Oh yes. It helps a LOT to understand the different processes. It's akin to a recording engineer not knowing anything about mixing, only going off their best guess as they've never done it before. It's why some mix engineers slap some mix buss processing on and falsely believe this is mastering, but it truly isn't. This is why I don't rely on a mix buss any more. Maybe the tiniest bit of processing, but that's it. It forced me to think differently about mixing, so I can achieve the best possible mix without relying heavily on the mix buss processing. If you have a recording engineer who understands the mixing process, they'll be able to deliver better audio tracks to mix engineers. If you have a mix engineer who understands the mastering process, they'll be able to deliver a better mix to a mastering engineer, not one that's been crushed by poor mix buss processing and poor decisions in the overall track balance (EQ, dynamics, etc.) To me, mastering is the process of listening to the track in terms of frequencies, whereas mixing is the process of listening to the track from the perspective of the music. Having both tools helps with both professions. My 2p.
I started with recording years ago and knowing what I know now I would made definitely some different decisions. On the other hand I had far less options available 30 years ago and made the decisions while tracking. We just had an eight track tape machine so we were very limited. When the HD recorders came in and the track count went up I started recording direct and applied processing afterwards, it’s still hard to say for me which was better. I liked committing on the way in. I have a band coming in for recording (after many years not tracking) and I decided to go oldschool again. I’m looking forward to it and see where it goes 😀
The issue is how you get the right information to base your experience on. I have a few mastering engineers I trust but I would definitely be looking for one sole mentor that I could learn from Internet hasn't helped mastering in my opinion
@@WorkingAudioTools Yeah I get what you mean, would be great to be a fly on the wall watching the process. Also it’s great to talk to a professional and understand the mindset behind the decisions. I miss that because I don’t know people in my area doing what I do. I know some live engineers but they have mostly a different approach.
Thoughts on today’s topic: I always ask tons of questions to understand the sound in someone’s head when I record, mix or master. Depending on what I’m hired for, I mix in a way I’m not changing the natural tones and I master with the same concept in mind. I mixed in the past in a way that I thought was right and got ripped into pieces for it 🤭 Then I learnt to produce in a way that I’m pleasing both sides as there’s a way artists hear their songs in their heads. These days if I’m not asked to change anything, I’ll enhance the song without changing the original natural sounds. I want people to simply go “wow I don’t know what you did, but it just sounds much better”. I think you were referring to the “soundcloud rappers” 🤭 The best is that those beats are already limited and -5LUFS 😂
Exactly 👍🏼 that ! Couldn’t say it better, I posted something similar on Colt Caperune’s channel. It still happens to me sometimes I did shape a guitar track I thought was amazing but the artist didn’t like it. I deleted the track and start again 🤟🏼
But then could it not be argued that if you don't have your own identity as a mixer then anybody could essentially do your job? I always see these things as a collaboration. In the industry you are paying for their taste as well as their skills. Essentially you trust their judgement to take your song to another level. That's why I would turn down mixes that I felt wouldn't be right for me. If I heard the vision of the rough and my taste was telling me it needs a lot of work to it that the client might not like, then I respectfully turn it down because I choose to have an identity, BUT there is obviously a need for engineers that will deliver exactly what the client demands. It's still a service industry but Im just not that type of character and I'll happily decline a job that requires me to produce an end product that I really disagree with cause its not good for the artist or the mixer. An artist needs to find a suited mixer, just like how a mixer needs to find a suitable mastering engineer. Its all a collaboration
I told you last week I would have things to say about this topic =D Mixing is about bringing together the different elements of a song together to form a cohesive whole. Mastering is about optimizing the final approved mix for your intended medium of distribution. So if you intend to distribute your music out on vinyl records, mastering will be about making sure that mix will sound at its best within the confines of that record. For all the adulation and praise records get, objectively it's a limited medium. The obvious part of it is how music you can fit on a single side. And what's interesting is that modern productions have decreased the amount of playing time (see U2's The Joshua Tree, which came out as a single album in 1987 but then reissued as a double from 2007 onward). But the records have a limited frequency range compared to digital audio, a smaller dynamic range, a higher noise floor (even if you can get a clean pressing with no artifacts), a slightly compromised stereo image. So a seasoned mastering engineer would understand these limitations and will make the lacquer accordingly. This same seasoned engineer would have also listened to thousands upon thousands of music and thus will know what to listen for and makes sure it works in that medium. I never liked the presumption that mastering is about "transforming" something where you sent it off for mastering and then it comes back as something else. Any adjustments are subtle, i.e. 0.5 dB difference, compression ratios may be at most 3:1 but it's usually less than 2:1, etc. The mastering engineer will presume that he's working on material that has an intended sound and will respect it as much as possible. This is really to make sure that it sounds at its best in that medium and across different playback scenarios (translation returns to the chat =] ). Now, the reason why you can sort of "get away" with being both a mixing and a "mastering" engineer is most people just want their music distributed through digital means and particularly on the streaming services. Even if you are incorporating outboard gear for additional processing, it's all going to be within the digital realm. Digital audio doesn't have the same issues compared to working with vinyl records. But even so, mastering is still a mindset. You are still thinking about optimization. You are still thinking about translation. And even though there aren't as many constraints with streaming services, you still have to consider their specifications and how the network connection could affect it. So here are few random statements that are my own takes about the mastering process: * The other value of hiring a proper mastering engineer is that engineer will most likely have a better room and better equipment to do the job, as well as the experience and expertise. * If your clients ever want to put their music onto record, use a mastering engineer with experience in that realm. * Yes, do your mastering in a separate session. I personally use Wavelab for my mastering and Cubase for tracking/mixing. This definitely makes the point that I'm thinking about mastering, not mixing * Yes, stereo bus processing is a kind of "mastering" chain. In fact, more often than not, I practice that concept on the clips of my mastering session, which are the session mixdowns. I can experiment with it during mixing, but my mixdowns are always clean and has 6dB or so of headroom. * I do use Gullfoss Master in my mastering sessions. Yes, it's CPU heavy, but it's also making minor adjustments and I'm only listening to portions at a time. I print it if I want to listen to the entire thing. * There have been times where I do back to the mixing sessions to address a problem that arises during the mastering. Remember, this is for my own music and thus I am the stickler asshole here =]. * I'm not worried or "afraid" of AI. If nothing else, AI can never be as resilient and dynamic as a human being.
Hard clipping looks at the amplitude of each sample, and reassigns any sample over the threshold back down to the threshold and ignores everything else. In soft clipping the samples are modified via (usually) trigonometric functions that get added to the amplitude value, which will increase harmonics, depending on the amount applied over a measured duration. If you can control the soft clipping shape, ie where the additional saturation takes place, like in Standard Clip or Newfangled Saturate, then you can shape the sound in a very pleasant way before audible distortion is apparent.
I don't like soft clipping due to the way it makes the transients sound. Softens them to my ears compared to hard clipping. Hard clipping deals with just the overshoots which is exactly what I want from the clipper. I hear more punch with hard clipping compared to soft
The biggest challenge for the AI monster is replicating our human flaws! AI is completely reliant on measurements and will be able to create well behaved, well balanced and safe results (ie. boring). When the algorithms include mixing fatigue, hangovers, artist and/or A&R tensions, stimulants etc. then it may start to become a threat. 😉 I love the Wings song "Let Me Roll It"... one of McCartney's best bass sounds but the "hook guitar" has always felt too loud... confirmed by the 9dB drop when the vocals start! But... when I got a hold of the stems and set the guitars at a more cohesive level, it just sounded wrong. So, good or bad, the production and song become "one" work of art. Probably why I've never been a fan of live recordings.
Haven’t watched till the end, but regarding all this -5 LUFS thing. It seems, that most people refer to maximum short term loudness. Once I checked integrated loudness of different loud mixes, it usually around -8 LUFS, but maximum short term loudness can be -5 or -6. And don’t get me started on situations when true peak measurements hover around +1 or sometimes +2 dB. So, all this loudness stuff can be very misleading))
When I checked lots of modern masters the integrated could go up to 6 lufs on pop stuff. -8/9 seemed to be the average but a lot of big artist single stuff (Ed Sheeran, Beyonce etc) seemed to be pushed pretty loud
@@WorkingAudioTools Yeah, there are definitely examples like this. But when I saw that Sam Smith's "Unholy" was at around -10 LUFS integrated, Lizzo's "About Damn Time" at -10 LUFS integrated, Wiz Khalifa's "Captain" also at -10, Bruno Mars/Anderson .Paak's "Fly as Me" at a record low of just -12 LUFS, I kind of thought that if all those engineers like Serban or Manny were not afraid of going to -10 or even -12 LUFS integrated, then there's nothing wrong if you couldn't get to -6 LUFS integrated. :) You guys make good mixes. I think if you got your hands on certain types of pop productions, you would be able to get them pretty loud. I don't think your skills are necessarily the issue if you struggled to get very loud. I guess what I'm trying to say is that when you get a type of production that can get as loud as -6 LUFS integrated, you will be able to get there easily. There's a song by Grace Potter that has a maximum short-term LUFS of a little above -3 dB and an integrated LUFS of around -9. It's an awesome song, very dynamic, and can get pretty freaking loud. I removed all quiet sections and replaced them with only loud sections, and integrated loudness jumped up to around -6 LUFS. Not a very scientific test, but still was interesting to do. P.S. I always normalize to 0 dB true peak on all tracks to get the most accurate reading of the real crest factor.
@@WorkingAudioTools I think it really depends on a song. I have a funny story related to that. A colleague shared a track that was -6LUFS integrated, but the thing is, the true peak measurement was +3dB. Once I normalized it to 0 it obviously became -9 integrated. So, there's that :D
Coffee and working audiofools ❤ Neh no masters for me lads 😂 My eardrums are like smashed potatoes through the years so I won’t even bother. I started with room measurement and treatment, standing waves, resonances, decay times bla bla bla. An other snake-pit with a lot of different opinions at least measurements are true without bias. By the way it’s funny to see exactly the frequencies where I had problems with in my mixes, now I go and get that room tuned 😊 Have a great weekend 🤟🏼
When you follow through this thinking of mastering informing mixing, mixing informing recording then learning more about marketing, business and what record companies used to do will inform your mastering right? Alternatively we now have udio which will replace us all!
For certain genres things like Udio will take over but only due to lazyness. There are certain genres that are on average just sample and preset based anyway so AI is not gonna change much. As for actual songwriters I just can't see it ever catching on. As soon as you let AI in, you aren't really songwriting. You can argue hybrid and inspiration but I'd personally feel that I hadn't actually written anything, I'd just gotten lazy and half arsed it The masterpieces of today have been written by humans so it's not like we can't do it, it's just that humans are lazier
That's different though. A physical painting doesn't go through the same channels as music, nor does it have any real industry expectation. A painting is allowed to be a subjective piece of art, music is unfortunately now a piece of media that has to work in a funnel created by the social media platforms and record label execs. Music can be listened to on various different platforms as well as different playback systems and has to conform to accepted industry standards. The loudness wars have created an expectation that means that music needs to be artificially loud and sometimes you need an experienced 3rd party pair of ears to ensure that your mix meets those expected standards and translates to as many systems as possible. Music is made to be mass consumed everywhere, where a painting has to be viewed in one place. It's a one of a kind, where music can be copied and distributed exactly how it is. 2 very different artforms
What a great podcast you have going. Will follow for sure. Cheers from Greece
👍👍
Oh yes. It helps a LOT to understand the different processes. It's akin to a recording engineer not knowing anything about mixing, only going off their best guess as they've never done it before. It's why some mix engineers slap some mix buss processing on and falsely believe this is mastering, but it truly isn't. This is why I don't rely on a mix buss any more. Maybe the tiniest bit of processing, but that's it. It forced me to think differently about mixing, so I can achieve the best possible mix without relying heavily on the mix buss processing.
If you have a recording engineer who understands the mixing process, they'll be able to deliver better audio tracks to mix engineers. If you have a mix engineer who understands the mastering process, they'll be able to deliver a better mix to a mastering engineer, not one that's been crushed by poor mix buss processing and poor decisions in the overall track balance (EQ, dynamics, etc.)
To me, mastering is the process of listening to the track in terms of frequencies, whereas mixing is the process of listening to the track from the perspective of the music. Having both tools helps with both professions. My 2p.
I started with recording years ago and knowing what I know now I would made definitely some different decisions. On the other hand I had far less options available 30 years ago and made the decisions while tracking. We just had an eight track tape machine so we were very limited. When the HD recorders came in and the track count went up I started recording direct and applied processing afterwards, it’s still hard to say for me which was better. I liked committing on the way in. I have a band coming in for recording (after many years not tracking) and I decided to go oldschool again. I’m looking forward to it and see where it goes 😀
The issue is how you get the right information to base your experience on. I have a few mastering engineers I trust but I would definitely be looking for one sole mentor that I could learn from
Internet hasn't helped mastering in my opinion
@@WorkingAudioTools Yeah I get what you mean, would be great to be a fly on the wall watching the process. Also it’s great to talk to a professional and understand the mindset behind the decisions. I miss that because I don’t know people in my area doing what I do. I know some live engineers but they have mostly a different approach.
Thoughts on today’s topic:
I always ask tons of questions to understand the sound in someone’s head when I record, mix or master. Depending on what I’m hired for, I mix in a way I’m not changing the natural tones and I master with the same concept in mind. I mixed in the past in a way that I thought was right and got ripped into pieces for it 🤭 Then I learnt to produce in a way that I’m pleasing both sides as there’s a way artists hear their songs in their heads.
These days if I’m not asked to change anything, I’ll enhance the song without changing the original natural sounds. I want people to simply go “wow I don’t know what you did, but it just sounds much better”.
I think you were referring to the “soundcloud rappers” 🤭 The best is that those beats are already limited and -5LUFS 😂
👀👀
Exactly 👍🏼 that ! Couldn’t say it better,
I posted something similar on Colt Caperune’s channel. It still happens to me sometimes I did shape a guitar track I thought was amazing but the artist didn’t like it. I deleted the track and start again 🤟🏼
But then could it not be argued that if you don't have your own identity as a mixer then anybody could essentially do your job?
I always see these things as a collaboration. In the industry you are paying for their taste as well as their skills. Essentially you trust their judgement to take your song to another level.
That's why I would turn down mixes that I felt wouldn't be right for me. If I heard the vision of the rough and my taste was telling me it needs a lot of work to it that the client might not like, then I respectfully turn it down because I choose to have an identity, BUT there is obviously a need for engineers that will deliver exactly what the client demands. It's still a service industry but Im just not that type of character and I'll happily decline a job that requires me to produce an end product that I really disagree with cause its not good for the artist or the mixer.
An artist needs to find a suited mixer, just like how a mixer needs to find a suitable mastering engineer.
Its all a collaboration
I told you last week I would have things to say about this topic =D
Mixing is about bringing together the different elements of a song together to form a cohesive whole. Mastering is about optimizing the final approved mix for your intended medium of distribution. So if you intend to distribute your music out on vinyl records, mastering will be about making sure that mix will sound at its best within the confines of that record. For all the adulation and praise records get, objectively it's a limited medium. The obvious part of it is how music you can fit on a single side. And what's interesting is that modern productions have decreased the amount of playing time (see U2's The Joshua Tree, which came out as a single album in 1987 but then reissued as a double from 2007 onward). But the records have a limited frequency range compared to digital audio, a smaller dynamic range, a higher noise floor (even if you can get a clean pressing with no artifacts), a slightly compromised stereo image. So a seasoned mastering engineer would understand these limitations and will make the lacquer accordingly. This same seasoned engineer would have also listened to thousands upon thousands of music and thus will know what to listen for and makes sure it works in that medium. I never liked the presumption that mastering is about "transforming" something where you sent it off for mastering and then it comes back as something else. Any adjustments are subtle, i.e. 0.5 dB difference, compression ratios may be at most 3:1 but it's usually less than 2:1, etc. The mastering engineer will presume that he's working on material that has an intended sound and will respect it as much as possible. This is really to make sure that it sounds at its best in that medium and across different playback scenarios (translation returns to the chat =] ).
Now, the reason why you can sort of "get away" with being both a mixing and a "mastering" engineer is most people just want their music distributed through digital means and particularly on the streaming services. Even if you are incorporating outboard gear for additional processing, it's all going to be within the digital realm. Digital audio doesn't have the same issues compared to working with vinyl records. But even so, mastering is still a mindset. You are still thinking about optimization. You are still thinking about translation. And even though there aren't as many constraints with streaming services, you still have to consider their specifications and how the network connection could affect it.
So here are few random statements that are my own takes about the mastering process:
* The other value of hiring a proper mastering engineer is that engineer will most likely have a better room and better equipment to do the job, as well as the experience and expertise.
* If your clients ever want to put their music onto record, use a mastering engineer with experience in that realm.
* Yes, do your mastering in a separate session. I personally use Wavelab for my mastering and Cubase for tracking/mixing. This definitely makes the point that I'm thinking about mastering, not mixing
* Yes, stereo bus processing is a kind of "mastering" chain. In fact, more often than not, I practice that concept on the clips of my mastering session, which are the session mixdowns. I can experiment with it during mixing, but my mixdowns are always clean and has 6dB or so of headroom.
* I do use Gullfoss Master in my mastering sessions. Yes, it's CPU heavy, but it's also making minor adjustments and I'm only listening to portions at a time. I print it if I want to listen to the entire thing.
* There have been times where I do back to the mixing sessions to address a problem that arises during the mastering. Remember, this is for my own music and thus I am the stickler asshole here =].
* I'm not worried or "afraid" of AI. If nothing else, AI can never be as resilient and dynamic as a human being.
Thanks for your thoughts
Hard clipping looks at the amplitude of each sample, and reassigns any sample over the threshold back down to the threshold and ignores everything else. In soft clipping the samples are modified via (usually) trigonometric functions that get added to the amplitude value, which will increase harmonics, depending on the amount applied over a measured duration.
If you can control the soft clipping shape, ie where the additional saturation takes place, like in Standard Clip or Newfangled Saturate, then you can shape the sound in a very pleasant way before audible distortion is apparent.
I don't like soft clipping due to the way it makes the transients sound. Softens them to my ears compared to hard clipping. Hard clipping deals with just the overshoots which is exactly what I want from the clipper. I hear more punch with hard clipping compared to soft
@@WorkingAudioToolsdefinitely. You retain all the punch, and especially in kick and snare hits, any distortion adds to that
The biggest challenge for the AI monster is replicating our human flaws! AI is completely reliant on measurements and will be able to create well behaved, well balanced and safe results (ie. boring). When the algorithms include mixing fatigue, hangovers, artist and/or A&R tensions, stimulants etc. then it may start to become a threat. 😉 I love the Wings song "Let Me Roll It"... one of McCartney's best bass sounds but the "hook guitar" has always felt too loud... confirmed by the 9dB drop when the vocals start! But... when I got a hold of the stems and set the guitars at a more cohesive level, it just sounded wrong. So, good or bad, the production and song become "one" work of art. Probably why I've never been a fan of live recordings.
Haven’t watched till the end, but regarding all this -5 LUFS thing. It seems, that most people refer to maximum short term loudness. Once I checked integrated loudness of different loud mixes, it usually around -8 LUFS, but maximum short term loudness can be -5 or -6. And don’t get me started on situations when true peak measurements hover around +1 or sometimes +2 dB. So, all this loudness stuff can be very misleading))
When I checked lots of modern masters the integrated could go up to 6 lufs on pop stuff. -8/9 seemed to be the average but a lot of big artist single stuff (Ed Sheeran, Beyonce etc) seemed to be pushed pretty loud
@@WorkingAudioTools Yeah, there are definitely examples like this. But when I saw that Sam Smith's "Unholy" was at around -10 LUFS integrated, Lizzo's "About Damn Time" at -10 LUFS integrated, Wiz Khalifa's "Captain" also at -10, Bruno Mars/Anderson .Paak's "Fly as Me" at a record low of just -12 LUFS, I kind of thought that if all those engineers like Serban or Manny were not afraid of going to -10 or even -12 LUFS integrated, then there's nothing wrong if you couldn't get to -6 LUFS integrated. :)
You guys make good mixes. I think if you got your hands on certain types of pop productions, you would be able to get them pretty loud. I don't think your skills are necessarily the issue if you struggled to get very loud. I guess what I'm trying to say is that when you get a type of production that can get as loud as -6 LUFS integrated, you will be able to get there easily. There's a song by Grace Potter that has a maximum short-term LUFS of a little above -3 dB and an integrated LUFS of around -9. It's an awesome song, very dynamic, and can get pretty freaking loud. I removed all quiet sections and replaced them with only loud sections, and integrated loudness jumped up to around -6 LUFS. Not a very scientific test, but still was interesting to do.
P.S. I always normalize to 0 dB true peak on all tracks to get the most accurate reading of the real crest factor.
Yeah maybe I need to update measurements on this year's records. Maybe the lufs wars are getting slightly better 🤞
@@WorkingAudioTools I think it really depends on a song. I have a funny story related to that. A colleague shared a track that was -6LUFS integrated, but the thing is, the true peak measurement was +3dB. Once I normalized it to 0 it obviously became -9 integrated. So, there's that :D
Coffee and working audiofools ❤
Neh no masters for me lads 😂
My eardrums are like smashed potatoes through the years so I won’t even bother.
I started with room measurement and treatment, standing waves, resonances, decay times bla bla bla. An other snake-pit with a lot of different opinions at least measurements are true without bias. By the way it’s funny to see exactly the frequencies where I had problems with in my mixes, now I go and get that room tuned 😊
Have a great weekend 🤟🏼
🤓🤓
When you follow through this thinking of mastering informing mixing, mixing informing recording then learning more about marketing, business and what record companies used to do will inform your mastering right? Alternatively we now have udio which will replace us all!
For certain genres things like Udio will take over but only due to lazyness. There are certain genres that are on average just sample and preset based anyway so AI is not gonna change much.
As for actual songwriters I just can't see it ever catching on. As soon as you let AI in, you aren't really songwriting. You can argue hybrid and inspiration but I'd personally feel that I hadn't actually written anything, I'd just gotten lazy and half arsed it
The masterpieces of today have been written by humans so it's not like we can't do it, it's just that humans are lazier
would an artist want someone else to 'master' their painting ?
That's different though. A physical painting doesn't go through the same channels as music, nor does it have any real industry expectation.
A painting is allowed to be a subjective piece of art, music is unfortunately now a piece of media that has to work in a funnel created by the social media platforms and record label execs.
Music can be listened to on various different platforms as well as different playback systems and has to conform to accepted industry standards.
The loudness wars have created an expectation that means that music needs to be artificially loud and sometimes you need an experienced 3rd party pair of ears to ensure that your mix meets those expected standards and translates to as many systems as possible.
Music is made to be mass consumed everywhere, where a painting has to be viewed in one place. It's a one of a kind, where music can be copied and distributed exactly how it is.
2 very different artforms
First 😮
🤘
More vulgar language please. It was very fun
Yeah even I didn't see the fucked in the arse comment coming 🤣
@@WorkingAudioTools 😂
NO......
👍