Mastering

Why you should master your own recordings

There are a few reasons to master your own recordings. Foremost, mastering your own stuff at home is economical. Although a good mastering engineer is worth every penny, they will cost you a lot of pennies. If you're on a tight budget, the savings can be reason enough.

Why you shouldn't

If you plan to release the recording internationally or if the recording is at all important, hire someone. A professional mastering job is another opinion; another chance to fix anything you may have missed. The mastering engineer will probably have better equipment than you will. The reasons are innumerable.

But, if you just want to have some fun with mastering to see what all the fuss is about, I think I can give you some tips. You can use multi-track software for this job, but I wouldn't recommend it. Try something like Wave Lab or Sound Forge.

General considerations

Your goal in mastering should be:

• To make the material suitable for replication
  
  
• To make the sound compete with other similar recordings in your genre
  
  
• To make the songs cohesive with each other
  
  

Listening environment

First, learn to listen to your system flat, with no EQ and the Loudness button bypassed. This will give you the truest sound possible from consumer equipment. Although most people will listen to your music on a stereo with the Loudness switched on or their EQ tweaked, you should try to avoid this for the sake of fidelity.

Keep your monitors away from reflective surfaces. The length of the reflected signal path should be at least 2 to 3 times the direct signal path. For example, let's say that your monitors are 3 feet from your ears. The distance from your monitors to a reflective surface, such as a wall, and back to your ears should be 6 to 9 feet.

Also, keep in mind the monitoring volume. The louder you monitor, the more bass energy your recording will seem to have. So monitor at approximately the same level as the ultimate listener.

Professional CDs as reference

Use professional CDs as guides during your mixing and mastering sessions. The best way to emulate the recordings you know and love is to do a direct A/B comparison. They don't need to be exact, but you might want to get the relative levels of lows, mids and highs in the same ballpark. When A/B'ing, listen to each for about 30 seconds to get an overall idea of the general tonal balance of the music.

What you can do in mastering

• Compression/limiting
  
  
• Track volume adjustment
  
  
• Noise clean up between songs
  
  
• Fades
  
  
• Stereo width expansion
  
  
• Harmonic enhancements
  
  
• Click & clip removal
  
  
• Hiss & noise reduction
  
  

How to do it

Compression/limiting

In Wave Lab, I use a plug-in called Peak Master. It is basically a hard limiter. You adjust the input gain and the effect makes sure your signal doesn't exceed 0 dB. Once I know what the average volume of the song is, I adjust accordingly. Since I generally aim for -14 dB, if the average volume is -16 dB, I'll use Peak Master to boost the input 2 dB.

If I'm using Sound Forge, I don't have this plug-in. Instead, I just raise the master volume until it averages -14 dB. This will cause clipping. However, if it's only a few decibels, it may not be noticeable. This isn't sonically correct, but it gets the job done.

EQ

Gentler, wider EQ slopes sound more natural when used in moderation. Q's of 0.6 to 0.8 are popular. This is helpful if you just want to make adjustments to the overall tonal balance instead of zeroing in on one point in the spectrum.

One typical problem area is the 400 Hz Mud Zone. Most instruments have at least something down there. Most of it just clouds over the important, higher end details. Cutting a few decibels here can clean things up.

The low end is an important part of the frequency spectrum. Most of the sonic energy of your recordings resides in the low end. If you have too much, the music will sound dull. Too little and it'll sound thin and wimpy.

You need enough of the upper bass to hear the tones in small speakers. A lot of the time, your recordings will be heard on factory car stereos, small boom boxes, cheap headphones, etc. The low end that can be heard on these systems can also be heard on better quality equipment. But, the low end that can be heard on high quality equipment can't always be heard on cheap systems. You have to consider the lowest common denominator.

A few final ideas

Dither and noise shaping

Stay in the highest resolution possible for as long as possible. If you're mastering with 24 bits, make sure that re-dithering to 16-bit is the one-time, final process in your project.

There are a few different types of dither. You can use none, Type 1 or Type 2. Type 1 is usually the better choice, but Type 2 emphasizes higher frequencies a bit more. Always audition different types of dither.

Also consider noise shaping. All dither adds noise. Noise shaping will shape the sound of that noise in an attempt to make the noise less noticeable. You can choose none, Type 1, Type 2 or Type 3. Generally, the higher the number, the better the sound.

Mixdown considerations

It's always a good idea to do alternate mixes. At least try to get an extra mix with the vocal up a few decibels and one mix with the vocal down a few decibels. Try to get another mix for anything that you're unsure about. Maybe the guitars are too loud. Is there too much reverb on the drums? It's better to give the mastering engineer an alternative than to have him or her fix an improper mix.