That's a quarter of an 88 key nektar to me

 

Did you get feedback from others that also felt that the mastered song was the bollacks or did you just yourself feel that way? Why don't you throw it up here for us to hear it? Maybe it's not as bad as all that!

 

I wish I still had it. He definitly just slapped it together. It was 2010. I burned him a DVD with the stems and with my mix. I know my mix was terrible back then. I was working in a small concrete floors and celieng room, reflection city.

Me and the artist I recorded played it on ipods, stock cars systems, aftermarket car audio with subs, and in a couple of different night club PAs. I have a few friends that are resident DJs, a beer and fat tip will get it in the rotation. That was our usual testing grounds back then. It was very harsh and distorted in the top end. Like ear bleeding shrill at high volumes. Had you running for the eq or highs knob.

I have some active PAs with 15's that I like to blast it through as well, my own far field test of sorts

 

Last edited: Oct 8, 2016

Oh!

 

Mastering might not have been able to fix that in all honesty, or could you analyze what he did that was specifically "wrong"

... there is that old mastering term "You can't polish a turd" , not that your track was..I have no idea,
but how you describe it makes it sound as though the mastering might have been a daunting task in some respects

would have been interesting to hear it.. but you chucked all of it?

 

Think I might have the DVD in storage somewhere. That was a few moves ago. But honestly, all my mixes were dull at that time because the highs and subs were bouncing all over my room. I was cutting too much and turning stuff down. Especially the lows.

 

Again, a lot of legit mastering houses will do at least a minute of a track for free, just to secure your business.

 

When it comes to the point that I need mastering, I will definitly shop around. At that time we went with the guy that a fellow artist suggested. I was younger and not as experienced. And his studio and gear blew me away. I wont make that mistake again.

 

Yeah.. and maybe search for a mastering engineer who has experience mixing tracks in your subgenre...
(sorry couldn't resist)

 

How I assumed that name? I used to DJ under that moniker as well, DJ subGENRE.

I was uploading a track to acidplanet.com a loooooong time ago. And first you selected the genre from the drop down. I selected Electronica, then another drop down pops up and you select the sub-genre. I selected breakbeats. Then ANOTHER drop down popped up and said "sub-sub-genre" I laughed out loud at that and asked if that is even a word. After repeating it to myself, I liked the way it sounded and adopted it as my DJ name (minus one of the subs of course). My EDM moniker. When I was recording and producing hiphop the crew dubbed me Hollywood James and Mikey Thai. Mikey Thai stuck, thats my "street" name now.

 

Last edited: Oct 9, 2016

sounds kinda Lauderdale... or is you Mikey Thai fum 'Tona? pum pum...

 

I produced and self-mastered an album back in 2004. At the time, I did it all myself to save money ... but even if I'd had the money, I don't think a top-level mastering engineer would have helped. It was recorded badly. It was mixed badly. Too many unnecessary plugs. Too much reverb. True, me mastering it myself made it even worse, but it went all the way back to the recording stage; there was just no way to fix what I'd done from the ground up. Worse still, I used what, at the time, was a fairly expensive and high-end plug: Prosoniq's Dynasone. I believe it was one of the first plugs to market itself as an all-in-one mastering plug for any genre of music. It even had an "Automix" feature that was supposed to adjust the plug to your material and "do all the hard work for you". All it wound up doing was turning my awful mixes into really loud, really compressed awful mixes. And after blowing all that money on gear and plugs and replicating CDs, I learned the hard way that it's really one baby step at a time. Nobody can fix an awful mix, and there's no piece of gear or software that you can use as a shortcut, either. If you don't know what you're doing, all that expensive gear and software just winds up being a waste of money and space.

 

If you want some clean sounding / various purpose compressor that will not color, there is Pro-C2. Didnt find anything better in the clean category of compressors. And it is even incredibly modulable, it actually can color the sound if you want to. But the "mastering" mode is so, so useful and clean. It can secure peaks but not destroying them unlike a Limiter, glue a mix the clean way (or not), bring un-noticeable compression amazing for specific gain-staging, or still bring massive color/brightness to synths guitars etc...

Really, best multi-purpose/hybrid compressor out there. With good visual and controls over the dynamic (duh, you can solo threshold or compression).

On my master I often use it with colored comps like lovely Pultecs or Slate emulations (VMR)