I've always thought this.. generally, when you master a CD, you master everything so it atleast sounds like it's coming from a same source.. Well, I agree in terms of volume. but for EQ and dynamic response, I think differently. Personally, I like diversity. (as you can tell from my music) I love the difference between how a song sounds on FM radio, AM radio, CD, and mp3. So, well, what if you just mastered each track separately, only keeping the volume consistant? I think that serves the tracks much better.
Just food for thought, anyway.. happy holidays to y'all. You know, I always wished everyone on Z could gather in one place to have a big discussion about all things off topic. I have so much respect for people here and what you all have to say. Really interesting and intelligent bunch.
am I just wierd? don't like all tracks on a CD being master
Sir 
I spent 3 years of my life mastering CD's, before we had all these magical mastering plug-ins that just smash the music.
Back then my job was to make sure that you didn't have to get up and touch the volume control or the EQ on your stereo while listening through the whole album. Mostly that meant trying to keep the amount of bass energy relatively constant from track to track. I tended to let the highs fall where they may, unless they were really out of whack. I always felt it was important to let each track be what it was...as much as possible. I didn't compress the shit out of every song to make it as loud and dense as possible! For some reason this concept has become synonomous with "mastering".
Of course, in those days the tracks I was working on were recorded in "real" studios by people who were engineers for a living, so the tracks tended to have a type of consistency that "home recordings" sometimes lack.
So I'm with you Ken. As long as the listener doesn't have to jump up and adjust the volume or EQ, then I'm happy.
Rod
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: nprime on 2005-12-25 10:07 ]</font>
Back then my job was to make sure that you didn't have to get up and touch the volume control or the EQ on your stereo while listening through the whole album. Mostly that meant trying to keep the amount of bass energy relatively constant from track to track. I tended to let the highs fall where they may, unless they were really out of whack. I always felt it was important to let each track be what it was...as much as possible. I didn't compress the shit out of every song to make it as loud and dense as possible! For some reason this concept has become synonomous with "mastering".
Of course, in those days the tracks I was working on were recorded in "real" studios by people who were engineers for a living, so the tracks tended to have a type of consistency that "home recordings" sometimes lack.
So I'm with you Ken. As long as the listener doesn't have to jump up and adjust the volume or EQ, then I'm happy.
Rod
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: nprime on 2005-12-25 10:07 ]</font>
well, there's mastering and mastering... Mastering with plug-ins in one's own daw and real pro mastering in a mastering facility by engineers with 10-20 years of experience. I'm just about to have my first "official" release mastered in a pro facility. I went there for a pre-mastering listening with the engineer. Wow, so much to learn from these people! Good mastering studios have a really flat sound system so they easily hear any flaws that you've overlooked in the production process.
They go song by song, treating just as it needs to be. I my case, I'll bring them around 4 tracks per song, so they can be even more precise and treat only what needs to be fixed. The usual mastering is done on a stereo mix tho. Of course they look at the cd as a whole but its really not a batch process thing.
With this said, a real mastering work should never be done on the system on which the cd was mixed, because it will amplify its flaws even more...
They go song by song, treating just as it needs to be. I my case, I'll bring them around 4 tracks per song, so they can be even more precise and treat only what needs to be fixed. The usual mastering is done on a stereo mix tho. Of course they look at the cd as a whole but its really not a batch process thing.
With this said, a real mastering work should never be done on the system on which the cd was mixed, because it will amplify its flaws even more...
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Interesting Ken!
I think mastering is a personal thing, but it also has some rather fix principles to follow and learn, that are for everybody the same, if you want to keep a good balanced sound among all the platforms your music will go through.
Basically, I believe that mastering in different ways all the songs in an album, and then re-mastering them all as a whole, it’s not a contradiction act. Both realms can keep together harmoniously.
It is very nice indeed, to have different pieces of music mastered in different ways, why not, that makes songs more interesting in relation to each other. I personally do this most of the time, as you suggest Ken, because I find more freedom, amuse myself more, and well, the final work is more interesting, BUT, I definitely do always a final master, to mach several characteristics: EQ, Compression, Limiting (but not in “perfectly” equal amounts, but quite close anyway).
The only problem is that, if you go too far with this “exclusive” mastering for each song, people will have to get ready their players all the time, (as previously said here) so to handle possible distortions, harsh sounds, or passages with to much depth, or different volumes.
The balance between creativity and science is the perfect combination for me.
Creativity:
Do whatever you want, limiting yourself to a coherent whole, so to hear your album is a comfortable, enjoying experience.
Science:
Keep your master homogeneous as naturally, everybody likes it because this is the way our ears work, and also the market, technologically speaking. Keep track of what the great masters of all time says to us; Bob Clearmountain being one to follow.
I think mastering is a personal thing, but it also has some rather fix principles to follow and learn, that are for everybody the same, if you want to keep a good balanced sound among all the platforms your music will go through.
Basically, I believe that mastering in different ways all the songs in an album, and then re-mastering them all as a whole, it’s not a contradiction act. Both realms can keep together harmoniously.
It is very nice indeed, to have different pieces of music mastered in different ways, why not, that makes songs more interesting in relation to each other. I personally do this most of the time, as you suggest Ken, because I find more freedom, amuse myself more, and well, the final work is more interesting, BUT, I definitely do always a final master, to mach several characteristics: EQ, Compression, Limiting (but not in “perfectly” equal amounts, but quite close anyway).
The only problem is that, if you go too far with this “exclusive” mastering for each song, people will have to get ready their players all the time, (as previously said here) so to handle possible distortions, harsh sounds, or passages with to much depth, or different volumes.
The balance between creativity and science is the perfect combination for me.
Creativity:
Do whatever you want, limiting yourself to a coherent whole, so to hear your album is a comfortable, enjoying experience.
Science:
Keep your master homogeneous as naturally, everybody likes it because this is the way our ears work, and also the market, technologically speaking. Keep track of what the great masters of all time says to us; Bob Clearmountain being one to follow.
Ken I'm with you, but I don't belive diversity it's a strict rule; I mean: I also like diversity, but if the tracks are all pompous (for example), I don't try to diversify them too much. I always try to keep the original message of the music, this is the main rule I try to follow.
Maybe IMO a well balanced album needs different kind of tracks (some slow and some fast or some pompous and some romantic etc...) so has different tastes and different possibilities of mastering.
Maybe IMO a well balanced album needs different kind of tracks (some slow and some fast or some pompous and some romantic etc...) so has different tastes and different possibilities of mastering.
Welcome to the dawning of a new empire
When I started to mix my tracks I ignored the existence of mastering. When I hear someone on the net talking about it, I tought he was referred to mixing. Then when I tried to compare my tracks with some commercial one, I I noticed that the main volume was a lot low and the mix less clean.On 2005-12-25 10:06, nprime wrote:
I didn't compress the shit out of every song to make it as loud and dense as possible! For some reason this concept has become synonomous with "mastering".
The most difficult things for me was to reach the hi level (but maintaining the nature of the music) and now I can handle that tool quite well (read only in case of necessity) for my purpose.
Obviously I've learned it making a lot of experiments, so abuse of compressor was abosultely normal, like the abuse of reverb etc...
Seeing that the accesibility to hi-end tools for mix and mastering (either software or hardware) is grown a lot in these days, making mastering a thing for everyone, I belive it's quite normal to speak of mastering referring to the gain of volume (because IMHO it's the first aim a people watch camparing his tracks with the others). I belive that the most of the people wich refears to that, is people relatively new to master.
Welcome to the dawning of a new empire