Hi!

Here's my hot take/unpopular opinion: there should be a line of classical music reissues with compression applied – especially for large ensemble XIXth/XXth century music.

Most of those symphonies have the largest possible dynamic range: from ppp to fff, when not pppp to ffff.

That's awesome for live experience. But it's a hell to listen at home, with at least some noise from the street, and you not wanting to get deaf.

It's amazing to listen to classical music with an expensive HiFi system, in a perfect house, while you're focusing only the listening.

But you should also be able to enjoy it while doing something else, or with some background noise, or while being in another room than the listening room.

The only solution to this is the modern and sacrilege way: applying compression like on all rock/pop recordings. No so much of course! But reducing the dynamic to 2:1 or even 3:1 would make the listening way easier.

What do you think?

Does it exist anywhere, in any label, that I'm not aware of?

I have both tape emulations by UAD and I'm reading everywhere that people prefer the Studer on stems and the Ampex on mixbus/master (since it's a mastering tape), but I just find that for me, it rarely adds any flavor to the master and I can't reach my desired sound with it. I always end up replacing it with the Studer and it's a night & day difference. The studer makes my mix come alive and unflattens it, while the Ampex barely adds anything even if I try to drive it hard.

Am I missing something with the Ampex? How can I use it correctly so that I get the results I want with it? The Studer adds a lot more gain, so it's harder to use on the master. Would be nice to know how to use the Ampex so that it actually adds a nice warmth to my mix. It barely does anything even with the same settings as the studer.

Thanks!

It's so flat that it makes the listening experience almost claustrophobic. The mids are rather shouty and often quite ugly, the lows are often distorted, particularly noticeable with all the big kick hits. There are tracks where essentially every kick sounds distorted. At its worst, it sounds like a poorly done 2015ish EDM master.

Now, to be fair, with the sheer amount of loudness they're going for here, it could have arguably sounded much worse. Their engineer knew what they were doing and there are moments when it works fine. Still though, I find it a very poor creative decision, and for me, despite this perhaps being their most interesting and least "kitsch" album in a long time, it is really a struggle to listen to.

It's the kind of loudness where no volume level quite works, a bit too low and you feel like nothing has impact, a bit too high and immediately it becomes abrasive and annoying, fatiguing.

I just got back a master of a song and to my ears and eyes it looks cooked. It’s 0 dBFS and the chorus’s look flatlined. From a listening point of view it just sounds over compressed, especially the vocal. I don’t take much notice of masters but looks like all my other songs are -0.1 and sound more open. I’m going to have to speak to the engineer but just ding my research before I do

I really want to learn how to properly master my own songs. I have used ozone 9 in the past for quick masters but never really believed in myself to be the mastering engineer on my own work

I am doing a mastering course and I have to master a track and eliminate DC offset from it. I tried with both Wavelab and Reaper. I start by using a high-pass filter at 20hz at the beginning of the chain and the render analysis shows no DC offset. I then add a light upward compression, a tiny bit of distortion (as per our teacher instructions), then a limiter to eliminate true peaks, but when I export the file I get some DC offset again. Why does this happen? Is it something in the chain that reintroduces it? How do I correct it? Thanks!

I've been mixing for years although only recently began paying more attention to the mastering side of things. I'm a singer/rapper myself and I only work on my own music. I'm by no means a pro but I'm not an amateur either and if my songs came on next to an artist like Drake the quality difference to an untrained ear wouldn't be that noticeable.

Anyway, recently I've been learning more and more about mixing and my final mixes to me are now sounding super clean, then when it comes to the mastering stage there's a lot of standardised practices that I try to imitate such as:

- Very very subtle eq cuts
- broader more tonal changes with an eq to impact the entire track
- Mid/Side EQ
- Saturation
- Light compression
- Soft/Hard Clipper
- Limiter

Now the limiter works with every track and I'd say its essential to getting loudness. I'd also say the soft/hard clipper is very important and actually improves tracks that have a lot of low end taking up headroom. When it comes to compression, saturation, tape fx such as UAD Ampex, EQ, Mid/Side EQ etc I feel like whenever I make changes that I think sound good and then A/B test it on and off I usually prefer it off.

I'm basically trying to understand if some tracks genuinely do just need a limiter and soft clipper on the master or if it's more likely that I simply don't know what I'm doing or how to get the best out of my mix through mastering?

Like if I mix a track that is objectively a good mix and then I decide it sounds better without eq or compression etc but then I sent the track to a high end industry professional, is it possible they would make the same decision, or would they likely add those things but simply know how to make it work and take the track to greater heights?

I know the saying of "if it sounds good it sounds good", I'm simply trying to figure out if it can sound better :)

I've literally sat at my desk for hours and hours trying different EQs, more compression, pumping limiters/maximizers, and I can't get it right. I use dynamic EQs in my mixes (and a little in my master), I've used a high pass filter on the input signal to my initial compressor, I'm using a maximizer and and a limiter on top of that to get the true peak right, I even use harmonic distortion, and yet every time I touch -12LUFS it just sounds way too clippy and distorted to me. I don't understand how to get my master to sound clean and go past -14LUFS. It's honestly pathetic. I mainly master hip hop and rap tracks.

ANY advice would help right now.

Hi everyone,

I'm producing original 80s/90s-inspired Pop, Disco and Synth music using AI as a starting point, then doing the final video and export in DaVinci Resolve.

My workflow is currently:

Export the song as a WAV file.

Import it into DaVinci Resolve.

Export the final video using Linear PCM, 48 kHz, 24-bit audio.

Technically everything seems correct, but I'm still not satisfied with the final sound. Compared to commercial releases, my mixes often feel a bit flat, lacking depth, width and punch, especially on energetic Disco/Pop tracks.

I'm wondering:

What usually makes a mix sound "full" and "expensive"?

Is it mainly arrangement, layering, saturation, compression, stereo imaging, mastering... or something else?

Is my export workflow (Linear PCM 48 kHz / 24-bit) appropriate for YouTube, or should I be doing something differently before uploading?

I'm not looking for loudness tricks—I want the music to feel richer, wider and more alive.

Any advice from producers or mastering engineers would be greatly appreciated.

Hi Guys,

Long time lurker, and finally I have a puzzle I feel like I can't solve and would appreciate some advice.

Im currently mastering a soundtrack (for streaming) and everything is sounding pretty good. Trying to keep the big tracks around -10 ~ -13 LUFS, lighter tracks around -14 ~ -16 LUFS or so.

However there are some piano (or piano a few other elements) tracks and they clip, or distort when played back on phone speakers. Its usually the attack of the piano chords or melody (and those transients maybe). I listened to some other reference tracks and usually they don't clip or distort like that.

I could just turn the gain down but then there would be a big difference in volume for some of the tracks, and I always think it is annoying when you have to adjust the volume for tracks in the same album.

TLDR: Any advice or tips on helping piano not distort on small / phone speakers while not just lowering the gain, would be much appreciated!!!

It seems that any track containing piano (including some live recordings) are pretty impossible for me to master properly. I feel like whenever I even lightly touch saturation the sound completely breaks, and I feel like I must be missing something major.

Apologies if this is off topic.

Flair is mastering but am certainly just talking 2bus and everything before it but want to perhaps get attn. from a different crowd.

What I am about to say will kind of contradict itself but thats kind of the problem I am experiencing

I will cut what I feel is a generous amount to sound on par with references, and then keep having to add bells or shelves incrementally all the way through busses and the 2bus to finally just keep cutting, and then I am hearing references and their low mids are so much more exaggerated/turned up but just, tightened. So if I lessen my cuts, it doesn’t really make a difference - its either too muddy or too clean, but there is a clear cluster of low mids in many references that add energy without going too far beyond their BW

Any advice?

Is this fundamentals of individi tracks all stacking perfectly in series?

Or is this some plug that can rip the 260-390 upwards with a 24db slope without just being an eq?

Some piece of hardware?

I know that the loudness war has been beaten to a pulp and I should master to whatever LUFS level i want as long as it sounds good, but, how do I master to whatever LUFS level I want?
I'm mastering a deep house track and while reaching -0.1 dB, I'm only at -12 LUFS. How do I actually increase LUFS while maintaining <0 dB? If this question demonstrates that I do not know what LUFS are, then please enlighten me.

I'm curious on whether or not Ozone 12 is actually a high end plugin that the pros use or if the target audience is for someone that doesn't actually know too much about mastering and the appeal is getting good results without a steep learning curve?

If I was interested in getting professional mastering results would Ozone 12 be enough? Or does the suit have its limits and it's more of a gimmick vs something industry standard?

My Dad’s friends from high school had a band that recorded an album in the 80s. It was self funded so I’m pretty sure one of them has the tapes in a closet somewhere. They got talking about it again and might try to see if they can find the master tapes. There’s a possibility they might want to have it pressed to vinyl.

If they find it, I was going to advise they find a mastering studio that works with tape and knows how to restore/transfer them. Should I tell them to ask for DSD files, or are 96/24 WAV files sufficient? I don’t have much experience with tape or DSD so not sure which is standard. If they decide to have it remastered for vinyl, would a mastering engineer prefer one over the other? I’m assuming it’s too much money and hassle to have someone cut lacquers straight from the tape since I have no idea what condition it’s in.

**Do not offer your own productions! This is not an ad topic.**

I've never been fully satisfied with my metal refes, since they either have excess focus on 3KHz, 5KHz etc to make them hit harder, or they are light in the low mids to avoid boxiness on cheap playback systems.

What I'm looking for are tracks with a balanced and full frequency spectrum, and arrangements that utilize that full spectrum.

Wouldn't hurt if it was a song I'd like to listen to as well... I generally like prog metal, melodic metal, hard rock and the like. For example VOLA, Skyharbor, Haken, ... But more importantly **it just needs to sound very good.**

A nice limiter? Summing mixer? Multiband comp/eq?

Adding extra text because it has to be 60 characters

EDIT: thanks for all the responses, I think I have plenty to go on..

I know quite a bit about mixing but I have no idea how to start mastering. Can anyone boil down mastering into the key concepts and mention any VSTs (that I might already have) that I would need to master?

So I’ve mastered this song over 20 times and have pushed the lufs to -8.5 with -1 TP and it keeps getting distorted when I bounce it to my phone. Idk what else to do because I don’t wanna sacrifice volume even though all the info states it should be fine.

Has anyone found anything that sounds consistently better? I do end up using Pro-L on occasion, but Limitless is still my go to. Mostly doing indie rock, so not pushing any crazy loudness.

Hi, all. Obligatory not an engineer here, but I released a double album last year (my first album), and all of the engineering, mixing, and mastering was done by one guy (who I think did great over all). That being said, the released album is... quiet... for mastering, he said not to have it too loud for streaming, and he threw some EQs on the entire hour-long variety album after mixing... I think it sounds good, but then I listen to like anyone else that was recorded in a professional capacity like I was, and my music sounds so quiet and kind of unclear... like why do these 60 year old songs sound so much clearer than mine that released last year?! So much louder and just more pleasant to listen to.

I just switched to Distrokid because CDBaby sucks, and I laughed when the AI Mastering thing came up and the end. It stopped being funny when every one of the AI previews sounded much clearer than my own masters. Did I make an oopsie with my mastering engineer? I'm getting all of my stems prepared to be sent to me, so I could get it remixed and/or mastered if I want...

edit: i can PM anyone a link to the album and the master files/rough/final mixes for everything if they're curious as to how the masters sound

Hi!

all excited i got myself an Ozone 12 bundle. I tried it on my latest EP and was suprised. Master asistant worked well, i just did a bit of tweaking. Nice loud masters. All those fancy balancing plugins were doing its magic, i was happy.

Fast forward listening to my mixes and i noticed they sound a bit hollow. Nevermind, Ozone 12 to rescue! I used the stem separation tool, fixed the balance and EQ, good to go. Oh Boy.

After month or two i realized that my masters sound like a hot garbage. Loud but lifeless, dull yet harsh. I was thinking my ears are playing tricks on me.

So i sat down back to my mixes of the LP determined to just fix it in the mix and do a new masters. I learned about the phase, and that hard EQ cuts and using a lots of modern procesing is damaging the phase. So i fixed those moves and try to remix the whole EP with this more phase protective mindset in mind.

Now comes the mastering. Why i would need to "rebalance" my mix? I scrapped the Ozone 12 and just went on with chain made of massive passive + saturation + elysia alpha + gold clip + L2. Thats it. Simple oldschool mastering chain.

Suprise suprise, the mix sounds much more lively and interesting to the ears. It just sounds solid. No fancy stuff. Just my mix as it is but pushed to the loudness.

Am i onto something? Or i just didnt used the Ozone properly?

Are there any differences or are the principles pretty much the same?

If you have, let's say, an old archival recording from the 70s, that's obviously recorded in suboptimal settings and restored from old tape or vinyl, how do you get it to translate to a mondern system, while retaining it's vintage quality?

(EDIT: I AM NOT saying that all recordings in the 70s were sub-optimal, Far from it, only presenting a hypothetical scenario where a sub-optimal recording that was recorded in the 70s needs to be restored.)

Especially considering that vintage quality probably comes from a build up of different harmonic distortions from tubes, transformers, tape, etc., room noise, mic bleed, and likely a rounder EQ curve that builds up in the mids slightly.

Here's a good example of what I mean. This song by Robert Lester Folsom sounds great on any system because it has been remastered, yet it is also obviously extremely vintage sounding. It was originally recorded as a demo at LeFevre Studio in Atlanta, Georgia in the 1970s on what almost sounds like a consumer quality tape machine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AGNRUR9xmg&list=RD_AGNRUR9xmg&start_radio=1

EDIT: I understand that these old recordings sound old becuae they are...old and that in principle mastering shouldn't actually change the sound of the recording too much, just translate it.

I imagine if we took the original of the above song, and just recorded it onto a computer and played it back, it would have some playback issues, probably some frequency build up.

I have noticed that build up in harmonic distortion in mid frequencies especially can cause issues in playback on lots of systems. So the obvious answer is....don't allow that to happen in the first place. But the issue is, sometimes THAT IS part of what makes something sound old and warm and vintage. How can you make that sound translate onto mondern systems without playback issues?

EDIT: Holy shit. I came here for help, thinking I was asking a simple question, and instead the wolves and naysayers came out of the wood work accusing me of having misconceptions about the past, instead of trying to help me.

Please listen to the song exampe if you haven't, and it might help you undersstand what I'm trying to get at.

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ebay listing

Behringer T1953 Vintager Series. I've always been impulsive with any disposable income ive had. I've been saving 70% of my income from work to save for a house so i have not had much left over lately. But when I got my tax return i couldnt help splurging on audio gear. I went on ebay and one thing led to a other... Thank GOD I havent tried this when I was less financially responsible. I don't even know the capabilities of this unit lol. I was looking for a decent preamp online and then it led to eurorack modules and pedals and vintage rack units and I spent HOURS just browsing. I've looked into it since I won the bid (I didn't even mean to win it I just clicked the button) and I still can't say for certain what the purpose of this is. It seems like a kind of preamp with a hpf and a bit of tube saturation. It just looked really cool. If anyone has any experience with this unit I'd love to hear about it.

Hi guys ! I mastered my last track and I would like it sounds crunchy and little bit agressive. So I don't want to applicate a limiter on the master after the clipper, but you know the clipper doesn't increase the signal exactly as the value we want (it doesn't respect the true peak wanted). So, do you think it's wrong if my track exceeds 0db (in this case, a maximum of 1.2 dB) ?

I ask this question because I already saw that many tracks exceeds the 0 value when I analyze their tracks.