I received a bunch of songs to master, some have too much bass and some have too little, not that they are not present but they need to be increased or decreased in volume, dynamically. Many of them are too acidic in the 2-7 kHz area.

What are your tricks for managing tone in mastering without access to individual tracks?

 

tilt eq?

 

pulteq style eq makes wonders

 

I want to tame just parts of the spectrum so the tracks sounds pretty consistent together

 

Dynamic pulteq?

 

put them in Ozone 11, let it do its thing. Then go to manual mode, see the processing, what module and what it does.

 

Ozone will be your best bet i agree w/S-Dude

 

I do not claim in any way to have the knowledge or the science for this but personally, a piece with too much sub infrabass for me is that there is a fundamental problem with the composer on his listening system or an artistic direction but generally it comes from the listening systems.

In short, that's not the question for the subs too present personally I tend to use saturation carefully, some tape for example but always check if it doesn't affect the phase of the song too much, recently I use an eq from Vertigo which allows you to manage and attenuate the drive by band q it's the VSE-4 for me it goes from very colorful to precise to manage this kind of problem, also sometimes a simple eq with proQ3 to reduce the impact of the mid in the infra helps enormously simple things like slope at 6db, pulsar 8200 with its tilt too but I personally don't like what it does to the infra finally last of which I have not yet used the full potential the michel angelo of tone projects accompanied by kelvin these two tools are really great to create a sensation bring warmth or clarity, the parameters are quite precise so you shouldn't abuse it, but the dynamic parameters with michel angelo make it a real Swiss army knife remarkable, manage the stereo space in the low frequencies, make it mono or simply lower it carefully with a hpf/side/6db if the phase is too crazy. SPL Vitalizer is also a remarkable tool for this task but I prefer it in the context of mixing + than mastering.

For tracks that sparkle or have too much presence in the high part of the spectrum, I particularly love using kirchoff eq with its tone eq which strangely resembles dangerous baxter, the latest bettermaker pultec gave me good results to carefully manage this part of the sound, finally a multiband also helps remarkably to keep things in place and to articulate the whole track with the lively and gripping parts of the song but it all also depends on the style of music that it is the multiband from MIA is very interesting especially if you like me to have a tool with several possibilities under the hood !!

 

mastering engineers usually receive just the stereo file, " without access to individual tracks ". did you do mastering before ?

 

Listening to the songs and applying the necessary corrections manually. Standard mastering procedure.

 

Last edited: Oct 4, 2024

Do you really have a degree as a mastering engineer and over 15 years of exp working with some high profile artists, or are you farming for an ANN? I have an easier time believing you are Drake than the former.

 

If you want an basic Dummy idea try multiple instances of gullfoss with specific frequency ranges