Good day people, I really need your assistance.
I've been having problems with my audios and I believe someone here can help me out.
In terms of mixing I think am ok, but, my mastering is bad. So, all I want is a good software and description of how to use it.
I look forward to a response from anybody.
Thanks.

 

That's a huge topic right there my friend. I'll try and simplify it for you as best I can though and give you some good pointers.

1) Get your mix as perfect as possible. Make sure everything is just the way you want it to sound, to the best of your ability.

2) Before even thinking about mastering, listen to reference songs. Pick songs that inspired you to create yours and that you might want yours to sound like. Listen to these songs on whatever system you're using the master, whether it's speakers or headphones. Get a feel for how they sound. How does the bass feel? Are they bright or a bit dark compared to yours. Do they have scooped mids or are they warm and thick. So, doing this will get you in the right mindset and give you a guideline for mastering your own sound.

3) After exporting your mix and importing it for mastering. Import one reference song that you want yours to sound like. Put an analyzer plugin on both of the tracks. Now play the reference track and take notes from what you see on the spectrum analyzer. Take note of the peaks, rms level, frequency levels an the shape of the frequency curve. Then play your own track and take note of the differences. Of course to do this your track has to be as loud as your reference track. So you can start off by putting a limiter and bringing your track up to the reference track's level, then you can more easily compare the frequency curves.

4) After taking notes and seeing potential problem areas, it's time to listen, because this is more important than seeing graphs. Listen to your song from start to finish and take notes on things that might need improvement. Write them down if you have to, I do it all the time.

5) After analyzing your song and the reference song and finding the areas that need improvement, it's time to start. I usually start off with an EQ and look for the bad frequencies and turn them down as much as I need to. I also usually cut everything below 30Hz if I feel the song is too heavy and needs more headroom.

6)After EQ fixing, I put a compressor to glue together..an ssl is nice for this..I look for anywhere between 3-5dB of gain reduction, a slow attack time and a fast/medium release time. Of course this depends on your music genre but I do dance music and these settings work for me.

7)Fix stereo image problems. use a multiband stereo imager like the Ozone one it's great. Everything below 200Hz should be mono and then gradually gets wider after that with the highest frequencies being the widest.

8) EQ sweeting/saturation - this is where you can give a subtle bass boost, or some high end air, or warmth using something like an SSL or pultech EQ or even just a regular EQ in your DAW..the trick here is to be gentle.

9) Multiband compression used to just catching 1-2dB of peaks on each frequency band. Medium/fast attack and release times work well here.

10) Limiter - Adjust the limiter to match the loudness of your reference song without getting any distortion. If you start getting distortion and your song is still not as loud..that means you might want to reduce some bass or cut some high frequencies to free up some headroom.



I know this was a long post but this is usually the way I approach when mastering for myself and for others. I hope it helps and if you have any questions please ask.

 

oh and forgot to mention that the most important plugin in mastering is the sprectrum analyzer. Voxengo SPAN is my favorite one. Use it.

 

Learning how to master - Izotope Ozone 5 pdf and search youtube
Master software - Izotope Ozone 5 or IK Multimedia T-Racks.

I feel T-Racks plugins sounds better, has better presets, and overall my tracks sound much fuller and warmer, now that im using T-Racks (I been using Ozone since version 4 for years and just got T-Racks 2 weeks ago).

 

Ozone and T-Racks are both excellent...but a point that should be made is that you need the skills and knowledge before the plugins. This is a problem that so many home musicians face when trying to mix and master their own songs. They focus and waste so much time on the tools rather than the skills and methods. I personally mix my songs using only built in ableton plugins and have only a few of my favorite plugins (Fabfilter, ozone) that I use for mastering and any special techniques that I might need.

So my suggestion to you as a start is to master using only the built in plugins in your DAW..this will really help you focus on your technique and skills and methods rather than wasting time on plugins that will most likely not need. After you get the hang of using EQ, compression and limiting properly then you can start looking into plugins until you develop your own mastering chain that you're comfortable with. But please, for now, just focus with what you have and forget all the fancy plugins.

 

this mite Help http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V9d6zQzcrg i don't like Ozone 5 for Mastering it Colors the signal to much for me

 

what i use:

T-Racks, ozone 5, SPAN, sony spectral layers, AAMS

there are y tube vids u can learn from

 

I had the same question, im a musician first, all this producing stuff im kinda new at. I got a copy of the AskVideo Cubase 7 tutorials and there are a really great couple of chapters on how to master directly in your Daw. how to export properly and what it all means short , simple and REALLY informative!. ive gone back and "remastered" a couple of songs and its made a world of difference! I highly recommend this series. Its done in Cubase 7 but i work with Logic as well and it translates to that as well.

http://www.askvideo.com/courses/application/cubase

Hope that helps




j

 

I disagree on some things with fuad. For starters nothing SHOULD be tied to rules. Like the stereo imaging when he says frequencies below 200hz SHOULD be mono and get wider as you go up the spectrum, that's entirely up to what you want to do with your song. Mastering is not something that has a path to follow as each song is different, IMO never try to sound as another song. Be unique with your productions and develop your own sound. Experiment with EQ giving it a notch around 125 to tighten the kick and low end, notch also around 400 to remove some mud. Experiment and have fun with your mix. If you have any questions feel free to ask.

 

Yup, I completely agree with you Ricardo, but sometimes, especially for someone just starting out or learning these things it's good to have "rules of thumb." Tehy're not really set rules or anything you have to follow but theyre designed to get you closer to where you want to be. After that it's all experimentation and experience and that's what will take your productions to another level. But for starters, yes there should be guidelines to follow or else you'll never know where to start.