The Watering Hole

I found this over at Sneaps forum at ultimate metal, this is how I do my mixes, although I stumbled upon doing it this way after many hours of trial and error...

Originally posted by ahjteam

- turn all the faders down, bring the master fader to zero and turn off all the master bus plugins, except maybe spectrum analyzer and "safe limiter" (For example the free Waves L1 clone, W1, with threshold at 0dBFS, doing nothing, just making sure that the finished mix doesn't clip. Don't worry about archieving the loudness at this part, it will be done in the mastering, not mixing).
- bring up the bass first and keep that as a benchmark. Have it fucking slammed against the compressor and put it so that the peaks hit at -18dBFS and never move it again. If the bass gets buried, don't turn it up, but turn everything else down. If the bass sounds too quiet at -18dBFS, turn your monitors louder.
- Add the vocals so that they cut thru the bass but don't overpower them. if the song is an instrumental so far, skip this phase
- The bring up the kick and listen to the low end that it isn't competing with the bass in the sub or killing eachothers out. If they are, do something about it. My suggestion is to sidechain kick to the bass (see the sticky)
- Then add the overheads so that you get nice balance with the kick and the cymbals, don't worry so much about the snare
- Then add the guitars. They have to cut thru the mix, but not overpower anything else. If they cut thru the mix only by overpowering something, do something about the guitar sound.
- Then add the snare. Make sure that it cuts thru but doesn't overpower the mix. If it doesn't cut thru the mix without hitting the limiter, do something about it. Usually the bottom mic helps alot.
- Then add everything else to taste
- After you have done this, I suggest you group everything (ie. kick, snare, drums, bass, guitars, keys, vocals, fx... etc.) so its easier to do small adjustments. Its not mandatory, but I highly recommend it.
- Go take a break, atleast 10 minutes. Eat something, catch some fresh industrial polluted air, have a smoke, go watch some tv, surf the net. Come back and listen again. Tweak until it sounds good. 20-60 minutes of tweaking, a 10 minute break, 20-60 minutes of tweaking, a 10 minutes break, *continue until satisfied*

this to me is a very solid and effective way to mix guitar oriented music, whether its rock, blues, or metal.

Some nice basic nuggets there that people tend to completely miss (like not needing to make it loud right away and that changing the sound is usually better than turning the volume up). :)

Where is Andy's forum anyway?

its at ultimatemetal.com

its one of the many sub forums...

specifically its http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/andy-sneap-151/

When can you make it loud? Cuz I'm right about there on our CD doing final mixes right now. Any help ;) would be greatly appreciated, thanks Rich...

cgtrox  8-)

After you do the final mixes, when you master it?  Are you mastering it yourself?  Doesn't hurt to run it by someone else for mastering.  

you make it loud in the mastering process...

you want to have your final mix as clean as possible.

following that method your final peak Dbfs should be between -2 and -8 db depending on how full your mix is.

-2db is about as loud as you want to render your final mix for mastering.

anything between -2 and -10 can be worked with easily in mastering.

once you have your final stereo mix rendered as a .wav file

start a new project, insert the .wav file.

then do final eq, compression, and limiting to that file.

what i Do is this

EQ > Compressor > limiter 1 > limiter 2 > spectrum analyzer > out

I shave no more than -1.5 db off the track at any stage of compression or limiting. usually more like -1db and then use the final limiter to deliver the makeup gain to get the track hot.

I would prefer a master cut at -12 to -14 RMS, but with the volume wars I try to settle for no higher than -9db RMS. usually striving for -10db RMS.

hope that helps some...

Ligerborn — Feb 25, 2009I would prefer a master cut at -12 to -14 RMS, but with the volume wars I try to settle for no higher than -9db RMS. usually striving for -10db RMS.

So sad that this is what we have come to.  I was doing some listening mixes of jazz--jazz!--the other day, and I was pushing them to -12 RMS, just to sound decent next to other modern jazz mixes.

Ugh.

What's the benefit of performing the mastering to a mixed wav rather than doing the mastering at the master buss during normal mix-down.   I can see that if you want someone else to master it, then that makes sense, but if you are mastering it yourself anyway, would you get different results doing it to the "mixed" wav rather that at the master buss?

The benefit for me is that I then take all the mixes for an album, stack them up in one session, and then I can quickly jump around between them and thereby get the best "cohesive" master.  This is of no import if you are not doing an album, but most of the time, that's what I am mastering for in the end.  For a one-off, like an FNJ, sure, throw it all on the master bus, and crush the living shit out of it!

heh, it is sad very sad Charger...

If I was lucky enough to do a jazz session I would master it out at -20 maybe even lower, let it breath its fullest breath...

But that isn't what I work with so...

Jon, on top of what Charger said it also frees up resources, depending on the quality of plug you are running on the master bus.

in my case I am usually running a high track and plugin count across the mix so to add the plug's I use to master it would definitely cause some issues.

Plus there are some (i.e. Mastering forum at gearslutz) that say it is a very bad thing to master across your 2 bus, but they also say its bad to not have anyone but a mastering engineer with a ton of gear in a tuned room do your master...

Their reason is you will not get the same result is you mix across the 2bus as you will on a rendered wav.  Reasons fly from processing power, workflow, its simply not how you do it.  Take your pick...

I will say, personally I get a better master from working outside of the mix, on a rendered wav.  the main reason is that I get too caught up in chasing my tail in the mix, dealing with jsut the stereo mix I can focus on the big picture. and I also can't run the same chain of plugins on my master bus that I use in mastering outside the mix.

charger — Feb 25, 2009The benefit for me is that I then take all the mixes for an album, stack them up in one session, and then I can quickly jump around between them and thereby get the best "cohesive" master.  This is of no import if you are not doing an album, but most of the time, that's what I am mastering for in the end.  For a one-off, like an FNJ, sure, throw it all on the master bus, and crush the living shit out of it!

So you wouldn't use the master bus for mastering in that situation (as it effects all mixes)
maybe a "final" final limiter

So you master each track of the album on their own bus and flick around between them.
Play it as an album

When done mix them all down individually and you have a well balanced album

Makes sense.

Except you would get hit massively by the resource hog problem mastering a bunch of tracks at the same time - as Richard pointed out is one of the benefits of mastering separately.

So clicking processing on and off would be involved.

Still works - just the work flow is a bit messier.

yes and add that last thing you want on the master bus for a mix is a limiter, get your volume through the mix, striving for the range I mentioned, then pump it up in mastering, whether you do it yourself or have someone else do it.

yeah Charger's response is a common way to do it. makses for a very well matched result normally.

on a well mixed structured album, you really should have to make that many adjustments in the mastering process.  If the mixer gives you all the songs with a similar peak value you can pretty easily obtain a compressor and limiter settings that work across the album, thus only needing instances of the eq for each track, if even needed.

if the program material is diverse you may need to use the eqq and compressor on each track, but keep the limiters on the master bus...

Wow, thanks Rich/charger, a LOT of good info that I needed. Can I use the Ozone Mastering thingy to do it? Or is there someplace that you guys send your stuff? I know rocket mastered Schilsy's CD, right?

cgtrox  8-)

yes you can use ozone if you want to, it isn't a horrid mastering suite, avoid the stereo enhancer nad the reverb as they suck, but the rest is pretty decent.

Rocket mastered, Derek's album and the first two Fateless Tears albums.

However, I don't think anyone has spoke to him in over a year.  He basically disappeared...

I do mastering work now and I am doing the mixing and mastering on Derek's new album, projects I am involved in, and some other local bands in this area cause there isn't a mastering studio any where close, but lots of project and bedroom studios.

Ligerborn — Feb 26, 2009 Rocket mastered, Derek's album and the first two Fateless Tears albums.

However, I don't think anyone has spoke to him in over a year.  He basically disappeared...

Has anyone been in touch with him at all?  :-?

fingers — Feb 25, 2009Except you would get hit massively by the resource hog problem mastering a bunch of tracks at the same time - as Richard pointed out is one of the benefits of mastering separately.

So clicking processing on and off would be involved.

Still works - just the work flow is a bit messier.

Yes and no.

First, the resources aren't that much of an issue.  If you are running a ten-track album, say you are using a 4 band eq and a compressor on each track...  If you can't run that you are probably running a computer from the 90s.

However, we typically do use one set of master plugins with all the tracks.  An eq, a 2-bus compressor, sometimes a multi-band compressor, and a limiter.  With plugin automation it's not all that tough to write changes across the session and have plugin settings switch between each tune...  

Note that I don't consider myself a mastering engineer and generally do it only when there is no budget for anything else...

Craig,

no, to my knowledge no one has, Paul and I last talked to him back in January of 08 over at PPR chat.

Charger, I don't call myself one either, however, not being able to have Rocket do the mastering on the Sandstone Ridge and Fateless Tears albums, I bought Katz' book read it throughly/refer to it alot, and squeezed every ounce of information out of the gearslutz forum I could on mastering.  From that I figured out what and what not to do, got my room to sound the best I can with traps and absorbers, and tackled the task for those albums.  

I didn't really want to do mastering, but money is at a premium, and so I decided I would master my projects. I didn't really want to do outside projects, but with times as they are economically, when ppl have asked me locally I have done it cause its a little extra money.  

This area isn't very trusting in doing business with ppl they don't know or can't locate to throttle if they feel ripped off, so I have done several small projects, but I am understanding the process better, and I think getting better results.

In Derek's case he asked if I would help him and I said yes.

fingers — Feb 25, 2009Except you would get hit massively by the resource hog problem mastering a bunch of tracks at the same time

If I was still using Sonar I would agree with you, but since I have switched to pro-tools I don't suffer from any resource issues at all with plugins, even by loading up the master buss with limiters and eq etc. Pro-tools is quite remarkable in that respect.

I was thinking about the resource hungry plugs like Ozone.

Actually I tested my current systems performance when I got it by loading up a bunch of Ozone plugs into a project and I think I got to about a dozen or more of them  without any problems.

So it should be possible to master 10 tracks in one project with 10 instances of Ozone running.

It's a good idea  to work it all in the same session
So just the minor issue of making an album worth mastering :)

fingers — Feb 28, 2009 So just the minor issue of making an album worth mastering :)

That hasn't stopped some mainstream people/groups I can think of!

I have Wavelab 4 for mastering, too. Works pretty good! Here's one I fucked around with....

cgtrox  8-)