Compress It Like An Idiot EP1 (Patreon)

Compress It Like An Idiot - Mastering Masterminds

Hello everyone. Welcome to my new incredibly long-form vehicle for my channel called Compress It Like An Idiot. This is a music, art, culture, tech and creativity pubcast featuring myself, my patrons and special guests. We chat about all kinds of things around specific topics, and for this episode, it's about mastering. I've invited 2 patrons along who are also professional mastering engineers to share their knowledge and tips about the mysterious science, and everyone else is just there to hangout and throw questions and ideas around. Please read the whole description for a comprehensive list of links and notes. This will inevitably be a long learning curve for me as I've never tried this before, so on this occasion there are a few bumps along the way, such as a bit of noise and the stereo widening demonstrations are redundant as this was recorded in mono, but that banter is strong, which is the most important thing. If you'd like to be involved in the future then support me on Patreon. Guests include - https://www.youtube.com/c/TurismoBlu https://www.youtube.com/user/nalaDB https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtApLtFem3vzSrLcCY-W_mg/featured https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpqHVCU4ldSywMd3X_fMm8w https://qbrd.live https://mastering.monomono.audio https://aaronwharton.com/ Credits. Thumbnail artwork by Bob Bell. https://www.instagram.com/bob._.bell Thanks to Adam for taking notes during the recording. Notes. Soothe 2 OEK Sound Be consistent i.e. use the same monitoring setup, get used to how it sounds Never touch the loudness button on monitoring desk Get used to the loudness level you like Master to that loudness https://www.loudnesspenalty.com/ Need a true peak limiter Ideally want oversampling e.g. 192k sampling rate, to capture the true peaks Best to aim for -1dB, not 0 0 in Ableton is relative to the machine’s audio interface Standard Clip, has 256x oversampling Ableton limiter works well with higher sample rates Gain better resolution for your processing As a producer, constrain levels to -3, -6, -12 Really a relic of analogue days Just make sure it doesn’t clip Clip to zero production strategy Saturation can be a very nice effect Some hardware will do that Best to do it in software Ozone plugin Streaming services have different LUFS standards, not peak as seen in Ableton metering Be aware of the noise floor Often de-noise first before increasing loudness Izotope RX good de-noise plugin Spectral De-noise plugin As a producer, rely more on gain staging De-noising is more of a mastering engineer thing Better to use Izotope dithering, than Ableton Leave out limiting, save that for the end Load track into ozone Warp degrades the audio in Ableton, even if you’re not actually warping Dithering defaults to on in Ableton Slate VSX headphones, model different speakers etc and headphones, testing different setups virtually Best to be consistent with your monitoring setup Which one do you trust? It is worth it for the producer to check on different setups before sending to the mastering engineer This is because of different frequency response characteristics on your speakers e.g. some lack bass, so won’t hear it properly E.g. with bass kick, focus on the click, rather than the bass frequencies Recommended “best kick in recent memory” https://youtu.be/Mnq53ZR9v-w?t=82 Reference tracks Can be useful as a mastering engineer, to give a guide to what the client is expecting Plugin that can match the EQ curve of a reference track onto your mix Are cloud mastering services the future? https://www.landr.com/ https://www.cloudbounce.com/ You want a measurable response to your ideas E.g. send to Abbey Road, and compare their version with your own Value of e.g. LANDR is that it gives you different flavours quickly Can use it as a reference track for a mastering engineer The distinction between the production and mastering engineering stages Variable bias compression Emulating pulteq Analogue signal chain is non-linear, so adds pleasing saturation and distortion Pulteq lowers signal, then raises it again Boost and cut around same frequencies, works well for bass, kick etc. Creating stereo width without any phase Wide harmonics Moves saturation point from mid to low end Best to put it on separate instruments (Nik’s plugin) Need to listen to your mix in mono, as a check Weird widening techniques can be a problem Mid-side processing Mid can be lost if sides are too loud http://www.moultonlabs.com/full/product01 Your ears, your monitoring setup, and how much you can trust it Building confidence in how much you can trust your ears Correlates well with how bold you can be in your mastering/mixing choices Be able to identify which octave in the spectrum is being cut or boosted, on musical content, or on noise etc https://mixwiththemasters.com Boosting and sweeping to find the ugly frequency Gain staging, identify the resonance buildup OEK sounds, soothe 2, does that automatically https://members.theapproachinstitute.com/enroll