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From: JY on 24 Apr 2008 17:37
I know the common practice is to leave the final stereo wav completely
uncompressed before mastering... and I followed this rule (too?) religiously
for years, going as far as refusing to compress my drums on their own bus,
which didn't help the product any, as I learned with the years.

As a result, there was always a HUGE discrepancy between my finished tracks
and the finished masters. That annoying "had I known the kick would come
through so much once everything gets squashed, I'd have lowered it in the
mix" type thing. So the prevailing logic for me today would be to put a
LITTLE bit of compression on the main out, if only to take me a small
percentage of the way there... while there's still time to make adjustments
to the mix.

I've got a Waves L316 Multimaximizer on the main out of my mix, with a
tiny -2db threshold and an out ceiling or -0.2. It gives the song more
cohesiveness, a little bit more volume, and the pleasant side-effect of
eliminating the rare clip/peaks that managed to escape me along the way.

I'm not hearing anything distort, and by all account, it just sounds more
pleasant. I'll leave the final EQ adjustments and quest for loudness to the
mastering engineer, but I think I can get away with this very light
compression at the mix level.

My question to you pros is... am I breaking a sacred rule of mixing, here?
I've been told countless times that the further apart the peaks and valleys
are in a mix, the better, and more room the mastering engineer has to play
with. But like I said, this makes it harder for me to guess how far upfront
certain instruments will go at the end of the process. This light
compressing via the L316 allows me to better guess, and make the appropriate
adjustments in time.

Thoughts?



From: Anahata on 24 Apr 2008 18:30
On Thu, 24 Apr 2008 17:37:44 -0400, JY wrote:


> As a result, there was always a HUGE discrepancy between my finished
> tracks and the finished masters. That annoying "had I known the kick
> would come through so much once everything gets squashed, I'd have
> lowered it in the mix" type thing.

Why not listen occasionally though a heavily compressed monitoring chain
(not *all* the time while you're mixing, obviously) and make adjustments
based on that?

Rather like the way some people check mixes on a pair of crappy little
speakers or the car sound system.

--
Anahata
anahata(a)treewind.co.uk -+- http://www.treewind.co.uk
Home: 01638 720444 Mob: 07976 263827
From: Scott Dorsey on 24 Apr 2008 19:54
In article <fuqukq$h1f$1(a)aioe.org>, JY <no(a)thanks.com> wrote:
>As a result, there was always a HUGE discrepancy between my finished tracks
>and the finished masters. That annoying "had I known the kick would come
>through so much once everything gets squashed, I'd have lowered it in the
>mix" type thing. So the prevailing logic for me today would be to put a
>LITTLE bit of compression on the main out, if only to take me a small
>percentage of the way there... while there's still time to make adjustments
>to the mix.

If this is indeed the case... it sounds like they're crushing the hell out
of your mixes in the mastering room. Don't let them do that.

Light compression before handing it over to the mastering guy won't hurt
anything. Limiting probably will, so don't limit.

But if you're getting such severe changes, it's a sign the mastering guy
is doing too much compression. Tell him not to.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
From: Carey Carlan on 24 Apr 2008 20:16
"JY" <no(a)thanks.com> wrote in news:fuqukq$h1f$1(a)aioe.org:

> I know the common practice is to leave the final stereo wav completely
> uncompressed before mastering... and I followed this rule (too?)
> religiously for years, going as far as refusing to compress my drums
> on their own bus, which didn't help the product any, as I learned with
> the years.
>
> As a result, there was always a HUGE discrepancy between my finished
> tracks and the finished masters. That annoying "had I known the kick
> would come through so much once everything gets squashed, I'd have
> lowered it in the mix" type thing. So the prevailing logic for me
> today would be to put a LITTLE bit of compression on the main out, if
> only to take me a small percentage of the way there... while there's
> still time to make adjustments to the mix.
>
> I've got a Waves L316 Multimaximizer on the main out of my mix, with a
> tiny -2db threshold and an out ceiling or -0.2. It gives the song more
> cohesiveness, a little bit more volume, and the pleasant side-effect
> of eliminating the rare clip/peaks that managed to escape me along the
> way.
>
> I'm not hearing anything distort, and by all account, it just sounds
> more pleasant. I'll leave the final EQ adjustments and quest for
> loudness to the mastering engineer, but I think I can get away with
> this very light compression at the mix level.
>
> My question to you pros is... am I breaking a sacred rule of mixing,
> here? I've been told countless times that the further apart the peaks
> and valleys are in a mix, the better, and more room the mastering
> engineer has to play with. But like I said, this makes it harder for
> me to guess how far upfront certain instruments will go at the end of
> the process. This light compressing via the L316 allows me to better
> guess, and make the appropriate adjustments in time.
>
> Thoughts?

Mastering is not some dark art 'way out there in the land of the arcane.
It is merely finishing the process begun in the studio. In the ideal
world a mastering engineer just tweaks the finished tracks enough to lay
together politely in a finished album (be it CD, LP, or the next big
thing).

Tracks should be EQ'ed and compressed to your liking )barring the
massive hypercompression expected in the commercial market).

If you want/expect your finished product to have 6 dB of total dynamic
range, you should apply reasonable compression to each acoustic (that's
non-amplified) source before the final mix to get everything to blend in
a moderately compressed environment before handing it over to be rolled
flat.

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