clintoncole Posted October 4, 2011 Share Posted October 4, 2011 I'm using logic default mastering presets and it just doesn't compare or is this not the problem? I will spend the money if anyone knows what the big people up there use. I'll link my work when I get home from work at 11. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clintoncole Posted October 5, 2011 Author Share Posted October 5, 2011 http://soundcloud.com/clintoncole/who-knows-not-finished-to Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nmaison Posted October 5, 2011 Share Posted October 5, 2011 theres a lot more to mastering than using a preset, music today especially is super squashed with RMS levels around -9,-8. you want to put eq on your master, a compressor, a limiter and a stereo spreader is usefull then throw a meter on there to reference the levels, the most important is to learn each of those tools, there isnt any real preset that will work, there great to learn what the plugin does or is capable of. but you would still need to customize the settings for your particular mix. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rev. Juda Sleaze Posted October 5, 2011 Share Posted October 5, 2011 I will spend the money if anyone knows what the big people up there use. Thing is, the "big people" will have a mastering studio with a ton of top-end hardware, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. More importantly, they also have the use of their ears, which will have been finely tuned from years of engineering for 40-90 hours a week. To paraphrase nmaison, using Logic presets for mastering sucks ass. Find out what the plugins actually do, then decide what your track needs. You could always go for T-Racks or O-Zone or whatnot. If you search the forum you'll find a ton of posts about them. Probably worth checking Gearslutz too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Mayfield Posted October 5, 2011 Share Posted October 5, 2011 That's like saying you'll spend any amount of money on basketball shoes necessary to let you get "air" and dunk like the pros. It doesn't work that way. Just owning expensive tools doesn't meant you instantly have the skills needed to use them effectively. A pro mastering engineer with, say, 15 years x 40 hrs/week experience, could get acceptable, pro-level results with only Logic's built-in plugins, but could do even better with more sophisticated tools. A beginner is not limited by the tool, but by lack of experience and practice. In my opinion, if that's where your skills are at the moment, don't waste your money; instead learn to use the (perfectly decent) tools you have in Logic, until you hone your skills to where they are no longer the limiting factor. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clintoncole Posted October 5, 2011 Author Share Posted October 5, 2011 theres a lot more to mastering than using a preset, music today especially is super squashed with RMS levels around -9,-8. you want to put eq on your master, a compressor, a limiter and a stereo spreader is usefull then throw a meter on there to reference the levels, the most important is to learn each of those tools, there isnt any real preset that will work, there great to learn what the plugin does or is capable of. but you would still need to customize the settings for your particular mix. These are the tools used in the preset,, I understand mainstream music isn't mastered by presets by these presets are good guidelines,, but even the presets don't give me the sound I want so learning these to the best of my ability won't satisfy me.. I will spend the money if anyone knows what the big people up there use. Thing is, the "big people" will have a mastering studio with a ton of top-end hardware, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. More importantly, they also have the use of their ears, which will have been finely tuned from years of engineering for 40-90 hours a week. To paraphrase nmaison, using Logic presets for mastering sucks ass. Find out what the plugins actually do, then decide what your track needs. You could always go for T-Racks or O-Zone or whatnot. If you search the forum you'll find a ton of posts about them. Probably worth checking Gearslutz too. What hardware do they use,, this is my question. If there's tons of posts you know about could you be helpful and post them for me? I've searched and cannot find what I'm looking for. That's like saying you'll spend any amount of money on basketball shoes necessary to let you get "air" and dunk like the pros. It doesn't work that way. Just owning expensive tools doesn't meant you instantly have the skills needed to use them effectively. A pro mastering engineer with, say, 15 years x 40 hrs/week experience, could get acceptable, pro-level results with only Logic's built-in plugins, but could do even better with more sophisticated tools. A beginner is not limited by the tool, but by lack of experience and practice. In my opinion, if that's where your skills are at the moment, don't waste your money; instead learn to use the (perfectly decent) tools you have in Logic, until you hone your skills to where they are no longer the limiting factor. I understand the general logic with compressors and the works,, but do you know what the best products are? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ski Posted October 5, 2011 Share Posted October 5, 2011 These are the tools used in the preset Yeah, but the individual plugins aren't calibrated to work with anyone's music. these presets are good guidelines, No, they're not. The only thing you can get from mastering presets are very general ideas of about which plugins are used in mastering. But even if a preset contained precisely the right plugins for one of your tracks, you still have to set each plugin appropriately. And which plugins you need for mastering and how to set them is going to change from one track to the next. There's no instant gratification here. Mastering presets are a stupid concept to begin with. They're misleading at best. Your best bet is to read up on mastering concepts and then apply the plugins you think you need one at a time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rev. Juda Sleaze Posted October 5, 2011 Share Posted October 5, 2011 What hardware do they use,, this is my question. If there's tons of posts you know about could you be helpful and post them for me? I've searched and cannot find what I'm looking for. I really have very little idea of what the pros use to master. Searching for "mastering software" in the Control Room board of LPH brought this up as the 3rd hit: http://www.logicprohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=67472&highlight=mastering+software There's recommendations for 3rd party mastering software in there. Listen to Ski's advice about matering presets in Logic; whoever made them had no idea what material was going to be going through them, so they are completely redundant. If you want to learn anything from them, bypass them all and one-by-one play with all the settings to find out exactly how it changes your sound. Buying a good book and experimenting with what you've got will bring you far better quality audio than all the plugins and equipment money can buy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rev. Juda Sleaze Posted October 5, 2011 Share Posted October 5, 2011 Here's another thread (although I've ditched my procedure that I posted, and now do the mid/side thing mentioned in the last post I linked to, makes creating width alot easier without messing with frequencies and such): http://www.logicprohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=66313&highlight=mastering+software And in case you miss it, there's a helpful little article from Taraketh linked in there too: http://tarekith.com/assets/mastering.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clintoncole Posted October 6, 2011 Author Share Posted October 6, 2011 ty Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
redlogic Posted October 6, 2011 Share Posted October 6, 2011 If you really want to learn what's up with Mastering, save up some $$$ and have a few songs professionally mastered. Attend the session. Ask questions. Get a grip on the concepts underlying why a certain thing is done. Then, have another go at "self mastering". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clintoncole Posted October 6, 2011 Author Share Posted October 6, 2011 If you really want to learn what's up with Mastering, save up some $$$ and have a few songs professionally mastered.Attend the session. Ask questions. Get a grip on the concepts underlying why a certain thing is done. Then, have another go at "self mastering". Definitely thought of this,, I can't find anyone around that uses logic,, let alone that works with my genre. Does this matter in this mastering world? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
redlogic Posted October 6, 2011 Share Posted October 6, 2011 Definitely thought of this,, I can't find anyone around that uses logic,, let alone that works with my genre. Does this matter in this mastering world? It doesn't really matter if they use Logic. Knowledge of the concepts is what you want. You want to know: Why is the ME EQing those specific frequencies and do you see a trend. This can tell you a lot about your monitoring and room...and ear. Why is the ME compressing at that specific ratio with those particular attack and release times. Why is the ME using multi-band compression on those specific frequency ranges to achieve that particular result. How much Limiting is enough...how much is too much? If the ME is GOOD, genre shouldn't matter. That said, I wouldn't really feel comfortable bringing Dance stuff to a guy that ONLY does Country. But at this stage, it really doesn't matter. Again, it's the knowledge of the concepts that you want. Remember when you took David's class...what an eye opener that was? Wasn't that money well spent? Think of an attended Mastering session in the same way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
camillo jr Posted October 6, 2011 Share Posted October 6, 2011 Yeah, spending time with an ME is a real eye-opener. Find someone who will be willing have you at the session (not all are) and be willing to answer questions about what they are doing. It's also an ear opener to hear your mixes on the ME's speakers. On their multiple sets of speakers. You might find yourself wondering how did you miss that really spikey sound on the lead vocal? Or that your bass was way over the top. Referencing is a big part of mastering - the ability to quickly go back and forth between the song and previously mastered commercial releases to compare. For the bit of mastering that I do, I never use presets, with one exception - if I have two or more very similar songs, after mastering the first song, I'll copy over the plug-in stack from one song's channel strip to the next. (I don't put all the plugs on the output, instead I have a stack on each track.) This is a practice that I learned from a respected ME in my town, which is that once you've established a starting place that works on one song, you continue to work with similar settings on the next one, assuming a similar song. But this is completely different than blindly applying a Logic "mastering preset" to a song and hoping it works. It may work, but only by complete fluke. Mid-side processing is also a big part of mastering these days. Another route to consider is to take all your mixes to an ME just for a listening session. So you pay the ME for an hour or two and go in specifically to get advice on the sonic strengths and weaknesses of your mixes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shivermetimbers Posted October 6, 2011 Share Posted October 6, 2011 http://www.gearslutz.com/board/mastering-forum/626411-show-me-your-mastering-setup-2011-a.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
el-bo Posted October 7, 2011 Share Posted October 7, 2011 http://www.gearslutz.com/board/mastering-forum/626411-show-me-your-mastering-setup-2011-a.html such a waste of money and space...don't any of these people know about the free mastering channel strips that come with logic ?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
camillo jr Posted October 7, 2011 Share Posted October 7, 2011 LMAO!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Voltcontrol909 Posted October 7, 2011 Share Posted October 7, 2011 Try Ozone Izotope its a great mastering tool Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clintoncole Posted October 7, 2011 Author Share Posted October 7, 2011 Thank you all very much . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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