I have been composing instrumental production music,
and have a problem about mixing(or mastering) that isn’t solved for a long time so I tried to post here.
(I only use software plug-ins and VSTi.)
When I compare my tracks with commercial tracks,
my tracks’ mid-high frequency range(1000~16000 hz) is always lower(-5~-10db) than commercial tracks.
I just tried to give 2~4 gain to that large frequency range when mastering, then my track’s sound became similar with commercial tracks but also became too sharp, and individual instrument’s balance was ruined(especially the instruments like hihat, shaker, etc became too clear, loud and close.).
And I found that it is not only a mastering problem but also mixing problem.
I also compared my tracks with UNmastered commercial proquality tracks and just found that my tracks’ mid-high frequency range is still lower than UNmastered commercial tracks.
Honestly I don’t know where I should begin first and what instrument need to be boosted.
I know it is not a simple problem but really want to know some useful tips.
If I compose a song with instruments like below –
Piano(main instrument)
Bass
Drum
Acoustic guitar
Background pad
(genre = background music, easy listening, new age, relaxing and ballad)
What is the most suitable instrument to have mid-high frequency range boosted?
In short, How should I do for track to dominate enough mid-high frequency range like commercial tracks?
I’m sorry if my English is not good.
Please give me some advice.
If it sounds good, I wouldn’t worry about how low or high your mids are. If you’re sacrificing quality for loudness then maybe you’re approaching it wrong.
Commercial tracks were more than likely mastered at a high-end facility, with high end gear & more importantly a Mastering engineer whose sole job is touching up things that weren’t addressed in the mix or couldn’t be.
Hello JunL, a few thoughts come to mind. One is that maybe your VST instruments don’t have the same high quality sound as the instruments used in commercial tracks so it is difficult for you to match the sound.
If using eq to boost frequencies isn’t giving you the sound you are looking for, try other ways like a multi-band compressor. Start by looking for a pre-set that may have come with the plug-in. If a pre-set created to enhance the highs doesn’t exist, search the internet for how to use a multi-band compressor as a “dynamic eq”. Another plug-in to try instead of eq is an expander. This will take lower level signals and compress them upwards. Finally try an enhancer like the BBE sonic-maximizer or other “aural exciter” type of plug-in.
Actually I tried to analyze wav form of VSTi track and session recorded wav track(from mixing practice examples, etc). Result was that session recorded wav track’s high range(4K~16K) was much higher(4db+ at 4K and 15db+ at 16K) than VSTi and I just surprised how much difference was already there before starting mixing.
Moreover I also found that session recorded track had very clear low-cut(ex: bass or kick). I just tried to use highpass or low-shelf to my VSTi and just had to use 5+ overlapped same highpass filters to reach that quality. (but it also changed sound too light while session recorded tracks isn’t.)
I just assumed that it is because that session recorded track is influenced by ‘analogue’ recording system or something engineering is already applied when session recording.
Thanks to your detailed reply I learned about it more clearly.
So I would try ‘pre-mix’ for basic sound quality.
I’m finding suitable plugins like seamingless EQ or exciter or dynamic, etc.
Im getting tired of spending 4-6 hours (usually over 2 days) mastering some of my tracks to get them as close to commercial release quality as I can. They sound great when im finished but im not sure if its nesseary for me to put so much effort into this part of the production process. Do libraries need tracks to be mastered to such a high standard or am I just wasting my time? I dont want to spend so much time mastering anymore but im worried that if I stop trying to reach such a high standard that my tracks might not be accepted so readily into some of the libraries im with. Is there a real/any need to produce commercial quality masters?
Hi Hysteria,
I dont know what kinda music you produce, but this sounds like a long time you need for mastering.
Maybe you should put more effort in the actual mixing of the song (and also the selection of instruments), so that you dont have to fix so much in the mastering process.
I’m usually aiming at a clean, well balanced, moderatly compressed song, that gives the editors some room to play around with it too.
Try to find out what it is that you do while mastering, maybe you can streamline/organise that a bit and find out what you have to do while producing/mixing the song.
hysteria, you’re not wasting your time. Libraries usually want “broadcast quality masters”. To me this means make your track sound the best possible. You can knock some time off your 4-6 hours I’m sure. Like Ulla says, it all starts with your mix, the better the mix the less time spent polishing it later. Start your comparison to a commercial release as you are mixing, and make up for deficiencies (excluding loudness) then.
Setup an FX chain in your mastering software so it is ready to go ahead of time. Mine goes – eq set to remove rumble (frequencies less that 30Hz), tube pre-amp simulator, eq, compression, exciter, stereo-imager and maximizer. Each has starting settings loaded, but are bypassed. From there I can start enabling effects, listen and tweak. If I enable one of the plug-ins and it does not improve the sound I don’t use it! Just because it’s in the chain doesn’t mean it must be used (most likely the exciter or stereo-imager). On the other hand if none of those can solve a problem I will add a plug-in, like multi-band compression.
Eventually you could get your time down to 20minutes a song, I’m sure.
1. Do my tracks need to be mastered to a high level. ? I think so, you are competing and being compared to other tracks which have been.
2. You shouldn’t really be spending that long mastering a track. I have my mastering plugins on my mix bus. I by pass them and mix until I am satisfied . I will then turn them on and usually adjust mastering settings and elements in the mix until finished.
3. Bounce down a mix and DON’T listen to it for a couple of days. I usually find on this second listen I will tweak on or two things and it’s done. I can get over consumed in just one thing and miss the overall picture if I spend too long on it.
4. This is a rolling process where in one day I will compose, mix or review. Stops anyone track or project getting boring or over analysed.
Thanks for the tips Ulla, Michael and Denis. Yeah maybe its cos i dont spend enough time mixing before I master. I kind of end up mixing and eqing as I go along and then when the songs done I master it and adjust bits of the mix that need adjusting. just seems to take me ages getting my finished songs to commercial release standard. Probably doesn’t help using a £40 set of desktop speakers to mix/master on! To get a better idea of how my masters are sitting i check them on my stereo and my TV set. certain elements seem to stand out more when heard on different speaker sets. I then go back and adjust the mix again! Cant afford to upgrade yet. For a good set of speakers and an audio interface will set me back about 500 or 600, which i dont have at the mo. Cmon Music dealers! put one of my tunes in an ad campaign!
But your tracks do sound great in the end, it’s about streamlining your workflow I suppose. http://www.focalprofessional.com/en/cms-line/
These are brilliant monitors at any price. Put it on top of your list when the first cheque comes in. They aren’t expensive and will sound good in any room.
I do all of my mastering from stereo mixes in a separate file rather than on the mix bus so that I can do all of my 15, 30, 60 sec cutdowns there as well. Much easier to quickly edit one stereo file than 15-20 tracks!
Exactly. Some may view it as adding an extra step, but I feel like my end result is better because I try to make the mix sound as good as possible without any sweetening on the mix bus and THEN move on to mastering with fresh perspective. I think it’s good to assume that you are two different people doing two different jobs, again, like in record production, there’s the recording/mixing engineer and then the mastering engineer.
I actually do my edits while still in the midi tracks. Seems to be quick for me. I just cut out sections to fit the time and boom. It’s also easier for me to take out individual notes when needed.
Im mastering a track now where I want to keep the volume at a good level whilst avoiding low end distortion from kik drum. I can stick a limiter in after my EQ to keep the track at a higher vol but it effects the dynamics very slightly and in a way i dont like for the song. Is there another way of keeping dynamics 100% intact and maintaining volume? Or is it just a case of sacrificing vol for dynamics or vise versa.
Hey Hysteria,
If you have a compressor that you can control the mix percentage, you could try upward compression. It keeps the dynamics of the track and is more natural sounding than downward compression.
I usually find the peaks of the track, set my threshold to that, then set attack around 125ms, release at about 250-350ms (where it does not pump) Output set according to threshold. The output mix of the compressor I usually set around 50%. Ratio between 1.1-2.5
Theses are only rough guidelines as each track is different of course. It’s comparable to parallel compression.
This way works good for louder music, there is also another way to set up this style for acoustic/orchestral music.
Okay thanks again euca. I dont hav mix percentage option on my compressor but ill have a look at the attk and rel settns and see if I can help things there. I really dont understand what im doing when compressing i just kind of mess with it until i think it sounds right. i shud prob just avoid compressn altogether. Thanks.
No problem. If you want to avoid comp. you could try and ride the gain through the song and automate it. That works too. Sometimes no comp. is a good thing. I think comp. is actually abused too much. An over compressed song gives me ear fatigue.
Multi band compressor of which McDSP/Waves all make one. Divides the frequencies into 3/4 bands and then lets you compress each one differently, so lets say in your case you could compress the whole mix bar the bass/kick drum end or vice versa.
This couldn’t have come at a better time. Just yesterday, i was really struggling with a new piece. Somehow the freq. of a pad were battling with the freq. of the bass, and i wasnt able to get it right. I think the topics listed are going to be a big help.
So far i think its well written, and the links to free mastering tools are fantastic. I havent used them yet, but my intuition tells me this going to help. Much thanks…
Just wanted to pass on a new mastering tutorial site that just opened today that I was waiting for.
I’m checking it out now but looks pretty good and user friendly. I also like the idea of mastering being the main subject matter.
Don’t know much about the owners though but info looks good and helpful for those of us who master their own work.
Please post what you think about it.
Hello.
I have been composing instrumental production music,
and have a problem about mixing(or mastering) that isn’t solved for a long time so I tried to post here.
(I only use software plug-ins and VSTi.)
When I compare my tracks with commercial tracks,
my tracks’ mid-high frequency range(1000~16000 hz) is always lower(-5~-10db) than commercial tracks.
I just tried to give 2~4 gain to that large frequency range when mastering, then my track’s sound became similar with commercial tracks but also became too sharp, and individual instrument’s balance was ruined(especially the instruments like hihat, shaker, etc became too clear, loud and close.).
And I found that it is not only a mastering problem but also mixing problem.
I also compared my tracks with UNmastered commercial proquality tracks and just found that my tracks’ mid-high frequency range is still lower than UNmastered commercial tracks.
Honestly I don’t know where I should begin first and what instrument need to be boosted.
I know it is not a simple problem but really want to know some useful tips.
If I compose a song with instruments like below –
Piano(main instrument)
Bass
Drum
Acoustic guitar
Background pad
(genre = background music, easy listening, new age, relaxing and ballad)
What is the most suitable instrument to have mid-high frequency range boosted?
In short, How should I do for track to dominate enough mid-high frequency range like commercial tracks?
I’m sorry if my English is not good.
Please give me some advice.
Thanks
JunL
If it sounds good, I wouldn’t worry about how low or high your mids are. If you’re sacrificing quality for loudness then maybe you’re approaching it wrong.
Commercial tracks were more than likely mastered at a high-end facility, with high end gear & more importantly a Mastering engineer whose sole job is touching up things that weren’t addressed in the mix or couldn’t be.
Hello JunL, a few thoughts come to mind. One is that maybe your VST instruments don’t have the same high quality sound as the instruments used in commercial tracks so it is difficult for you to match the sound.
If using eq to boost frequencies isn’t giving you the sound you are looking for, try other ways like a multi-band compressor. Start by looking for a pre-set that may have come with the plug-in. If a pre-set created to enhance the highs doesn’t exist, search the internet for how to use a multi-band compressor as a “dynamic eq”. Another plug-in to try instead of eq is an expander. This will take lower level signals and compress them upwards. Finally try an enhancer like the BBE sonic-maximizer or other “aural exciter” type of plug-in.
Good luck,
Michael
http://www.guidetopricingmusic.com
Thanks Musicman and Michael Nickolas.
Actually I tried to analyze wav form of VSTi track and session recorded wav track(from mixing practice examples, etc). Result was that session recorded wav track’s high range(4K~16K) was much higher(4db+ at 4K and 15db+ at 16K) than VSTi and I just surprised how much difference was already there before starting mixing.
Moreover I also found that session recorded track had very clear low-cut(ex: bass or kick). I just tried to use highpass or low-shelf to my VSTi and just had to use 5+ overlapped same highpass filters to reach that quality. (but it also changed sound too light while session recorded tracks isn’t.)
I just assumed that it is because that session recorded track is influenced by ‘analogue’ recording system or something engineering is already applied when session recording.
Thanks to your detailed reply I learned about it more clearly.
So I would try ‘pre-mix’ for basic sound quality.
I’m finding suitable plugins like seamingless EQ or exciter or dynamic, etc.
Thanks
JunL
Im getting tired of spending 4-6 hours (usually over 2 days) mastering some of my tracks to get them as close to commercial release quality as I can. They sound great when im finished but im not sure if its nesseary for me to put so much effort into this part of the production process. Do libraries need tracks to be mastered to such a high standard or am I just wasting my time? I dont want to spend so much time mastering anymore but im worried that if I stop trying to reach such a high standard that my tracks might not be accepted so readily into some of the libraries im with. Is there a real/any need to produce commercial quality masters?
Hi Hysteria,
I dont know what kinda music you produce, but this sounds like a long time you need for mastering.
Maybe you should put more effort in the actual mixing of the song (and also the selection of instruments), so that you dont have to fix so much in the mastering process.
I’m usually aiming at a clean, well balanced, moderatly compressed song, that gives the editors some room to play around with it too.
Try to find out what it is that you do while mastering, maybe you can streamline/organise that a bit and find out what you have to do while producing/mixing the song.
hysteria, you’re not wasting your time. Libraries usually want “broadcast quality masters”. To me this means make your track sound the best possible. You can knock some time off your 4-6 hours I’m sure. Like Ulla says, it all starts with your mix, the better the mix the less time spent polishing it later. Start your comparison to a commercial release as you are mixing, and make up for deficiencies (excluding loudness) then.
Setup an FX chain in your mastering software so it is ready to go ahead of time. Mine goes – eq set to remove rumble (frequencies less that 30Hz), tube pre-amp simulator, eq, compression, exciter, stereo-imager and maximizer. Each has starting settings loaded, but are bypassed. From there I can start enabling effects, listen and tweak. If I enable one of the plug-ins and it does not improve the sound I don’t use it! Just because it’s in the chain doesn’t mean it must be used (most likely the exciter or stereo-imager). On the other hand if none of those can solve a problem I will add a plug-in, like multi-band compression.
Eventually you could get your time down to 20minutes a song, I’m sure.
Michael
http://www.guidetopricingmusic.com
1. Do my tracks need to be mastered to a high level. ? I think so, you are competing and being compared to other tracks which have been.
2. You shouldn’t really be spending that long mastering a track. I have my mastering plugins on my mix bus. I by pass them and mix until I am satisfied . I will then turn them on and usually adjust mastering settings and elements in the mix until finished.
3. Bounce down a mix and DON’T listen to it for a couple of days. I usually find on this second listen I will tweak on or two things and it’s done. I can get over consumed in just one thing and miss the overall picture if I spend too long on it.
4. This is a rolling process where in one day I will compose, mix or review. Stops anyone track or project getting boring or over analysed.
Just my 2cents.
Thanks for the tips Ulla, Michael and Denis. Yeah maybe its cos i dont spend enough time mixing before I master. I kind of end up mixing and eqing as I go along and then when the songs done I master it and adjust bits of the mix that need adjusting. just seems to take me ages getting my finished songs to commercial release standard. Probably doesn’t help using a £40 set of desktop speakers to mix/master on! To get a better idea of how my masters are sitting i check them on my stereo and my TV set. certain elements seem to stand out more when heard on different speaker sets. I then go back and adjust the mix again! Cant afford to upgrade yet. For a good set of speakers and an audio interface will set me back about 500 or 600, which i dont have at the mo. Cmon Music dealers! put one of my tunes in an ad campaign!
But your tracks do sound great in the end, it’s about streamlining your workflow I suppose.
http://www.focalprofessional.com/en/cms-line/
These are brilliant monitors at any price. Put it on top of your list when the first cheque comes in. They aren’t expensive and will sound good in any room.
I do all of my mastering from stereo mixes in a separate file rather than on the mix bus so that I can do all of my 15, 30, 60 sec cutdowns there as well. Much easier to quickly edit one stereo file than 15-20 tracks!
This is the way that I work as well. I guess it’s more like traditional record production.
It’s what I’m familiar with.
Exactly. Some may view it as adding an extra step, but I feel like my end result is better because I try to make the mix sound as good as possible without any sweetening on the mix bus and THEN move on to mastering with fresh perspective. I think it’s good to assume that you are two different people doing two different jobs, again, like in record production, there’s the recording/mixing engineer and then the mastering engineer.
I actually do my edits while still in the midi tracks. Seems to be quick for me. I just cut out sections to fit the time and boom. It’s also easier for me to take out individual notes when needed.
Correction: I edit to length from midi files. I master from a single stereo file for each edit.
There is a way that I can do that in DP without having to remix each of the edits.
nice. ill keep those in mind for the future. thanks.
Im mastering a track now where I want to keep the volume at a good level whilst avoiding low end distortion from kik drum. I can stick a limiter in after my EQ to keep the track at a higher vol but it effects the dynamics very slightly and in a way i dont like for the song. Is there another way of keeping dynamics 100% intact and maintaining volume? Or is it just a case of sacrificing vol for dynamics or vise versa.
Hey Hysteria,
If you have a compressor that you can control the mix percentage, you could try upward compression. It keeps the dynamics of the track and is more natural sounding than downward compression.
I usually find the peaks of the track, set my threshold to that, then set attack around 125ms, release at about 250-350ms (where it does not pump) Output set according to threshold. The output mix of the compressor I usually set around 50%. Ratio between 1.1-2.5
Theses are only rough guidelines as each track is different of course. It’s comparable to parallel compression.
This way works good for louder music, there is also another way to set up this style for acoustic/orchestral music.
Hope this helps.
Okay thanks again euca. I dont hav mix percentage option on my compressor but ill have a look at the attk and rel settns and see if I can help things there. I really dont understand what im doing when compressing i just kind of mess with it until i think it sounds right. i shud prob just avoid compressn altogether. Thanks.
No problem. If you want to avoid comp. you could try and ride the gain through the song and automate it. That works too. Sometimes no comp. is a good thing. I think comp. is actually abused too much. An over compressed song gives me ear fatigue.
Multi band compressor of which McDSP/Waves all make one. Divides the frequencies into 3/4 bands and then lets you compress each one differently, so lets say in your case you could compress the whole mix bar the bass/kick drum end or vice versa.
This couldn’t have come at a better time. Just yesterday, i was really struggling with a new piece. Somehow the freq. of a pad were battling with the freq. of the bass, and i wasnt able to get it right. I think the topics listed are going to be a big help.
So far i think its well written, and the links to free mastering tools are fantastic. I havent used them yet, but my intuition tells me this going to help. Much thanks…
No problem.
I think this site is very interesting and will definitely help to improving my mastering.
Just wanted to pass on a new mastering tutorial site that just opened today that I was waiting for.
I’m checking it out now but looks pretty good and user friendly. I also like the idea of mastering being the main subject matter.
Don’t know much about the owners though but info looks good and helpful for those of us who master their own work.
Please post what you think about it.
http://www.masteringtuition.com