Owen wrote: Fri Dec 15, 2023 9:22 am Here is one I have never dealt with.

What if you were preparing a live version of a song to have as a bonus track to send to a ME. It has all the hallmarks of a audience recording, but has a quality I like, is it worth cleaning up on my end, or should it be sent over warts and all to the ME? If I should do some cleaning up what would make the ME life easier?

Can you clarify what you mean by "cleaning up"?

In general I'd say just mix the fucker to the best of your abilities, make it sound how you want, and send it off. A ME's life is already easy, don't worry about us.

cakes wrote: Fri Dec 15, 2023 9:58 am the Ozone imager is cool that you can work on the image space between EQ bands.

Be real careful with that. I've never actually used Ozone myself, but I've heard a lot of self-mastered stuff (where I had the unmastered mix to compare to) where the low end sounds completely fucked, like everything between 50-150hz is out of phase, it makes me feel like my ears are turning inside out. I don't know if it's actually some Ozone preset people like or what, but...I'm just sayin'. Be REAL careful.

FWIW I mess with the stereo image maybe 1 in every 100 songs. And it's just as likely I'll be turning the M up rather than making it wider.

MoreSpaceEcho wrote: Fri Dec 15, 2023 9:55 am So in this situation, you might be working on something and when the bass goes from A to D halfway through the verse, what the hell? Where did it go, why's it seem so much quieter now? I guess I need to compress it more. Well, look at it on a level meter, does it actually get way quieter? It probably doesn't, it's your room fucking with you. I can remember having this exact problem years ago. So in a case like this it is actually better to trust the meters than your ears (oh it hurts to type that).

Yeah, and this is the sort of scenario I'd never be confident enough to rectify myself, and the roughly $50 per song a typical indie mastering engineer costs is a bargain for something you care about and have a lot of time invested in.

(I've had some mastering quibbles/revisions over the years but nothing that wasn't solved with another pass. I suppose if it always felt like an uphill battle working with someone else I could see the need to get more DIY with it)

MoreSpaceEcho wrote: Fri Dec 15, 2023 10:10 am

cakes wrote: Fri Dec 15, 2023 9:58 am the Ozone imager is cool that you can work on the image space between EQ bands.

Be real careful with that. I've never actually used Ozone myself, but I've heard a lot of self-mastered stuff (where I had the unmastered mix to compare to) where the low end sounds completely fucked, like everything between 50-150hz is out of phase, it makes me feel like my ears are turning inside out. I don't know if it's actually some Ozone preset people like or what, but...I'm just sayin'. Be REAL careful.

FWIW I mess with the stereo image maybe 1 in every 100 songs. And it's just as likely I'll be turning the M up rather than making it wider.

That is my fear. I haven't been able to easily pick out phase issues, so that's always been a problem for me.

I like using the stereo imager on the mixes I've been doing because it's on recorded band practices I've been using to practice mixing on. I plan to add extra vocals and guitar to tracks when we record in earnest to play with the stereo space. For now, I'm getting a feel for mixing in the studio and learning some mastering along with it. One guitar on the left and a bass on the right just feels a little off to me for the music. I just want a little stereo smear!

Now that you mention it though, when do you feel you need to mess with a stereo image?

penningtron wrote: Fri Dec 15, 2023 10:11 am Yeah, and this is the sort of scenario I'd never be confident enough to rectify myself, and the roughly $50 per song a typical indie mastering engineer costs is a bargain for something you care about and have a lot of time invested in.

Exactly. Mixing is hard work. I dunno about y'all, but when I get done mixing a record, the last thing I want to do is listen to it (especially critically!) any more. That's a TERRIBLE frame of mind to be in when mastering. It's worth it just to hand it off to someone else and say "here, it's YOUR problem now."

I get so many emails that read something like "I've been working on this for months and I don't even know what I'm listening to any more". Most of the time people think their stuff sounds worse than it actually does, they're just totally burnt on it. I press play and I can hear it clearly cause I'm hearing it for the first time, I have no baggage with it. And I can listen to it for two minutes and know what to do.

(I've had some mastering quibbles/revisions over the years but nothing that wasn't solved with another pass. I suppose if it always felt like an uphill battle working with someone else I could see the need to get more DIY with it)

It should NEVER feel like any kind of battle, if your ME is giving you a hard time, find another one. We're here to serve you. If people ask me my opinion about something, I'm happy to give it, but if they just say "make it louder", I make it louder.

MoreSpaceEcho wrote: Fri Dec 15, 2023 10:24 am Exactly. Mixing is hard work. I dunno about y'all, but when I get done mixing a record, the last thing I want to do is listen to it (especially critically!) any more. That's a TERRIBLE frame of mind to be in when mastering. It's worth it just to hand it off to someone else and say "here, it's YOUR problem now."

I get so many emails that read something like "I've been working on this for months and I don't even know what I'm listening to any more". Most of the time people think their stuff sounds worse than it actually does, they're just totally burnt on it. I press play and I can hear it clearly cause I'm hearing it for the first time, I have no baggage with it. And I can listen to it for two minutes and know what to do.

Omg, when you said to spend time away from things, I could understand. You put things under a microscope for so long, you forget all the other context around it. You can focus on the one mistake you made that no one else hears, and the song sucks to you. Listening back to a song or an album a year or two later and hearing everything in context together after forgetting the issues you might have had with it is akin to a therapy session.

Learning mastering techniques is actually rather eye-opening and demystifying a lot of black magic for me, personally. It's a great opportunity to know how to set up a mix for mastering, at the very least!

cakes wrote: Fri Dec 15, 2023 10:31 am You put things under a microscope for so long, you forget all the other context around it.

Right. Happens to literally everyone, with the possible exception of FM Steve.

MoreSpaceEcho wrote: Exactly. Mixing is hard work. I dunno about y'all, but when I get done mixing a record, the last thing I want to do is listen to it (especially critically!) any more. That's a TERRIBLE frame of mind to be in when mastering. It's worth it just to hand it off to someone else and say "here, it's YOUR problem now."

I tend to DIY everything. EVERYTHING. Except mastering. It's so easy to get too far inside your own head when doing your own music that I am more than happy to pay my trusted ME for his services. And I feel like it is the right thing to do to have a professional involved at that stage of the game with something that you want to put out in the world.

I need long breaks between mixing and evaluating mixes because, not only is it exhausting, it can be so deflating the way we tend to beat ourselves up about anything and everything from aspects of the performance to the capture to tiny, completely insignificant things that no one else would ever have an opinion on in a million years. I feel like I am incapable of accurately assessing a mix that I just finished. It takes time to turn off those parts of your brain...like to not be in "musician mode" while mixing, still trying to change the performance of the song, and just be able to focus on what's there in front of you to work with. The last record I did, I took a lot more time in the mixing phase than previously. I tried many different approaches with extra time (at least a week) in between to actually go back to my most recent slate of mixes to determine if I was actually improving anything. After months of this back and forth, I went back to the original, very first spur-of-the-moment reference mix about 85% of the time. The changes I did make were subtle and would usually just be to a single instrument that was sticking out too much. All in all, it was a tedious exercise and a way of working that I won't be revisiting, but it really did teach me the importance of trusting my gut and my first instinct in the mix.

One last thing and I'll quit blowing smoke up MSE and other ME's asses

In a few instances a noise has ended up on something: don't really know quite how it got there, and it's not the typically easy-to-isolate kind of sound (drum sticks between tracks or whatever). At first I'll feel like fuck it's ruined, but then take some deep breaths, step away, and just sort of accept it. No one notices this shit anyway, right? I've attended a few mastering sessions where I point those moments out probably just for the sake of venting, the ME will say "oh that thing?", whip out some mystery plug in and remove it in 20 seconds. Magic.

I never regret paying for the things I'm incapable of doing on my own.

Cheers, MoreSpaceEcho. This thread got very good.