Mastering: Awakened to the Sound
Mastering is one of the last stages of completing the final recording of an album.
Blog reader Nathan Pullar wrote: I’d be interested to hear about your decision making during the mastering. Specifically the volume and compression levels.
First, let’s discuss what mastering is:
MASTERING:
What is the difference between mastering and mixing? And do I master my own albums?
I will answer the last question first. The answer is no, I don’t master my own albums because once I have reached the final stage, before the album is released to the public, I really want to hand it over to someone else to listen to - a different set of ears, so to speak.
Most of you know that songs are recorded with multiple tracks of individual instruments. For my songs, that ends up being anywhere from 12 tracks to 100 or more (usually more toward 100). Once completed, those individual tracks need to be “mixed” down into a single stereo track, hence the word “mixing.” Music producers don’t always mix their own work. In fact, before computers were used in music, most producers didn’t mix. There was typically a studio mixing engineer dedicated to the task. This can still be true, especially in the higher budget arena. However, because computers have made mixing available to musicians out there working on a tighter budget, more and more producers have developed the skills to mix. I am an example of such a producer, and I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to develop those skills.
After I’ve mixed a song, I have a stereo bounce, or stereo mix. This means that all the levels between the individual channels are set and can no longer be tweaked in relation to each other. However, at the final stage, that stereo bounce can be manipulated in two ways: EQ (or tone) and volume. It is a lot like your car stereo; you can add treble (or bass) to adjust the sound. You can also decide to leave the volume low, or crank it up to overcome the noise of your car.
3 REASONS WHY I DON’T MASTER ENGINEER MY OWN ALBUMS:
1) As I said, I want another set of ears on the project.
By the time I’ve mixed a song, I’ve probably listened to it a thousand times.
At that point, I have to admit that I am not the person with the freshest perspective.
The album has to pass the test of another person's expertise. Another person will hear things that I missed. They will also have a different set of ideas and artistic approaches to the sonic quality of the music. The mastering engineer's job is to take the song one last step further than I did.
2) I want the song to pass the test of a different listening environment.
Mastering studios can have speakers that cost $100,0000 alone. The rooms are often been built to achieve a nearly perfect, sonically balanced listening environment. My mixing room is tuned with bass traps and absorbers, but nothing close to a mastering studio.
3) I want the song to take on a new character that I had not achieved in my mix.
This is something that many producers or musicians DON’T alway want. Sometimes, they want to be assured that the master will sound the same as the mix, just maybe a little louder or more balanced. Over the years, I’ve learned to appreciate that a mastering engineer can bring depth, warmth, and character to a song that wasn’t there in the first place.
WHO DO I CHOOSE TO MASTER?
There are loads of mastering services out there. The cheapest services are computer automated; your song is analyzed and an algorithm spits out an EQ and compression setting that matches other popular songs within the genre of music you chose. I’ve never used these services because they miss the most important thing to me: the human touch. Middle budget to higher budget mastering can range from $50 to $250 per song. I tend to hire mastering guys that will be in the $125-$200 range.
"AWAKENED TO THE SOUND" - DEVELOPING A FRONT TO BACK SPACE
Bob Katz mastered the “Awakened to the Sound” album. Bob is known for writing the textbook on mastering. Literally. His textbook is used in music schools across the globe. I owe it to Bob for really bringing a new dimension to my music. When I first submitted the album to him, he replied with enthusiasm. Although he was excited about the songs and music, he felt there was dimension, a sonic depth missing. He said he could master it as it was, but going back to the mix first would really make a difference. He felt the reverbs were a bit “flat,” lacking in front-to-back space.
Let us be honest for a second; is there really front to back space in a stereo listening environment? Assuming we are talking about a stereo with two speakers, you have a left speaker and right speaker. Both speakers are in front you. It is obviously possible to “pan” music to the left or the right. If you want to pan the sound to the right, then the volume goes up in the right and down in the left. If you pan completely to the right, then no sound comes from the left. If sound comes out of both speakers, a phantom center is created. This is your brain summing the two sounds so that it feels like its coming from an invisible speaker in between (you must have to sit equidistant to both speakers to experience this). The same is true with headphones. When the volume and source in both ears is the same, its almost as if the singer or snare drum is right in the middle of your head. With the limitations of these two speakers and their ability to project from left to right, is it possible to have sound project from front to back? Can the direct sound be panned from front to back? In other words, if your speakers are 3 feet away, is it possible for some sounds to feel like they are three feet away while others feel like they are 15 away, far beyond the speakers and wall? The answer is yes and no. Speakers are not designed to project in other directions (aside from really badly designed BOSE speakers that have been known to direct tweeters sideways or backward to face the walls of the room). There are no pneumatic devices that will move the speakers back and forth in your room.
However, with psychoacoustics, sound can be manipulated to fool our brains into “perceiving” that sound is coming from places beyond our speakers.
Bob Katz is a master at this (no pun intended). Not only did he write the textbook on this stuff, he has developed his own plugin. After our conversations, I collected gear notes and concepts to apply to a revision on the mixes. He demonstrated a few things for me by taking a full mix session of mine and adding one of his many Bricasti reverbs (starting at around $4k per unit). He also versed me in some new plugins such as Ircam’s Flux Spat and Reverbs which broadened my palette on psychoacoustic dimension tools.
As a padawan of Jedi Bob, I came back with the new mixes; his response was, “you nailed it!” Whew! The songs were now ready for his magic. The rest was up to him. His mastering somehow brought even more depth that; that’s the part I can’t explain. The only thing I know is that he is mastering at 96k (which is high), regardless of what fidelity the mixes are delivered to him. He is doing magical things with a variety of analog gear. I asked him over the phone a bit about the process and these are the pieces of gear (and plugins) that he used on “Awakened to the Sound."
Parallel Compression (not sure which ones he used on my album)
MLA4 - top compression and up
Lowender (on a track or 2 that was missing low end)
Equilibrium EQ (Linear Phase In Fir Mode)
LOUDNESS WARS
There has been a lot of discussion on loudness wars. The loudness war is the battle to get your song to be louder than all of the other songs. Yet, because there is a volume limit on every song a radio station, digital converter, or speaker, plays, “louder” really just means “more compressed.” The more compressed, the less dynamic. The end result? There are no quiet parts, no dynamic changes: its all one volume. When I choose a mastering engineer and discuss my vision for the album, I have an idea at which end of the compression spectrum I want the album to fall. Do I want it to be loud and compete with commercial radio music? Or do I want it to be as dynamic as classical music? Do you want to hear the difference? Listen to any song from the Travel Series (Mastered by Dan Shike at Tone and Volume). Then immediately listen to Awakened to the Sound. If you are the average person who uses the vocal to set the level of your listening environment, then you inevitably turn your volume up for any of the songs in Awakened to the Sound. This is not a malfunction or accident. The Travel Series was meant to be kind of indie pop music that you can listen to in your car and rock out to anytime, any place. Awakened to the Sound is more like a fine wine. If you listen to the album on a quality system (especially the High Fidelity Version at 96k!), you will enter into the world of depth and dynamics. If this album had been treated the same way as the Travel Series, it would lack the dymnamics and emotional impact that it was meant to have. I guess I am just pointing out that every album has a its own unique vision. Even within the same entity of Future of Forestry, there can be a huge variety of artistic approaches to music.
I hope you guys have enjoyed this. Thanks again for all of your wonderful comments and questions!
Eric
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LINKS
Awakened to the Sound Audiophile Version (96k 24bit)
Awakened to the Sound Physical CD
A more in-depth article describing Bob Katz’s approach to mastering