Re: [LAU] [OT] Help with mixing and mastering?

On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 12:41 PM, James Stone <jamesmstone(a)gmail.com> wrote: You might want to get a copy of Bob Katz' book at the library Mastering Audio, Second Edition: The art and the science I have the first edition and it's without parallel in the area of real mastering. (It doesn't cover mixing which is where I think you are really working, except in how the mix might be done to get better mastering. Anyway, Katz convinced me that keeping the VU's below maybe -15 on peaks makes a better CD and doesn't actually effect SNRs, at least the way you really hear SNR and assuming some use of dithering which is a topic that doesn't come up all that much around here. I now keep all my mixes and final CDs very quiet and then just let the listener turn it up a bit. To me it really does sound better. If you can get ahold of a copy of 'NewYork Reuninon' by McCoy Tyner you might both enjoy the music and be a bit awed by the sound. It was mastered by Katz and is a great example of doing it right in my opinion. I want to come back to you later on your recordings. I haven't had a chance to listen to the guitar part except for a few seconds. My immediate question was whether this was the same song as the studio production. I've honestly not had even a second to get to the machine where that mp3 was, but if it's not then I think we could best spend our time focusing on the question 'How can James get the same sound in his basement as the studio engineer got in the studio using Pro Tools?' If we approach the problem that way, my thought is that if you can track your instruments at home as well or better than he did in the studio then we could move on to mixing it. Moving to a different song makes it far harder to compare the work in both locations. Just my 2 cents, Mark