AA2 Week 11 - Mastering Part 1

This week our task was to do a Master of our best mix. I chose my first mix from week 8. Unfortunately on the weekend I left my headphones at the club I was DJing at, so I had to use my sister's dodgy ipod headphones. I am so used to my own headphones as I use them for everything, so I'm sure this weeks mastering will sound different to when I do my final assignment. Maybe it's good to use a different listening environment every now and then. Still, nothing beats my Sennheiser HD25. They're a cracker of a can!

[1][2][3]Dream on Apple. . .


I used Logic instead of ProTools. I did this for two reasons.

1) It's Sunday night and I'd rather stay home. My copy of ProTools has a problem with the plugins whereas my Logic works fine.

2) During class I didn't feel we really needed to specifically use any type of software. I gathered from class that in a professional situation you would pay a Mastering Engineer anyway.

Therefore I don't think it really matters what software we use as long as we use the same underlying concepts. This I did.

The reference song that I used was Missy Higgins - Steer. I chose this song because I think this young singer sounds a lot like her. It also had the same general musical feel.

First up I pulled up a Linear Phase EQ. I boosted up the vocals to make the overall sound brighter. The problem with working using a guide vocal is that my mix wasn't really ready to master. I did think that putting that boost around 4kHz made a better sounding mix.

Next I used a multi-band EQ, or a Multipressor in Logic. I tended to compress the frequencies below 100Hz. I think that maybe it was because of my headphones but I was using my reference song as a basic guide for bass. My most common mistake in the past has been producing music that has way too much bass. Even though I produce Dance music there is still such a thing as too much bass! In the Multipressor, I also adjusted the other bands to try get a cleaning sound.

Next I used an Adaptive Limiter to try and squash up the overall sound. I did get a few more dB out of my mix. This plugin is very much like the L2-Ultramaximiser. I have learnt about mastering when I was studying at SAE so I had used the Waves plugins for mastering. I find the L2-Ultramaximiser very useful for compressing and gaining that loudness that you want. The Adaptive Limiter in Logic gave me almost the same power.

I then used a Stereo Spread plugin. To be perfectly honest, I don't really know how to use these kinds of plugins other than for experimentation. I know that in mastering you can use a stereo imaging plugin, but I don't know what settings you would use. In my case I put a slight stereo spread on the higher frequencies above 2kHz.

Finally I placed a plain old Limiter at the end of the chain of plugins. This was basically to stop any clipping. I had no gain on this limiter as I already had the Adaptive Limiter earlier in the chain.I know that you are meant to place a Dithering plugin as the last plugin in the chain. In Logic there isn't a Dither plugin, rather it is there as an option when you do your final bounce. I find this a bit annoying but I can't complain really when you consider the huge amount of other plugins at my disposal.

I think my master sounds better than the original but with proper monitoring could sound much better.[4]

These are the plugins I used. . .
and here . . .

AUDIO
Week 8 Mix [835kB]
Mastered Mix [884kB]


[1] Tom's Hardware. Avivo vs. Purevideo. http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/09/avivo-vs-purevideo/ (Accessed 27/5/7)

[2] Head-Fi. Headphones in Australia. http://www.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php?t=72883 (Accessed 27/5/7)

[3] Nick Starr.com. twitter. http://www.nickstarr.com/2006/09/13/2g-4gig-silver-ipod-nano/ (Accessed 27/5/7)

[4] David Grice "Audio Arts: Semester 1, Week 11; Mastering" Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, 22nd May 2007.