[LAU] Linux mastering services?

[Ken Restivo]

On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 10:56:46PM +0800, Ray Rashif wrote:
> On 29/03/2010, drew Roberts <zotz at 100jamz.com> wrote:
> > On Monday 29 March 2010 04:32:55 Ken Restivo wrote:
> >> So, why not, I guess I'll do that. For much less than the price of a
> >> single
> >> mastering session, I could probably buy some decent monitors, and learn
> >> how
> >> to use JAMIN (and whatever else) properly.
> >
> > With your ears? Or am I mis-remembering a recent thread? ~;-)
> >>
> >> Thanks again all.
> 
> I consider mastering a whole different game. It doesn't come with
> knowledge, but with knowledge and more experience, and a facility
> worth more than I can earn in a year. You've got to have at least 2
> different rooms and a car stereo, not to mention a number of different
> monitors and speakers ranging from $10 to $1000++.
> 
> So most of us actually do submasters, or leave it up to someone who
> has been mastering for the last 20 years (more than $500).
> 
> And the best part is, for really good mixes, the only thing to master
> would be the level, so the engineer just inserts one of those
> plug-ins, pushes the fader up, and tells you it's done. First-hand
> experience.
> 

Ding-ding-ding-ding!! That's what I suspected all along, and my reading so far confirms it.

So far, it seems like what is today called "mastering", is what back in the day, used to call MIXING. Keeping the levels consistent. Making sure all the frequency ranges are well-represnented. Hauling out any annoying peaks or resonances. Resolving conflicts between sounds in a frequency range. I believe this should all be done with faders and EQ and compressors IN THE MIX.

And, yes, to do it properly, it helps to have years of experience and lots of expensive equipment. But that used to be called MIXING, and it happened before printing to 2-track 30ips tape and handing that to the mastering engineer (who would hand the mastered tape to a cutting engineer, who'd make an acetate test pressing and hand that back to you).

So far, from everything I've read recently (and remember from way back then), mastering was just making sure the needle didn't jump out of the grooves when ths vynil LP was pressed-- squeezing the dynamic and frequency ranges to deal with the limitations of vynil.

I suspect that once the CD era came along, mastering engineers found themselves more or less out of a job, until the home and project studio explosion, when people would walk in with all kinds of crappy mixes done by amateurs on lousy equipment, and the mastering engineers found a new source of income in trying to fix these lousy mixes at the mastering stage. Which I could imagine would definitely not be easy, and would require a tremendous amount of skill and expertise (and patience).

And then of course we got into the "loudness wars" era, where everything is supposed to have all its sounds between -2 and 0 db. "Make it sound louder than so-and-so's record".

But back to your point, I agree: if the mixes are well-done, mastering should just be maybe applying a final blast of compression using the engineer's favorite compressor-of-choice. Done, that'll be US$500 please.

It seems to me, again from the reading I've done, that if the mix sounds good on shitty iPod earbuds and 1cm-diameter laptop speakers, then it's mission accomplished, since thet's what everyone is going to listen to it on anyway. Unless of course you're mixing for clubs, in which case mix it on a bangin loud club system with a subwoofer to make sure it works there, or for film or theatre, in which case it's best to mix it on those systems, etc etc..

So AFAICT our audience will be listening on iPods and laptops (I'll check with the guys to to make sure). If so, I think I'll go that route: get the mixes as good as I can get them, then run it through JAMIN set to grab just the highest peaks in each of the frequency ranges, and call it done.

-ken