Drumwaiter wrote:Tons of good advice in here.
macrae11 wrote:Ok I was thinking that your statement could be interpreted either way. A bit of a boost = more volume?
My statement was meant to be taken however you wanted to take it, because it allows dialogue either way.
Fair enough.
Drumwaiter wrote:macrae11 wrote:If this is what you were meaning, I would recommend against it. Are all of your songs singles, or do some of them make it to an albumish type medium? Even something like Myspace. If they're all completely one offs, then I would say add your processing during mix, but after everything else is done. Mastering style two buss compression/limiting can stomp on transients pretty good which will affect how you mix, particularly percussive instruments. Not saying you couldn't learn to mix well with this, I just wouldn't recommend it.
This makes complete sense, and is a great reason not to do this. The opposite argument would be that since the end user only hears the compressed/limited version, what does it matter what the unprocessed version sounds like?
Two reasons. In theory if your mix requires copious amounts of compression and limiting to hold it together and keep it tight, then your mix wasn't that good to begin with. You should be able to get a much better sound, by having a better mix, and applying smaller amounts of compression and limiting, which should sound more open but still with impact. Even if you want the super compressed sound, I would still argue that it will still sound significantly better with a better mix.
Reason 2 I already mentioned. Potentially the consumer may someday hear the unprocessed version. For example if it gets placement in some visual format, where the re-recordist needs an unlimited, or less limited version. Then you will hear the unprocessed mix in all its glory...... or not so much.
Drumwaiter wrote:macrae11 wrote:If your stuff is ever going to be showcased together, like I said, even a Myspace page, I would recommend taking all the songs that live together and do a "master" of them all at once. Just for consistency if nothing else.
Is there anyway I could do this consistently in Cubase? The reason I'm asking is that soon I'll have done a few recordings that will be on Myspace or on a CD or some sort of medium where the songs are together. I've never noticed any differences in my finished "masters" before so could I just keep going down this road undetected? Or... Should I be considering getting a mastering/audio editing suite to avoid the use of this kind of thing while mixing? Any thoughts or suggestions? Maybe Wavelab 6 could handle that kind of stuff while also being able to work as a audio editing program with functions like batch conversion, audio "clean-up" functions and so on. However I'd be interested to hear anyone else's suggestions on that. I know Andrew, you use something else. I know Jef uses Wavelab, so any insight there would be great too.
I really like Wavelab, and might even consider switching over now that they have a mac version. Until you're sending masters to a plant to be replicated though, you don't really "need" a program like Wavelab. For the price though, Wavelab is a great investment, and a great tool, that could make your life a ton easier.
For my mastering, I actually do all my processing in Tools, and you could do it in Cubase. If I was only uploading mp3s, I wouldn't need my CD authoring program, which is PMCD. As it is, I just use it for sequencing, PQ editing, inserting CD Text, ISRC codes, and uploading to the plant. Occasionally I'll trim some heads and tails in it, or adjust some fades. Obviously I also have to do any crossfading of tunes in PMCD as well, when I require that. If you're not doing any of those things that I mentioned, than you should be able to keep working in Cubase, and just create a "mastering session" where you import all your mixes so you can manipulate them together relative to each other.
Drumwaiter wrote:macrae11 wrote:If you do decide to do your final processing at the mix stage, just make sure you also print an unlimited version, just for future safety. You never know what future medium your work might end up on, and what the requirements might be. If your mix falls apart when you take the processing off, then you should IMVHO definitely remove the processing while mixing.
That's some pretty sound advice. No pun indended.