Original Message                 Date: 22-Aug-00  @  07:00 PM   -   That Mysterious Professional Sound

azazello

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I am experimenting with making some drum & bass. I made some good standard loops, have good sounds, and I think, "Hey, this is pretty good." Then I listen to some tunes, such as anything by Ed Rush & Optical, DJ Trace, Nico, etc., and discover that my music sounds completely unprofessional! What gives it that "professional" sound? I realize that all songs are pretty unique, but they all have a polished sound in common. Is there anything specific I should be doing in the final mixdown or mastering phase? Any and all tips will be helpful.
Thanks!
Azazello

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Message 21/43                 Date: 04-Sep-00  @  05:53 PM   -   RE: That Mysterious Professional Sound

johnny

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Oh and Chris you'll need plenty of 'magic dust' to sprinkle on your tracks to make them sound pro. You can only get this in a top mastering facility so give up now there's no hope :-)

(serious head on now).........

But in all seriousness, mastering seems to be the last facet of recording that's still perceived as being 'best left to the pros only'. Over the years advances in technology have brought many processes to the masses (synths, samplers, mixers, FX, recorders) that were once deemed 'pro only' and the skill level of those using them has increased accordingly, to the extent that there are many more competent home-studio based engineers/recording artists than there ever were. I think it's started to happen with mastering now - the technology is there to be used, but as always the skill of the person operating it has a large say in how 'pro' the results are, no different to using synths, samplers, mixers and such. Given the tools anyone can do it, but like anything else only few can do it really well. It's also something you can mess with when the compositional juices are running dry - leave a stockpile of old mixes to polish when you feel like a change. That's the best way to learn how to do it, trial and error - see what parameters do what.

Home mastering, the next big thing.

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Message 22/43                 Date: 05-Sep-00  @  02:22 AM   -   RE: That Mysterious Professional Sound

chris

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Ta for the advice Johnny.

Formant - yeah, I'd appreciate your presets: chris@purusha.demon.co.uk

It'll be nice to have a starting point.

I'll give all this a try after the weekend, since I've got a gig coming up on Friday.

Cheers!

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Message 23/43                 Date: 05-Sep-00  @  05:06 PM   -   RE: That Mysterious Professional Sound

formant

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its on the way via email... enjoy!

jamey

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Message 24/43                 Date: 05-Sep-00  @  09:58 PM   -   RE: That Mysterious Professional Sound

Defector Z

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Shit. That's all I can say. Shit.

Where do I get one of them new-fangled multi-band do-hickeys for VST? Hmm? On the cheap - if not free. Heh-heh.

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Message 25/43                 Date: 06-Sep-00  @  03:30 AM   -   RE: That Mysterious Professional Sound

chris

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Thanks for the file Jamey...

A few more questions though (hopefully of interest to others too)...

I guess that before the multi-band compression is used, the audio track should be normalised by peak? Otherwise the compression mechanism might not hit suitable threshholds...

Would you suggest re-normalising after the compression too?

Any advantages / disadvantages to doing this?

What advantage is there in using a limter at the end of the process (as suggested by Johnny)? Is there something special about the Waves L1?

Any other processes people can recommend?

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Message 26/43                 Date: 06-Sep-00  @  01:44 PM   -   RE: That Mysterious Professional Sound

johnny

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Yes, limiters should go after the compressors, because a limiter is just a compressor with a high ratio (from 10:1 up to infinity:1) used to bring down peaks that would cause clipping. If you limited the material before compression, you'd be severly affecting the dynamics before letting the compressor do it's stuff. And then applying compression would completely undo the work of the limiter, which is meant to keep levels below a certain limit, 0dBFS in this case.

With fast enough attack/release times you can limit by several dB without any side effects, resulting in a much louder track.

Normalizing should be done before compression for the reason you mention, in any situation gain optimization is always best done as early as possible in the processing chain. If the compressor and limiter is set up correctly, you shouldn't need to apply normalization after compression/limiting because the track will be regularly peaking at 0dB, with no headroom left to be exploited.

Hope that makes some sort of sense...

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Message 27/43                 Date: 06-Sep-00  @  08:17 PM   -   RE: That Mysterious Professional Sound

phunkytek

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you shouldn't have to normalize your master at all. it takes away the headroom needed for eq and multiband. The pro's are using machines with internal processing rates up to 96bit, so when eq and compresion are done on a 24bit file, changes are not truncated. Most DAW's are processing files at 32bits, sufficiant, bu the quaility is less than what the pro masterhouses have. There is a great article on compression at the Digital Domain web site. It is geared more toward pop and film , but it helps point out the mistakes that are made when amitures try to do mastering. There are a lot of technical factors involed, and the article points out the mistakes that can be avoided when these factors are considered. I posted a link. If you do decide to do mastering, keep an unmastered mix to return to for comparison.

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Message 28/43                 Date: 07-Sep-00  @  02:32 AM   -   RE: That Mysterious Professional Sound

MGS

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Get Future Music issue #99. In the "Perfect Setup" section they tell you what gear to get for mastering, and it's pretty cheap:

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-Behringer Composer (compressor) - 299 pounds
-Behringer Dualfex EX-2200 (sound processor) - 199 pounds
-Behringer Ultrabass PRO EX-1200 (bass booster) - 199 pounds

--------------------------------------

Peace.

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Message 29/43                 Date: 07-Sep-00  @  08:56 AM   -   RE: That Mysterious Professional Sound

ville

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I allways wonder where do they get the prices in FM. Who would pay 299 for Composer?!?! you can get it for less than third of that price... anything over 100 pounds would be stupid i think.

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Message 30/43                 Date: 07-Sep-00  @  01:34 PM   -   RE: That Mysterious Professional Sound

djdarrenb

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One thing to say PCTOOLS. All those "professional sounding" tunes have been master in the studio by sound engineers using PCTOOLS. Honestly you wont be able to aford that ,unless you send on to record label a&r's if they like it they might sign it and master it to that "professional sound" you crave

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