Hey Two Hands
I've just finished my own album start to finish including the mixing and mastering and it has been a very involved complicated process to say the least!
It is the most mish-mashed cross between science and art I can think of. The advice you need really depends on your knowledge level at the moment, and what you're equipment and goals are.
The first thing you need to realise is this. Well, the major TABOO NO-NO I learned from hanging around the mastering forums was that mastering is not about getting it louder, in fact mastering engineers are fighting to keep mixes quieter because albums these days are gettin the mixes cut so hot that all the dynamic benefits of the CD format are getting squashed and lost.
Yes evryone who's dabbled in home recording feels your pain of gettin the tracks louder. And there are plenty of tools for that however thats not going to get it sounding pro alone.
I think the first steps are to realise your own goals and limits. Think about
:
1) The recording signal chain/process up to now.
2) The final mixes are they the best they can be, and are they set in stone.
3) What kind of tone/feel are you looking for
4) How much money do you want to spend which leads to
5) What equipment do you have.
You've kind of answered some of those questions already.
Mastering is more about the process than the tools you use, however I can say that without a decent quite of plug-ins (if you're going the software route) and a semi-god listening environment (i.e no monitors sub $300 - you really need to be lookin at yamaha, event, mackie, genelec) then the end result will still sound perhaps less than desirable.
I could give you a detailed description of the process I went through but it would only aid you on the path to find the tools and techniques your music requires.
First of all check out
www.sospubs.com and read the archived articles there, then hang out at
www.homerecording.com forum and
www.therecordingproject.com they are both good for soaking up techniques and getting your work crituiqed.
Anyway here is a basic outline of what I did for my project.
After the final mixes were complete I hooked up my yamaha msp5's (which are certilany good for attempting home mixing/mastering and around the 400-500 budget). The next was I borrowed my recording collegues/house-mates laptop which contains the very very desirable and incredibly expensive Waves Diamond collection. Basically these tools are the bollocks for professional mastering in the software world. So I had the tools but honestly they're so complicated that I really didnt know what I was doing.
So there began 6 months of very intense reading all the Waves manuals, googling, researching, trials and tests, and basically tuning my ears to hear what the effects of the science I was reading was doing to my music.
It came down to it that obviously every track needed something different doing to it, however I was seeing a pattern emerging. It may be different for other peoples work but I could get a rety quick good sound by using these tools.
* Waves Renaisence Bass - which basically acts as a fine tuner for the lower frequencies without effecting the other parts of the spectrum. Other companies provide equivelents.
* Waves Stereo Imager - this really puts the pro sparkle on the sound however you really have to be conservative with how much you use and let your ears adjust to it so you aren't over-doing it.
* Waves Multi-Band EQ - this is PART 1 of the crucial trick for getting your extaneous peaks in your mixes tamed and leveled in order to get things louder when you burn to disc. So can control and compress just 1 part of the ferquency spectrum that is out of control. So you aren't getting huge peaks that prevent yo from maximizing the final volume potential
* Waves L2 Ultra Maximizer - PART 2 this very cleverly boosts the volume a good number of dB without much noticable artifacts or distoriton to the sound. It basically compresses then boosts the overall volume. But the way it looks ahead and calcualtes this is far beyond your normal brick wall limiter/finalizer. The results sitll end up musical.
In the end I resisted slamming the volume to current radio levesl because through my experience I learned enough about the art of it to appreciate what sounds good and what sounds bad in mastering terms. I couldnt bring myself to totally kill my dynamics just to compete with radio rock of the 2000's. FUnilly enough my levels are still prety good however and they are on a par with masers from around the mid 90's. It matches up volume wise to rock mixes like Jaged Little Pill for example. I think I found a good trade off.
Part of my research took me to analyze records from the last 25 years and you can literally see the tops of the waves being chopped off these days compared to even as little back as 7/8 years ago. Its a crazy problem that the record executives are breeding but there's not a lot you can do about it. Engineers are trying to break the myth that LOUDER=PROFESSINAL , all louder really = is squashed heavily copressed and ear fatiguing listening.
Anyway just as some examples of what I managed to achieve, here are a few tracks from my album. Self-produced "bedroom studio" jobby..I hear where it could be better but given the resources and situation I am pleased with the result. Ahh yes bare in mind that these are 128kbps mp3 too, there are higher bitrates on my actual site.
01 From Here
02 Above
05 AmeRockan
06 Last October
08 Tide
The rest of the album and info about it you can check out at
www.davidbeebee.com if you're interested.
I can give you a breakdown of what I did on various tracks and possible ways to improve you're masters if you wish....bah just cant type anymore right now fingers are gonna fall off. cheerio
Track
