I'm learning more about the skill and art of mastering specifically since I'm trying to up my profile as a sound engineer. As my experience is mainly in mixing and production, I only know the very basics about mastering. In earlier years I used to use Wavelab to arrange my tracklist, create markers and export my full album projects, but I'd send that to a mastering engineer for mastering. Lately I've been messing with Ozone in Cubase to master my singles, which has taught me much and works very well. I recently sat in on a MIXING session with a mastering engineer who mainly deals with hip-hop and uses Waveburner which I believe was packaged last with Logic Pro 9.5. He swears by it. I brought up Wavelab as the mastering DAW that I'm familiar with and also brought up Ozone as a great plugin app for mastering in a DAW. To my surprise he seemed quite inflexible when comparing ANYTHING to Waveburner. Throughout the session there are other practices that I picked up which left me bewildered, like how he didn't gainstage or didn't seem to monitor is levels and how the master was peaking at +0.4... many of the things that I'd learn when studying sound and that I've been learning and reading about more recently about mastering specifically from pros online, were not being followed in this session. I soon found out he was proud to have been "self-taught", as he put it. After the mixing session, I later received the final master. When I listened to it, I thought it might be distorting and was a bit to heavily compressed. I checked it with Izotope's Insight and, among other issues that raised my eyebrows, the true peak maxed at +0.7. This experience left me with a lot of questions. Are my ears deceiving me or does what Insight reflected confirming what I was hearing? Am I being to nerdy about gainstaging and clipping the master bus or are these "rules" that are not as flexible as those applied during the creative and pre-production process? Are the fundamental principles of sound engineering no longer applicable or do we actually need them now more than ever in an era of ever-changing technologies and applications which are now accessible to anyone who can train themselves to be a self-taught professional? Throughout my career the most pervasive idea I've heard, and that I hear more and more now, is that "there are no rules". But as I gain more experience I realise that this is more of a self-fulfilling prophecy by those who don't fully appreciate the complexity of the skills and knowledge required to excel in the discipline of creating, producing, mixing and/or mastering. Add to that the plethora of plugins and the questionable advice from an endless supply of self-proclaimed online gurus promising an ever easier way of getting your mix to sound just as good as the pros or a way of creating and producing music without even needing to know the theory behind it, and you have a situation where people don't feel they really need to learn the basics at all because the technology seems to it all for you anyway. I've rambled quite a bit. I know I likely won't get a response because this is so long and I'm not famous, but I hope I do. I will post a comment with some more specific technical questions, but it would be great to hear what other people think about my rant. Thanks for reading if you got this far.
Wavelab is way ahead of what waveburner was. People cling to old software because they don't have to buy or learn something new. If Waveburner has made him a lot of money why leave it.
Hi and thanks for the video. How do you write the metadata information for each individual track of the audio montage without having to burn a CD? Specially for the ISRC code. I find it difficult to do it when rendering.
Could you do a video on how to export songs that transition into each other without any delay in between songs once they are published on iTunes/Spotify?
A lot actually. Its not just plugin differences. WaveLab handles metadata, and rendering for various formats in a manner that’s extremely powerful. Cubase can not render DDP files nor can it embed all of the track markers and data, or IRSC codes etc. There is also a totally different signal chain and capabilities in WaveLab that Cubase simply does not do.
After visiting a self-taught mastering engineer who still uses and swears by Waveburner from Logic Pro 9.5, I have some questions: 1. How much of a difference is there between mastering in a DAW like Cubase or Nuendo and mastering in an audio editor like Wavelab or Waveburner? 2. According to Wikipedia, WaveBurner has several notable features: a) Allows for up to 99 tracks and 99 subindexes per track b) Includes ISRC codes for each track c) Includes copy prevention and pre-emphasis for each track d) Adds UPC/EAN codes for the CD e) Supports CD-Text f) Create DDP (CD-image) Are these features exclusive to Waveburner or are they available in Wavelab as I assume (and other audio editors, for that matter)? 3. Throughout my career the most pervasive idea I've heard, and that I hear more and more now, is that "there are no rules". But I realise more now that there actually ARE RULES, but that you need to know them so you can know how to break/bend them. Would you (whoever is reading this) agree or disagree?
1) As far as signal processing goes, you can do that in both WaveLab and Cubase/Nuendo. WaveLab has a few more tools such restoration and spectral editing. 2) WaveLab is able to do all these things. 3) Agree.
@@TheMasterMister Thank you so much for your response! I'd given up. I'm only getting into mastering how as I've been producing and mixing on and of for about 10 years now. I'm looking to elevate my profile since I decided to do this full time. So I got Ozone 9 and I'm learning a lot Incidentally you can use Spectralayers in Cubase for the restoration and spectral editing capabilities, so since I also got Spectralayers 7 I think I'm in a pretty good position to produce some decent masters. Any other recommendations you have for a newbie to mastering?
Why do iTune songs always sound so harsh and even distorted in the high end.. Is there something iTunes is doing like boosting the frequencies or something? It seems to be the case for every Artist.. Don't believe me? Check yourself.. If you know any good commercial songs with a strong high end in it.. Try comparing the iTunes mix to any other and the chances are it sounds even harsher on iTunes...
I have a question, what happens if I upload a master .wav (-10 - to -11 LuFs integrated) optimized for AAC ( measure with AURoundTripAAC plugin in the master channel) 126kbps totally healthy from peaks to spotify?
I'm learning more about the skill and art of mastering specifically since I'm trying to up my profile as a sound engineer. As my experience is mainly in mixing and production, I only know the very basics about mastering. In earlier years I used to use Wavelab to arrange my tracklist, create markers and export my full album projects, but I'd send that to a mastering engineer for mastering. Lately I've been messing with Ozone in Cubase to master my singles, which has taught me much and works very well.
I recently sat in on a MIXING session with a mastering engineer who mainly deals with hip-hop and uses Waveburner which I believe was packaged last with Logic Pro 9.5. He swears by it. I brought up Wavelab as the mastering DAW that I'm familiar with and also brought up Ozone as a great plugin app for mastering in a DAW. To my surprise he seemed quite inflexible when comparing ANYTHING to Waveburner. Throughout the session there are other practices that I picked up which left me bewildered, like how he didn't gainstage or didn't seem to monitor is levels and how the master was peaking at +0.4... many of the things that I'd learn when studying sound and that I've been learning and reading about more recently about mastering specifically from pros online, were not being followed in this session. I soon found out he was proud to have been "self-taught", as he put it. After the mixing session, I later received the final master. When I listened to it, I thought it might be distorting and was a bit to heavily compressed. I checked it with Izotope's Insight and, among other issues that raised my eyebrows, the true peak maxed at +0.7.
This experience left me with a lot of questions. Are my ears deceiving me or does what Insight reflected confirming what I was hearing? Am I being to nerdy about gainstaging and clipping the master bus or are these "rules" that are not as flexible as those applied during the creative and pre-production process? Are the fundamental principles of sound engineering no longer applicable or do we actually need them now more than ever in an era of ever-changing technologies and applications which are now accessible to anyone who can train themselves to be a self-taught professional?
Throughout my career the most pervasive idea I've heard, and that I hear more and more now, is that "there are no rules". But as I gain more experience I realise that this is more of a self-fulfilling prophecy by those who don't fully appreciate the complexity of the skills and knowledge required to excel in the discipline of creating, producing, mixing and/or mastering. Add to that the plethora of plugins and the questionable advice from an endless supply of self-proclaimed online gurus promising an ever easier way of getting your mix to sound just as good as the pros or a way of creating and producing music without even needing to know the theory behind it, and you have a situation where people don't feel they really need to learn the basics at all because the technology seems to it all for you anyway.
I've rambled quite a bit. I know I likely won't get a response because this is so long and I'm not famous, but I hope I do. I will post a comment with some more specific technical questions, but it would be great to hear what other people think about my rant. Thanks for reading if you got this far.
Wavelab is way ahead of what waveburner was. People cling to old software because they don't have to buy or learn something new. If Waveburner has made him a lot of money why leave it.
@@webza77 Different strokes for different folks...
ima gonna use this! your way of showing is SUPERB!! thank you!
Good Video Dom, Keep em coming! would love to see you do a master from beginning to end, with outboard, would like to see your workflow.
Thanks a lot Joey and thanks for the suggestions, we will definitely take it into account for future videos :)
Thanks this is so important for me cause im a beginner on music mixing and mastering 🙏🙏💪
Thankyou again! Very informative
Thanks for this!
What about mastering for vinyl, do you master in a different way?
Not a tutorial, this is a demo, a high-level overview.
Hi and thanks for the video. How do you write the metadata information for each individual track of the audio montage without having to burn a CD? Specially for the ISRC code. I find it difficult to do it when rendering.
Since most go through a distributor to both Apple and Spotify, aren't settings specific
to each streaming platform rendered useless?
What is on that monitor on the right?
Could you do a video on how to export songs that transition into each other without any delay in between songs once they are published on iTunes/Spotify?
OK! and HOW to SAVE yout wisdom in WAV for example?
He bit looks like Sam houser ( Rockstar Games CEO)
What are the differences between mastering a track using WaveLab or doing it using Cubase?
Thanks!
i think that wavelab have specific build in plugins, meters and tools made just for mastering. the audio processing should be the same
@@Zagoorland thanks!
@@patricioescandonguajardo9506 no problem, have a nice day! :)
A lot actually. Its not just plugin differences. WaveLab handles metadata, and rendering for various formats in a manner that’s extremely powerful. Cubase can not render DDP files nor can it embed all of the track markers and data, or IRSC codes etc. There is also a totally different signal chain and capabilities in WaveLab that Cubase simply does not do.
After visiting a self-taught mastering engineer who still uses and swears by Waveburner from Logic Pro 9.5, I have some questions:
1. How much of a difference is there between mastering in a DAW like Cubase or Nuendo and mastering in an audio editor like Wavelab or Waveburner?
2. According to Wikipedia, WaveBurner has several notable features:
a) Allows for up to 99 tracks and 99 subindexes per track
b) Includes ISRC codes for each track
c) Includes copy prevention and pre-emphasis for each track
d) Adds UPC/EAN codes for the CD
e) Supports CD-Text
f) Create DDP (CD-image)
Are these features exclusive to Waveburner or are they available in Wavelab as I assume (and other audio editors, for that matter)?
3. Throughout my career the most pervasive idea I've heard, and that I hear more and more now, is that "there are no rules". But I realise more now that there actually ARE RULES, but that you need to know them so you can know how to break/bend them. Would you (whoever is reading this) agree or disagree?
1) As far as signal processing goes, you can do that in both WaveLab and Cubase/Nuendo. WaveLab has a few more tools such restoration and spectral editing.
2) WaveLab is able to do all these things.
3) Agree.
@@TheMasterMister Thank you so much for your response! I'd given up.
I'm only getting into mastering how as I've been producing and mixing on and of for about 10 years now. I'm looking to elevate my profile since I decided to do this full time. So I got Ozone 9 and I'm learning a lot
Incidentally you can use Spectralayers in Cubase for the restoration and spectral editing capabilities, so since I also got Spectralayers 7 I think I'm in a pretty good position to produce some decent masters.
Any other recommendations you have for a newbie to mastering?
Why do iTune songs always sound so harsh and even distorted in the high end.. Is there something iTunes is doing like boosting the frequencies or something? It seems to be the case for every Artist.. Don't believe me? Check yourself.. If you know any good commercial songs with a strong high end in it.. Try comparing the iTunes mix to any other and the chances are it sounds even harsher on iTunes...
This is not a tutorial at all, merely a "look what I could do, and you don’t, because I won’t even show you where the modules are”.
Can you please take some more time for your explanations. Relax, and don't talk too fast.
I have a question, what happens if I upload a master .wav (-10 - to -11 LuFs integrated) optimized for AAC ( measure with AURoundTripAAC plugin in the master channel) 126kbps totally healthy from peaks to spotify?