For mastering to vinyl.
Dolby were the first, @solo83.
"Exactly".

When you see Dolby mentioned on the back of a DVD or a film poster, it means that the audio has been encoded with it and will sound great obviously, and that it is optimised for playback systems that use it.

 

Last edited: Jul 17, 2020

Wonder if that's a thing that renders differently in individual DAWs?

 

@solo83 I dont know how old you are or whether you have done some reading on Dolby's contribution to pro audio but @Smoove Grooves is on point on what he is saying about Dolby. How well does Dolby's expertise will translate in its partnership with Soundcloud is pending, however, I will give Dolby the benefit of the doubt based on its history, and the fact that it is not privately held company. If the Soundcloud partnership fails, the investors are not going to be very happy. Finally, anyone who thinks that a fucking preset is a substitute for a mastering engineer deserves the results that he or she gets by utilizing these services or plugins. Finally, if the source sounds like shit, the "mastering" will sound like a "mastered shit."

 

I could imagine that.

 

I believe that mastering is part of the whole artistic process
The best option in my opinion is that the responsibility for composition / mixing / mastering is from the same artist: this obviously requires skills in all 3 different disciplines. For those who are uncomfortable with mastering techniques, I recommend contacting a good sound engineer, briefing him in details what the message of our work is and what goal we want to achieve. It often happens that, even in doing so, it is necessary to refuse a too "trendy" mastering because it is inappropriate and ask to do it again. A technically perfect mastering, but without empathy with the audio content can damage the message of the entire song.

Hoping that, with a click on a button, an algorithm preset interprets what we wanted to say with our music, but that we have not been able to do is a pure utopia

 

Last edited by a moderator: Jul 17, 2020

These are three different departments, each of which requires several years to master (no pun intended). Additionally, probably not in the interest of a lot of composers.

In my opinion, the first task of a good mastering engineer is to listen to a track and ask himself: 'What is the artist's intention, how does he/she want the track to sound like?'
If this doesn't work satisfactory, a detailed briefing is necessary.

 

Last edited: Jul 17, 2020

Absolutely! but we are talking about professionals, certainly not teenagers who waste time with a cracked serum instead of doing their school homework

In the vinyl era, mastering was a mandatory procedure for properly printing a record. It was considered more a necessary nuisance than a sound enhancement (as it is now). The standard procedure was to reduce dynamics and narrow the stereo image. In the early90s I produced various techno vinyl records: every time I went to the press factory I had to fight with the sound engineer who put too many limiters, squashing everything: this was our usual script:

Sound engineer: "what do you mean with squashing? The mix is too dynamic, the stylus of the turntable will jump out of the groove!"

Me: "I don't care, print it like this: no limiter needed"

Sound engineer: "I've never printed this way, it won't work"

Me: "It will..."

in the end the records worked very well and every 909 drum kick struck direct into the heart
(they still do it now)

 

? You mean a professional musician is able to mix and master his song?

 

Last edited: Jul 17, 2020

mastering is a new hype they want to give it into people's hands. soundcloud will make millions before people realize how shit their music sound

 

Ok I will elaborate: better to leave the stereotype of the damned rock artist to hollywood movies



An artist/producer who wants to take show business seriously must know how to follow all the phases of his work until the end: from composition, to production, to marketing, to organizing concerts, etc. For example, when it comes to mastering, it is likely that an artist does not technically know how to do it, but he must have very clear ideas about what he wants it to be done. From there on, he can rent a good recording studio and explain to the sound engineer what to do, without being hijacked by external personalities and tastes.
This same concept is valid even when it is time to organize concerts: there is no need for an artist to be able to do it first hand, but he must have very clear ideas on what the right steps are, otherwise there is the risk of failure (especially when important money starts to come out)
An example of an artist of great charisma who was able to keep all his work under control to avoid hijackings was James Brown, there are many others in the history of music. In cinema this type of attitude is applied by Quentin Tarantino

 

the half of the thing makes out that somebody other than you , a unbiased ear , work (master) on your material

 

Majority of people wont even notice if it sounds like shit because the market, as it is today, is polluted with crappy tracks. tracks that have not been mixed by pros. Nowadays everyone is a recording engineer, a mixing engineer, an a master engineer. All from their untreated bedrooms. Shit, we got 15 year old kids charging $10 for "mastering" your track.

 

on how many different club sound systems ? it was good on every device´(car,mp3,walkman back in the day whatever etc) you played it ?
i guess you do good gain staging

also genre dependend

 

No clubs at that time would have played that music, it was made for rave parties only (with gigantic turbosound audio systems).
in the first records that I printed I didn't even use mixer: my Roland S50 sampler was directly connected to a portable dat: no gain, no staging, no computer, no mastering, nothing (just a Roland mc500 as a midi sequencer). The sound was extremely raw, typical of hard and pure techno 90. It was a period of intense experimentation, any attempt to make a sound more "radio friendly" would have been misleading and therefore out of the question

— EDIT —

Now I feel like those old musicians from Buena Vista Social Club: Ok let's close it here and I apologize if I let myself go with these useless stories

 

Last edited by a moderator: Jul 18, 2020

For illustration purposes only.

 

Dolby has a nice app for recording on mobile.
It actually works. Check it out. Maybe you can play your song from the mobile speaker and record it thru the app hahahhahava

 

mixing and mastering

Think Carwash scenary

the last step you do after you have given the car awash is to give it a nice finnish with a layer of wax. a coatting to really make the colors pop and and to make it shinny.

Do you want some blind person do the finnal job on your uber carwash on the car of yourdreams?