devices

mordeith

Neurojazz wrote: »

The 808 bassdrum probably won't come out too well on a phone - and it's probably over powering the mix a little - try some gentle compression on it or eq out the subs a little and turn it back up - maybe even add a little overdrive to it and this would give it more presence in the mix at low volumes and on crappy devices

Cool. I'll give that a try and see how I get on. Thanks for the advice.

mordeith

Neurojazz wrote: »

- try some gentle compression on it or eq out the subs a little and turn it back up

Actually now that you mention it, when I was eq'ing the kick to take out some of the low end the volume was dropping as you say. I used a plugin called Bolsterizer to try and bring it back up again but there is still a lot of low end. I was also just thinking there that the decay in the kick is probably a bit long as well which is exacerbating the problem.

Neurojazz

mordeith wrote: »

Actually now that you mention it, when I was eq'ing the kick to take out some of the low end the volume was dropping as you say. I used a plugin called Bolsterizer to try and bring it back up again but there is still a lot of low end. I was also just thinking there that the decay in the kick is probably a bit long as well which is exacerbating the problem.

Add a high pass eq and remove the subs that way - start at 30htz and move upwards until you get it cleaner - be careful not to strip all the warmth away.

peter05

Check your harmonic freq section for the synth and kick drum instead of boosting over all volume these sections could be off for smaller speakers. You could use a tape saturation for more harmonics instead of EQ.

jpsr

Mastering through headphones wont help, Good monitors are needed for a start.

mordeith

jpsr wrote: »

Mastering through headphones wont help, Good monitors are needed for a start.

I'm aware of that but unfortuantely I don't have the work space to setup with monitors. Maybe in a few years when the kids are grown up and I can assume they won't shove their fingers through the speaker cones! :rolleyes:

italodisco

Love that track , few bits to do with the higher end but man its nice indeed!!
Pm me your details , I'd be interested in working with others Into such genres .

mordeith

italodisco wrote: »

Love that track , few bits to do with the higher end but man its nice indeed!!
Pm me your details , I'd be interested in working with others Into such genres .

Thanks for the interest. Unfortunately I'm not really in a position to do any collaboarative work as I only get to work on stuff rather infrequently.

Rob Humanoid

As op said, some saturation wouldn't go a miss. That'd definitely bring out the drums. I think it would help the snare especially.

I generally like to drive mine with hardware, but any half decent vst would do a similar job.