Mastering in software Feature MTMT Feature Master your music Mastering is the vital last step in the production process, and with so many software solutions around, it’s easier than ever to get involved. Hollin Jones explains all… he evolution of music technology in recent years has seen mastering, once seemingly the most mysterious of processes for the uninitiated, become something that almost any producer can do for themselves. Thanks to powerful computers, advanced applications and plug-ins, the tools needed are now far more accessible than they used to be. Plus there’s a greater understanding of what mastering is and how to go about it. It does, of course, remain as much of an art form as it ever was, and simply having the tools is meaningless if you don’t know how to use them or you lack the musical judgement to make the right creative decisions. In truth, with a little guidance most people can create great-sounding masters, and the good news is that your DAW provides almost all the tools you need to do so. There are some specialised suites and plug-ins that will make your life easier if you have the option of using them, and a decent set of monitors and a sympathetic listening environment are also crucial to any mastering session, Witth just a little gu uidanc ce most peop ple can crea ate great-soun nding ma asters MAGAZINE August 2014 | 13 Mondotunes. and show you the key stages you’ll need to go through. Of course you want it to be loud enough. Spotify and others.MT Feature Mastering in software regardless of what’s going on inside the computer. Although services like these will rarely screen music based on genre (unless it’s a very genrespecific service. As well as getting your music into these stores they also usually provide a centralised hub for managing earnings from your music and downloading sales reports. MT Technology Who needs record labels? It’s never been easier to sell your own music online. so it’s vital to get the best-sounding results in order to maximise sales potential. programming and arranging it. radioready sound. Blue Cat Audio makes some excellent analysis and metering plug-ins that provide an amazingly detailed view of what’s really going on inside your audio signal. Here you take your mixed-down stereo file (or possibly some stems. Of course you can sell music yourself using the excellent Bandcamp. So you’re EQing the guitars a little here. and so on. What we’re going to do is take you through the process. When you work on a track you are concentrating on recording. so look for one that doesn’t unless you’re sure you will be earning a decent amount from sales. and you should also look at CD Baby. for example. The goal of mixing is to get the perfect blend of sounds. and ReverbNation. or that has digital clipping anywhere in it. As with any creative process there’s the caveat that every piece of music is different and needs to be mastered according to its own unique characteristics. There’s never been a better time to sell your own music online. Ditto Music.com is pretty good and only charges once. editing. MondoTunes is one of the better digital distribution services as it only has a one-off initial charge. What is ma Wh mast ster st ering? Before talking about how to master audio it’s important to understand what the term actually means. Amazon. from mixdown to selling your music online. which has become the go-to self-publishing platform for musicians. but during mixing your only real concern as far as the master fader goes is that nothing is clipping or peaking and nor is the master level too quiet. and when you come to mix it what’s important is the relative balance of all the different elements. Digital distribution services are likely to reject 14 | August 2014 MAGAZINE anything that’s ridiculously quiet. though this is a little more complex) and process it as a whole using specific kinds of effects to try and achieve a solid. and also showcase your stuff on SoundCloud. there are audio quality barriers to entry. of course). with more services than ever enabling you to have a presence on major digital music stores such as iTunes. automating the vocal a little there and adding reverb so that everything blends together. but producing a good master will help a lot with the saleability of your music. you can see which stores are performing the best and in which regions of the world you’re selling the most. What you’re not doing at any of these stages is worrying very much about the gain and power of the track as a whole. . But the great part for producers of any level is that mastering in software is now accessible to all. and the final step of the production process is mastering. but underlying this is a common set Every piece of music is different and needs to be ma aste ered according to its own ch haracteristics of techniques that will help you get a great. There are a fair few of these services around and most charge a one-time fee for uploading your music. These aren’t hugely strict (any halfway decent production ought to be sufficient).com. so. Some charge an ongoing admin fee. 01 Go through each processing stage and activate the ones you want to use. You can cycle through presets while auditioning the track. You might have also already used a little master buss compression during mixdown. MAGAZINE August 2014 | 15 . and then make the necessary tweaks. It has a nifty ‘loudness suggestion’ feature so you can master appropriately for a specific genre. Star St artt wi with th tthe he m mix ix A lot of producers.or 32-bit. preferably a couple of days. OSTEMS Groups of tracks that bear some relation to each other. What you should end up with after a mix session is a track or a bunch of tracks that sound well balanced and hang together nicely. Although it’s possible to layer up lots of plug-ins on modern systems. Mastering is the very last step before your music is released to the world. This has a number of benefits. which is why it’s so vital to get it right. Pro Tools and Reason. guitars or vocals. All major DAWs. Use your judgment and leave some dynamic range so the track isn’t being squeezed too hard. which might typically be 24. Also applies to comparing your work-inprogress with commercially mastered material to help decide if you’re heading in the right direction. Have at least a night off. Start with a preset that sounds close enough to what you want. Stem mastering enables you to alter the balance of these elements during mastering. setting parameters as you go. Some producers will mix down a collection of stems for mastering and this is technically fairly easy IK Multimedia’s T-RackS is a self-contained mastering suite whose modules also work as plug-ins. The Maximizer section is where the limiting takes place. to high-end hi-fi systems and everything in-between. 02 powerful gain level and an EQ curve that perfectly sweetens the signal. The aim of mastering is to make the track sound as good as it possibly can on all the playback devices on which it will be listened to. Here we have dialled in some EQ to pull specific sounds up in the mix a little. It’s also a good idea to master tracks in the same sessions if they are destined to end up on the same album so there’s an overall coherence to the sound. now make mixing in-the-box a powerful experience. not least that it greatly reduces Tech Terms OA/B’ING The process of temporarily muting processing to hear the original version of the signal and judge how you are changing it. so it’s a very good idea to leave a little space between the two processes. Mixing is about balancing the elements of a track.Mastering in software Feature MT MT Step-by-Step Mastering a track using Ozone Load up your stereo mix in a DAW and create an instance of Ozone. As you can imagine this is something of a tall order since there are many possible ways to listen to music: from a car radio and phone earbuds. as it’s much better to keep everything at maximum and compress web versions and so on much further down the line. For those of us working in home or project studios it’s very useful to be able to do everything on one setup. Using a wide Q value for an EQ point creates a broader EQ curve and a narrow Q value means that only a very precise frequency is affected. eg. if you get your master right you will achieve this seemingly impossible task. even some at the top of the industry. Logic.1. worked on and finished without ever leaving the computer.1dB. drums. 03 the amount of physical equipment you need to do your job. 48 or even 96kHz. and any sample rate from 44. it’s strongly advisable to separate the mixing and mastering processes because they have two distinct and different aims. which isn’t otherwise possible if you have a stereo file to work with. such as Cubase. When you export a mixdown you will have a few options. Then use the Threshold and Margin sliders to drive the input level up against the limit to squeeze more gain out of the track. You will probably spend a fair amount of time on your mix. and here you should set your output level to 0dB or -0. The most common technique is to export a stereo audio file at the same quality as the sessions. Nevertheless. and don’t be afraid to try one or two whose names might not automatically match your style of music. which is a good trick to give a kind of audio ‘glue’ to your mixes and magically bind everything together. before you come back and start mastering. and possibly go slightly mad from listening to the same track hundreds of times. which means that music is started. now work almost entirely in-the-box. and mastering is about affecting the overall sound once the mix is done. Don’t start reducing quality during mixdown. and is perfectly optimised for the touch interface. it’s now even possible on iOS too. Sound Forge is now available for Mac too.and post-EQs. but it’s interesting to know that you can now master on iPad using very similar tools to those that you would use in your studio. If you’re fiddling around by altering stem levels you might get bogged down in changing the mix instead of focusing on the mastering processing.99. Starti St ting ng tthe he process You can master in various different kinds of software since it’s really just a case of loading up an audio file 16 | August 2014 MAGAZINE Using master buss compression. and running it through some effects. some apps are better than others. stereo imaging. With advanced technologies being developed for iOS all the time. There have been advanced DAW apps on iOS for a couple of years and it’s possible to use insert effects in those. an app called Audio Mastering. Just as with your computer you will want to use a proper audio interface and serious monitoring in order to get the best possible results. Cubasis. Far more advanced than you might expect. so consider whether you trust yourself enough to get the mix right and use a stereo file. spectral analyser and more. It has a parametric EQ. pre. A simple wave editor that can load plug-ins will do in a pinch. reverb and dither. but a pro audio wave editor is preferable because it will usually have a more efficient way of handling plug-ins. metering and the like. Stems are groups of tracks that all have a common theme as defined by the producer. it has detailed controls for every aspect of the mastering process as well as great metering and comprehensive import and export options for putting music directly online. stereo imaging. looping. to perform mastering tasks. four-band dynamics. effectively tweaking the mix even after mixdown. NanoStudio and FL Studio Mobile HD are just some of the apps that will enable you to do this. Final Touch is a dedicated and powerful mastering app for iOS. Steinberg’s WaveLab for Mac and PC is designed specifically for mastering. It’s an interesting approach. Technically it’s not so different from stereo mastering. maximizer. and has basic and advanced control modes. reverb. Alternatively. though it is rather different to its PC sibling.49). just as on your own desktop. Potential problems can arise from giving yourself too many options. Positive Grid produces Final Touch (£10. can help to glue a mix together and mean that less compression is required at the mastering stage. Masteriing is also possib ble in n you ur DAW by creating an au udio track and using inse ert effe ects to do by using mixer grouping and batch exporting from a DAW.MT Feature Mastering in software MT Technology On the move? You can still master! Mastering hasn’t just made the leap from professional to home studios. As you might imagine. GarageBand. Of course if you are mastering material that has been mixed by someone else. such as here in Reason 7. The idea is that this affords you more flexibility during mastering because you are able to vary the levels of the different stems (which you can’t do using a stereo file of the whole track). also for iPad and priced at £8. Auria. guitar stems and vocal stems for mastering. although it does add an extra layer of complexity to the mastering stage. has a more scientific interface but is nonetheless very powerful. things such as Audiobus and Inter-App Audio now enable you to stream audio between apps without having to export it from one to the other. stereo imaging. which is usually simpler. though. Perhaps the most interesting development has been the release of a couple of dedicated iOS mastering apps. Any major . an excellent iPad-based mastering solution with a slick interface that has a maximiser. Mastering is also possible using your DAW by simply creating a single audio track and then using insert effects on that channel or the master buss to process the mixdown that you import. getting stems will give you more flexibility in the event of a poor mix. so for example you might export drum stems. and Sony’s Sound Forge is another excellent choice – both have some great built-in processing and editing tools. it’s just that you load up four or five synchronised audio tracks and route them all through master effects instead of just the one. multiband compressor. but if you are doing serious mastering it’s worth looking at some more heavyweight plug-ins. With mastering you want the compression to glue the whole signal together and smooth out the peaks Parallell compress sion ca an bee ef-u up yo our tracks an nd gre eatlyy in ncrease pe erceived loudne ess MAGAZINE August 2014 | 17 . ensuring that quiet bits aren’t inaudible and the loud bits don’t deafen you. compression is an excellent way of pulling together the louder and quieter parts of the signal to create a more even feel. full-quality digital files that result from mastering fulfil much the same role. Your pristine. Tech Terms ODITHERING Changing the bit depth of audio. Sque Sq ueeze e th the so soun und d There’s no strictly defined order in which to start processing your master but many producers like to FabFilter’s Pro-L is a great limiting plug-in that can be used to squeeze the maximum amount of power out of your tracks without crushing them. say when mixing down from 32-bit to 16-bit. which has some excellent tools and is a staple of many people’s mastering setups.Mastering in software Feature MT DAW will enable this. limiting and ideally some stereowidening and metering tools as well. Used carefully. If you have applied master buss compression during mixdown you may want to go a little easier during mastering so as not to over-compress or ‘pump’ the sound and risk sucking the musicality out of it. probably the most complete of which is IK Multimedia’s T-RackS CS. though these will of course vary in quality depending on how high-end the software is. begin with compression. EQ. Suites such as iZotope’s Ozone or some of Waves’ plug-ins are great. OGLASS MASTER An increasingly outdated concept. Although the vast majority of mastering effects come in plug-in format there are some dedicated mastering apps as well. can introduce distortion into the signal. Dithering adds noise that’s more or less inaudible to our ears in an attempt to minimise this. Pro Tools and the like come with most of these. The core effects you will need are compression. the glass master is the master copy of a digital album that is used to press a large number of CDs from. Others can be added for free. and not just for mastering but for general tracking and mixing tasks as well. and as you’re not going to be using any MIDI or arrangement tools the only really important thing to do before you start is make sure the project settings match those of the audio you are importing so that no unexpected format conversion takes place. Listen to any track where a singer practically whispers one line then screams the next and yet both seem weirdly about the same volume: that’s compression doing its thing. Logic. It’s quite possible to master using the bundled plug-ins that come with your DAW. The major DAWs such as Cubase. although they can also be used as inserts on your single audio track if you are only working with one track at a time instead of stem mastering. As such it’s usually better to apply a relatively gentle amount with a low-ish ratio and an attack time that’s not too quick. usually with adjustable crossover points. especially when the other mastering effects have changed the character of the sound in their own ways. Because you are applying an EQ curve across the whole track you can control the feel of the soundstage much more easily. such as performing a very low bass roll-off to deal with any sub sounds. Compression and EQ are the most common multiband types and are both used extensively in mastering. Beco come me tthe equ qual alizer With your audio ‘glued’ together by compression it’s time to use EQ to sweeten and balance the sound. A parametric EQ is a good choice as it provides a nice visual representation of the EQ curve and will have multiple points and Q controls. more usually. you might use a wide Q value and a gentle rise in the gain. If your budget stretches far enough then Steinberg’s Portico 5033 EQ is an excellent choice. When you apply a compressor across the whole signal it has to deal with everything from the bass to the crash cymbals. leaving similar sounds to either side relatively untouched. The aim of mastering EQ is to pick out certain elements of a track and then either back them off or. even for a track that has been mixed well. At their simplest. For example. The Q settings of a parametric equalizer are particularly useful here because they control the width of the area around the EQ point and thus the amount of frequency to either side that is affected. The goal here is to ‘squeeze’ as much gain and power out of the signal as is appropriate but without causing it to clip and without ‘crushing’ it so it becomes dull and lifeless. A good parametric EQ will serve you well for mastering. As good as your mixdown is you will always find small improvements that can be made at this stage. so you can effectively pull different bands up or down selectively. So to perform a broad boost to the lower mids.MT Feature Mastering in software and troughs but without sounding artificial. To isolate a single sound such as a guitar. There are some commonly used techniques here in addition to sweetening the sound. in order to ensure that the signal will not exceed this level and thus not clip. You need to set the output level to 0dB or just below. Multiband compressors enable you to set the crossover points and compression levels for several frequency bands independently. Tech Terms OMULTIBAND Any processing that works across several frequency bands. OMASTER BUSS The stereo output of your DAW through which the whole signal passes. Limiting comes at the end of the processing chain because anything placed after it could interfere with its operation by negatively affecting the signal.1dB. and either adding or cutting very high frequencies to add sparkle or remove hiss. use a narrow Q value and pull the sound up or down. Take iitt to tthe limit Ta The third core process in mastering is limiting. You will invariably find that a little EQ during mastering can really help. but using multiband compression to control it serves to level it With your audio ‘glued’ togetther by compre ession. Use the input gain level control to drive the 18 | August 2014 MAGAZINE . limiters just have input and output gain controls. if the bass is too loud in the mix. Singleband compression is common but you can also use multiband compression if you feel confident enough. sweeten and balance th he sound with EQ off rather than knocking it out and should also help it to blend with any nearby frequencies. for example. Though different from EQ this can be a very useful trick because it helps you to deal more effectively with rogue groups of sounds. DAWs on the iPad such as Auria have advanced insert effects sections that you can use for mastering on the move. During the mastering process this is where you would normally place the effects. using EQ to take it down might lessen the power and impact of the track. say -0. so using a decent quality model is preferable. enhance them by pulling their frequency up a little. which means driving the input level of the signal while ensuring it doesn’t exceed a predetermined level. and your position relative to them. you need to check the meter… When mixing and mastering you spend a lot of time looking at the master level meters in your DAW or on your mixing desk. Before signing off on a master it’s vital to listen back to it on as many systems as you can in case you find that for some reason the bass disappears on an iPhone. signal until you get a solid and consistent level. It’s generally accepted now that the loudness wars went too far. and can be loaded into any DAW. work on and finish off whole tracks without ever leaving their digital environment. Regularly A/B’ing your master both with its dry. bass can sound very different depending on how you stand in relation to the speakers. unprocessed signal and with commercially mastered songs in a similar style can be invaluable in helping keep you on the right track and getting the best end results. It’s quite possible to over-limit and crush your signal. compression and limiting they may also have stereo widening and mastering reverb too. Typically comprising EQ.Mastering in software Feature MT MT Technology To really understand your masters. To fully understand what’s going on you will need to use some more advanced metering tools. but it offers only one kind of visual feedback. For example. This is indeed where you can see if your signal is too loud or quiet. The aim is to bolster and boost the sound’s gain. and enable you to correct these during mastering. Best Be st o off the rest st As well as the processors mentioned above you may also want to use stereo widening. or the cymbals are way too loud on a car stereo. It’s good to use a stereo widener with low and high controls and a configurable crossover point so you can keep the low end tight and centred while adding a little width to the top end. These can be applied as inserts across your master buss and don’t process or change the sound. step back and listen to whether your track is in fact being squeezed too hard. The modules in T-RackS CS also work individually as well as in a suite. strong level against retaining the right amount of dynamic range. it’s not necessary to crush your tracks to death. which means your level meters are spending a lot of time up near 0dB. some producers start. either by running the output level over 0dB or more likely by driving the input gain too hard. OMASTERING SUITE A collection of plug-ins or processing modules that collectively make up a mastering chain. MT MAGAZINE August 2014 | 19 . seriously altering the mix. Increasingly popular as a standard working method. By analysing the sound before it leaves the computer. Stuff like this does happen and it’s well worth going back and refining the master to account for it. You don’t want to suck all the dynamic range out of it because this kills its musicality – the levels should have a little movement left in them. With a little practice and the right set of tools you can use mastering to really enhance the finished sound of your tracks. It’s also the culprit behind the ‘loudness wars’ where commercial studios have tended to limit harder and harder. just use some judgement in balancing a Tech Terms OIN THE BOX Any production that takes place entirely inside the computer. When your master is done you can export it out to a stereo file and then top and tail it in a wave editor to deal with any errant reverb tails or clicks. If your level meters are consistently hammering up against the zero mark. Stereo widening should be used sparingly because it can quickly start to really mess with the soundstage if you push it too far. a phenomenon that Use judgement in balancing a strong level ag gainst re etaining the right amount of dynamic range reached its nadir with Metallica’s Death Magnetic. You’ll also need a decent set of monitors because you need as accurate a picture as possible of how your master is shaping up. When you listen to sound through loudspeakers it is being affected by all kinds of factors including the character of those speakers. their placement and proximity to walls. and careful limiting is the reason so many commercial tracks sound much louder than those produced in home studios. an album so tiring on the ears that some listeners actually sent it back. since many of your listeners will experience your music this way. they simply analyse it. and some more advanced metering can also help. And preferably get yourself kitted out with a really good set of headphones. What you gain by using proper audio analysis tools is a better insight into the way the frequencies in your master are really behaving. plug-ins can show you what’s truly happening across the frequency spectrum with phase issues and so on. Your DAW may come with an analysis plug-in or two but there are excellent third-party models available too from the likes of Blue Cat Audio’s Analysis Pack and Waves’ Dorrough Meter Collection and PAZ Analyzer.