A Mastering Studio's Tips for Making Better Recordings:
"How to record an album that lives up to your artistic vision."
This video is intended as a warm-up before each mixing session. This warm up was carefully created by Stonebridge Mastering, a member of the Audio Engineering Society and the Grammy Recording Academy.
We want to help our clients create a bridge over the disappointment of shady studios, wasted time, wasted money, and lost chances. On the other side of the bridge, we will take special care in polishing and putting the finish on your refined work of art.
Combining artist development and mastering is a dream we have pursued for over a decade.
Professional mastering requires specialized equipment and acoustic treatment as well as the influence of an experienced mastering engineer. No mixing studio can do professional mastering, although many try to upsell it and advertise that they can.
It must be considered that the quality of an album's mastering is known to make or break record sales, even since the 1960s. We could do an entire video about why professional mastering is necessary, but a bit of looking around on Google is very convincing.
When recording at a studio, our recommendations can be downloaded and printed from our website, and given to your engineer. This can help ensure refined quality throughout the entire recording process.
Let's talk about a few concepts that can help prevent the common pitfalls. There are seven main concepts:
1. Good final mixes don't have any digital clipping. This means that all peaks are below -3db.
2. Good final mixes are created using tasteful EQ techniques.
3. Good final mixes have the bass frequencies cut from tracks that are not bass instruments.
4. Good final mixes are a little punchier, and more dynamic than you expect the final master to be.
5. Good final mixes usually sound different from commercially released albums, which is mostly due to dynamics.
6. Good final mixes should avoid adding excessive high-frequency.
7. Good final mixes are overall well balanced.
Part 1 - Avoiding Clipping
Have you had problems with a harsh sound-quality, a sense of low-fidelity, muddyness or boxyness? Digital clipping could be part of the problem.
To avoid clipping, most people rely on meters to show when the signal goes into the red. The problem is that meters lie, including digital meters.
To carefully avoid clipping, all peaks should be kept below -3db. This will avoid actual clipping instead of just clipping lights.
Some engineers think that to get a good sound, the recording level must be as high as possible, but that idea is not true in 24-bit digital recording. It is always important to drive your preamps to their sweet spots, but at 24-bit, the input levels going to the computer don't matter much.
It's important to make sure clipping does not occur on individual track meters, master output meters, and between plug-ins. Sometimes a track will peak at -3db, but isn't loud enough in the mix. It's usually best and most thorough to reduce the level of every other track to match it. Another option is to use a compressor or limiter to lower the peaks. Then the volume of the track can be raised in the mix, without the peaks going over -3db.
Finally, clipping should be avoided everywhere in the signal chain. That means checking all track meters, the master meter, and all effect meters to make sure they all peak below -3dB. This takes time, but after all, that's why most home and project studio studios are crated, so that the owners can spend the needed time without paying hourly for it.
Part 2 - Subtractive EQ
EQ is a widely misused tool. An informed approach to EQ is the real essence of mixing. To illustrate this, let's think of this blank screen as the entire mix before anything has been recorded. This is silence. When we add a picture of this guitar, with nothing cut out of it, and a picture of this bass with nothing cut out of it, and these drums and this vocalist, then we can see what many people's mixes would look like.
The transparency of the pictures can be adjusted, which is like adjusting track volumes, but it still looks and sounds jumbled. People who mix this way wonder why their mixes rarely come out sounding the way they want.
Instead, teh frequencies that aren't important to the mix should be cut, and as you can see, the mix becomes more clear. The individual tracks won't sound as good when soloed, but we're working on a good mix, not good individual tracks.
In almost all cases, bass frequencies should be cut out of all instruments that are not bass instruments. This cut might be around 175Hz and below. This is sometimes called a bass roll-off or a high-pass. Bass frequencies are most harshly affected by the overlapping of frequencies. High frequencies can be cut on some tracks because not every instrument can have high-frequency sparkle without taking away from another instrument's sparkle.
EQs are often dipped in the middle. You can dip by boosting the EQ very high and with a narrow Q. Then you find the most displeasing frequency, adjust the Q to be surgical, and finally, dip the EQ to reduce that frequency. The Q is the slope of the EQ curve.
Finally, panning and tasteful reverb and delay techniques can be used to go even further with reducing overlap. Also, just to get it said here, bass instruments such as bass drums and basslines are usually left in the center and not panned.
Just a little review. First, all instruments that are not bass instruments need to have the bass frequencies cut out of them. Next, tasteful judgement should be used to figure out which unnecessary frequencies can be cut without sacrificing an instrument's sound in the mix. Finally, panning can be used to separate instruments from each other that occupy the same frequency range.
Of course, these rules are not set in stone, but instead, they are concepts to keep in mind that can lead to good choices.
Part 3 - Punchy, Dynamic Recordings
Avoiding overlapping frequencies, and avoiding clipping and not just clipping lights, will lead to much more control over the punch. Punch usually comes from the bass rum and sometimes the bass guitar. Of course, this can be different in the infinite possibilities of music, so it's your call on exactly where the punch comes from. Where it comes from, it's best to error on the side of a little more punch, or dynamic, than you would expect to hear on the final master. This can get a little difficult since this must be done while still keeping the overall master output peaks below -3dB, the individual track peaks below -3dB, and each plug-in's peaks below -3dB but it's part of the work that makes great recordings.
Part 4 - Getting a Good Balance
A good balance between all of the instruments is a top priority. This is something done according to taste, although there are many opinions on best approaches. Mostly, this balance is where the expressiveness of mixing comes from, and is what mixing engineers live for. Achieving a good balance often becomes natural if the methods we're talking about are fresh on the engineer's mind, which is why it's a good idea to make this video part of your mixing routine. Also, the shaping of EQ cuts can yield many different flavors of tone that can help with balance. Balance also involves depth, which we'll talk more about in Part 6.
Part 5 - Parallel Compression
Compressors are used by some engineers more than others. They can destroy dynamics, but they can also help smooth out something that changes in volume too much, and is necessary for some vocalists. Compression is often used on drums, but there is a trick for a more full drum sound. We encourage our clients to try out what is sometimes called parallel compression, or New York compression.
To do this, bounce your entire drum track down to one stereo track, then make a copy of it. Then, put high compression on the duplicated track, which means opening up a compressor and turning the threshold low and the ratio high. Then, mix that in with the original track. Just a little bit of the compressed track goes a very long way. Using parallel compression gives the tonal benefit of compression without losing punch from the uncompressed drums.
Part 6 - Reverb
Reverb is crucial to achieving certain sounds, but simple reverb is not the answer to gaining the huge sound you hear on well engineered recordings. If you use reverb, you should use the pre-delay control so that the reverb does not mask the dry track. Predelay is a very important control for a reverb to have and many well known engineers won't use a reverb without it. If you don't have a predelay control then you will want to pan the reverb effect away from the original dry track. A dry track and it's reverb should not be on top of each other in the same speaker. You'll also find that true stereo reverbs yield better sound quality than mono-to-stereo reverbs. Instead of reverb, you can also use delay, or several delays, with the delay time set between 12 and 40 milliseconds. The lower part of that range should be used from drums and other fast sounds. Different layers of your mix may contain several delays, one delay, no delay, or reverb using predelay. Reverb and delay effects can be tweaked to shape the depth of a mix.
Part 7 - Equipment Recommendation
We have many digital home studio clients that are looking to buy new equipment. Many times we end up recommending the highest quality AD/DA conversion they can afford. The quality of AD/DA conversion can dramatically change the overall fidelity of a recording. The AD conversion built into high quality interfaces such as the MOTUs or Lynx cannot compare to what is possible if the interface is used along with a good AD converter. Using them together creates the professional sound that many expect to hear from the interface alone. In recording and mixing, Apogee and RME are good. Cranesong, Benchmark, Lavry and Prism are the best. When comparing studios, giving heavy consideration to AD/DA conversion and acoustics is a smart choice.
Part 8 - Burning the final mixes to CD for Mastering
We can accept material in almost any format, on almost any media, and in almost any condition. There are a few things you can do for optimal preparation. We ask that you do the fade-ins and fade-outs the way that you want before sending your tracks to us. We can do fading, and suggest that you make notes about how they should be done on page 2 of our order form, or leave it up to us. Next, it's always good practice to make sure they are no effects on the master bus. Also, the final mixes should be exported as 24-bit. We can accept any sample rate.
The .wav files should be copied to a high quality CD-R or DVD-R like the Apogee Gold or Taiyo Yudens. We also will accept a high quality USB drive with all of the .wav files copied to it. The final mixes should be burned to CD or DVD as a date or ISO CD or DVD. Using your burner's lowest burning speed will minimize errors.
A Few Final Comments
If you are serious about the quality of your album, then please watch this video before each mixing session, during set-up, or while packing to go to the studio.
The full text of this video is available on our website. You will also find a one sheet summary that you can use yourself or give to your engineer. If they, or you, have any trouble, then you can call us at 1-888-DoMyMix. In addition to mastering, Stonebridge Mastering also offers mixing services if you would rather leave the mixing to us.
