Easy all,

I'm about to start working on pre-masters for the 1st of 3 12" releases I have coming out this year.

I am wondering what I should consider coming into this - Lots of things floating around my head about LUFS / RMS / EQ to get them in a similar space and general structuring of the mix's.

When it comes to achieving continuity across several mixes I'd like to know that I've given it all the consideration I can. The tracks are all fairly different sounding as they stand now - I'd like to tie them together as much as possible!

I'll include a link to the tracks that I'm working on this week below - Not all will appear on the 1st EP and some will probably require a bit of tidying up, maybe even re-arrangement - feel free to comment on this if something sticks out at you.

If there are any walkthroughs or documents I should try and look at / read, mention them - could be super helpful!

Thanks,
J

Soundcloud Link!!!

 

So I have started out by mapping out the RMS Peak and LUFS values for each track - it's sort of helpful but also not getting me anywhere.

I know a lot of people will say that the mastering engineer should sort most of it out but I want to get them into a good spot so he / she doesn't have to battle with anything before starting to fill out the sound if that makes sense?

 

Don't worry about it. The mastering engineer can do the loudness matching job blindfolded, and with one arm, while brushing their stinky teeth with the other. You're already paying for it, and it's part of their job. It's not very artistic either, very menial part of the process.

You might want to shine your spotlight on things they won't be able to do, instead. Such as making all the tracks in your release thematically consistent (so nothing to do with RMS, but with feelings, mix choices etc.)

 

Interested to see what information is shared as I'll be wrestling this myself in tthe near future.

 

Yep. First, i gotta say you got some cool house music mate. It's nice to hear new approaches on "classic" styles, shuffling/swinging fat beats and some cool sampling and synths. Congrats and best of luck
Your mixes are very good too and mostly balanced, but some tracks sound are really maxed in volume through compression/limiting, either on the master ch. or the individual channels. In terms of dynamics your best track is "Ee Ye" and it's how the rest of the tracks should be like before going to master, with plenty of headroom. The less headroom you provide the mas.engineer with, the more you constrain him and obstruct him from doing his job properly, and at the bottom line it is your music not his or hers.
I have been mastering tracks for a living in my studio for more than 15 years now. Although i don't get many international artists to master, i have some "current" showcase. If you are interested to check it out let me know.
Cheers

 

Maybe have some bits of melody/instruments be the same across outros & intros, a bit like gaye's album

, just an idea, but might be hard to do.

BTW, it's not all about RMS & EQ, Imaging matters too. wide & narrow songs don't match.

 

@Satai Thanks, I hear you - I knew this would be the case, just wanted to make sure I had put in the effort to make sure they get the most out of the tracks when I send them.

@taskforce Thanks for the kind words - means a lot. I found this really affirming, even though I could hear (and knew having smashed the master bus) with the others that they they were "hot" when I measured out Peak / RMS / LUFS you could see that reflected in the numbers Ee Ye is almost -12 lufs integrated whereas the others are -7 / -8 lufs. RMS was around -6 for the majority while Ee Ye is -9.

It clearly makes the difference. PM me if you want too always interested to hear.

@junh1024 Thanks for the shout - I feel like there could be a bit more cohesion instrumentally for sure but I'm thinking I could bed the whole EP with the same noise floor. You may notice all the tracks are embedded with noise / hiss / hum but each one is from a different device / treated differently. Could possibly pick my favourite and use it throughout.

Thanks for providing the perfect afternoon listen - Haven't heard this album in a while. As a side note - are the vocals in here taken from the outro of the first track on this album??

 

I forgot to say @junh1024 imaging is a really good thing to check on - I feel like moving forward I will be bringing only a select few plugins forward for stereo fx / widening & sticking to the Orville for my reverbs & vocal doubling. I think this will make things a lot better in the long run.