Honing the ears for a M.E. is a lifelong activity but the normal listeners' ears can not distinguish the subtleties. @PopstarKiller 's defended approach I think is more than enough for them.

Who would care if you increase or decrease the level around 3KH 1dB?

PS: We all know that different listening environments have different acoustical properties so why to expect a master guy to make the track perfect and sounding-good-in-everywhere that logically is impossible?

 

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Really ? And who shapes the normal listener's ears dude ? The "artists" with their self mastered tracks ? You can troll all you like, think whatever, fact is you can be Iznogoud if you want to, but you 'll never be Vizier in the place of the Vizier.
Good luck catching Roadrunner mr. Wile E Coyote.
Beep beep.
Ps: You ever heard that mastrubating is ok but with sex you actually meet people ? Now you have your analogy.
Oh and the only funny thing here is you saying a track playing well in all mediums is logically impossible when everywhere you go, be it car,plane,work places, bars, clubs, elevators, supermarkets even fkn hair salons there is MUSIC. Hopefully not yours. Meh

 

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Once upon a time there was a track.....

A mastering engineer said the mix is perfect & just needs finalizing....

Another mastering engineer said the mix is not perfect & needs more processing mixing/mastering....

A third mixing/mastering engineer was in the room listening to the track & having a blast....

Who was/is wrong...who was/is right

 

Oh gosh, you said Manley and I just came in my pants. Now there is an eq that you could use in the mastering process. I think I'll just let everyone believe all eq's are the same and that mastering is a farce. Who doesn't want job security in this market.

 

No one knows. Even the experienced guys can not answer it. The more you become experienced the more you can glorify and mastership is nothing more than that and is subjective.

 

The third one was right on the money. He understood and liked what he was listening to so he or she passed to next stage. Which is always having fun with what you do.
There is always room for improvement as there is never the perfect track or album. Staying always on the critical side when you hear something instead of immersing yourself in it, means you have no real love for this, so your insight might be scientific but it will never be artistic as well.

It is always nice to hear from you mate. If your post meant to show there's many opinions on a track, it is not wrong. This though doesn't necessarily mean that each and everyone of the 3 dudes in your example would harm your track if they messed with it. You would get a different approach and that is all.
Many years ago i did a simple test. I took 10 professional djs and gave them 10 tracks in 12" singles. I then asked them to put them in the best order they can. Can you guess what they came up with ? To spare you the thought, they came up with 10 almost entirely different orders. Each and everyone had a backup story that explained how they came up with their particular order and how what they did should be the best possible order. 9 out of 10 djs could almost convince me their order was right, the 10th guy was just too stoned to explain.
So there you have it. Opinions are like aholes etc etc. Still, persons with a hit roster behind them are no slouch and should not be taken lightly. You have ears, put them to use and decide who's the ME for you.
99.999% of those who say will master their own stuff are barking at the moon my friend. For the most talented it takes less than a year of failed mastering attempts, to realize they need someone skilled at this, if what they do is career/money critical.
Some others who have a different day job or no job at all, will sit here and elsewhere mumbling about how MEs are optional, real studios offer nothing more than your pc and mic and expensive gear is a myth. I wish them all good luck and a long lasting career.
Cheers

 

yes cheers to the Unknown

 

Thank you for sharing all this ^
I will read it again
also when you have time tell me your thoughts about the monitors

 

Just ignore mastering for a couple of years. Or 10. Finish some music and train your ears as a byproduct of this process, then you'll understand what difference a single dB can make. And if you can't then go fishing. Ride a bike. Live.

Aside from the obvious technical details that every ME agrees on, the common ground of all ME which is also the only aspect that differentiate them is taste and luckily this is nothing one can measure.

You desperately try to quantize, measure, evaluate, categorize every process involved in music making while the only thing you should do regarding music is... play.

 

Better his than those spammers!

 

Mr Foster, I think you're hung up on something that doesn't really concern you at the moment. Hence your lack of appreciation and understanding of what mastering entails.

 

I'm almost certain that stem mastering is the industry standard. lol Why in this day and age would you process a single stereo mix for consumption, instead of grouped stereo mixes, which will give a much more in depth, and cohesive master?

 

Doug breaks down the process of stem mastering and highlights the benefits of using grouped mixes to achieve a higher quality master.

 

I just said the normal listeners. More than 90% of music consumers are them and they can't make sense of the sonic characteristics of a professionally mastered work.

I'm also hard pushed to work on the mastering right now and never will stop.

 

This is the reason I created this thread. Different tastes, different views, different workflows, different results, etc.


Differences naturally are not a bad thing but
humans usually get satisfied by the unity and having only one definition for everything.

Why did you say luckily unmeasurable? It means you're happy that it only belongs to you and your property?

Conveying the Capitalism?

 

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It's probably already been said but .. the simple reason for mastering is to make a 'master track'. The question should then be, 'What is a master track?' The master track is the final mix from which the copies will be made. This can be digital or tape or CD. Traditionally, this was the job of the record company and didn't involve the recording artist. You should be able to complete your recording up to final mix stage, and it's up to the releaser to prepare it for release, since mastering should not be part of the creative process; mastering is a technical process that should not change the recording but make recording sound payable on the target media. BUT, and it is a big but, since production often becomes part of the creative process now, it's of little surprise that the creative artist is now also producer AND mastering engineer. Many artists now self-release, release on iTunes, Bandcamp or Soundcloud, and want, or need, to create a release-ready MP3. If a releaser/label asks for a WAV, you can be sure that they may want to do do some mastering on your tracks.

 

If you give a single mix to eg. 7 different M.E.s and ask them to apply a mastering EQ to it, any of them would use different curves like these by different EQs:




You may say it depends on their rooms, monitors, ears, experiences, analyzers, guidelines, perceptions, target media, etc. My first question was:

1- Which of them is telling the truth?

2- What's the truth?

3- Are they 100% sure about their choices?

4- According to what fact they're sure?

5- If the taste dominates all of them, why don't the mix guys use their tastes?

6- What's the difference between the mix and mastering taste?

 

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Why do the same threads have to be written over and over and over? There are a trillion articles on mastering, and many threads just on this forum alone.

Mastering is simply tailoring the source material to the distribution medium -- nothing more, nothing less. It was really important for vinyl, not so much for digital. I'd even go so far as to say that knowing how to minimize compression artifacts (MP3 versus Ogg; target sales/streaming platforms of Spotify/iTunes/YouTube, etc.) is more mastering than what's passed off as mastering in modern times -- same thing with PQ codes for Red Book (but what are these round CD things people keep talking about, anyway?)

People use the term mastering as if it's having an expert correct sub-optimal mixes by sprinkling fairy dust on the 2-bus, and it really isn't. Or it shouldn't be, I should say.

Given 48kHz / 24-bit source material and told to put it on CD? High-quality SRC and selection of the best dithering algorithm is mastering. Given 44.1 / 16-bit source material and told to put it on CD? Not much to it other than CD-Text entries and the like, but the far majority of it is near -effortless and automated in 2018.

Given source material and told to put it on vinyl? Well, then you've got a slew of things you need to consider, and you really need to know how vinyl reproduction works to make the correct decisions in what you're going to do to the source material.

 

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Off-topic, but:

A music genre whose style is primarily centered around improvisation, typically in a musically advanced form -- classic tropes of the genre include swing rhythm, scat vocals, and augmented/diminished chords.

 

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Now I'm enlightened!