You're dead right: mastering's certainly no "black art" – never has been. No more than repairing or tuning a car engine is a black art to me. It's just an air of mystery [*edit: not even that... merely lack of understanding] originally surrounding a process fundamental to the process of making masters that best translate for vinyl, cassette tape or CD, and the quality control aspects of each.

As to whether the best way to learn is via reading or using meters… believe me it really does come down to clocking up many hundreds of hours of listening, and on a system that gives you full range, unflattering detail. Doesn't at all mean that one can't DIY it. Many obviously prefer not to DIY, for the sake of experience and objectivity, knowing when not to do anything, and often deadlines, alone.

 

(I think I've had recourse to turn to mutliband compression maybe just twice in the past 12 months).

DOMC Mastering said:

I didn't like what it did to the stereo image from the get go.  even when I just turned it on and didnt do anything.  The bottom end felt wrong on it.  And the eq was too course for me.  I think its a great bit of gear for the price... and I really wanted to like it.. it was a bargain.. but I dont think its quite right for mastering.... 

 

Mind you at the time I didnt have a lot of cash to spend so I was looking for stable boxes I could use on a lot of things.  the TLA just didnt cut it for broad genre ranges.  Same deal with the comp - I felt it was a bit grabby and slow...

I wonder what running it in does to a vca? maybe the caps and resistors and op-amps etc need to settle down... beats me

Oh I forgot last night, you mentioned somthing about stereo imaging and the A2 TLA, what program where you using to master with.  What you are talking about, sounds to me like the pan law.  On Sonar I set the pan law so the left and right channel are minus-3db or 3.5 can't remember which one, this is suppose to be how most consoles are set up.  With the expection of the SSL's I think and they had -4.5db, this was suppose to be because the SSL's were going to be in better rooms.

 

Does anyone know what pan law Pro Fools, Logic and Cubase use?

 

Peace Ben

pan law?

I have a TLA A1 pre, to be honest I thought it would make ever mic sound better, I cant tell the difference between it and my Mackie 32.8.8 desk but it looks cool. I think i would get a UA 710 x 4 thingy next time . But I only paid 850 for it new.

Pan rule has to do with the level change of a mono signal when fed through the pan network as the pan pot is swept from centre to left or right. It comes from the electronics where the signal driver is fed into the pan network (the wiper of the pan pot is usually grounded) and the impedance of the network changes as the pot is swept, causing signal attenuation as it passes through to the bus amplifier. So when swept to the right, say, the signal on the left will go to zero, but the impedance change causes the signal on the left to increase as well, rather than stay the same.

In the digital world though, the pan rule can be zero since there isn't any pan network impedance changes to worry about.

I'm not releasing CD's or putting out comercial material so I feel somewhat free to play with the idea of mastering 'ITB'.

It's been interesting to approach a recorded song from an over all sonic perspective then 'go back and fix things in the mix'
Hopefully what I end up with in Mastering is very subtle eq (if any) and soft limiting to bring down the peaks and bring up the RMS.
Thats about all I can do with the limitations of my software and monitors.

If I was to put out some commercial material I would definitely consider using a Mastering service. I feel I lose some objectivity listening
over and over (as if recording wasn't enough) to the song. My ears get bored sonically and I start to change things to create interest again.

The only other way around this is to leave the tracks alone for a few weeks and listen a fresh.
Having a deadline has its merits too. It allows you to make a decision, stick to it, put it to bed and move on.

I'd say for me, and I consider myself a beginner even after mixing now in the box for 8 years. Learning to pull better mixes is more important
than mastering. In other words, I'd rather spend time getting the mix better but home mastering IS opening my ears to better mixes.

Hope that makes sense.

As most people have been saying, jump in, get your feet wet/ hands dirty/ ears bleeding and see what you can achieve.
Its *always* worth trying to do things at home with the tools at your disposal.
At the very least you can gain an appreciation of what the pros do so if/when you do take your songs to be mastered you'll have a good idea
of what they are trying to achieve.

Dags