to master or not to master your mix cd's
ayo
44 Posts
im on protools and 80% done with my first official mix cd. is it worthwhile to get mastered in a studio or should i just mix it myself on protools? My question is how much of a difference does mastering the cd make?
Comments
Makes a HUGE difference son! Levels are even, bass and low end is hittin', sounds MUCH better. That said, lots of people do not master mix CDs. It just depends what kind of sound you are going for. If it is an Old School hip-hop mix and you want an "Old School" sound, I would not worry about mastering it. If it is a lot of non hip-hop music I would master it. Good mastering is a little expensive so plaese be aware of that. $200 to $300 an hour is pretty standard.
I have a couple of mix CDs already done that I would like to have professionally replicated/copied with printed covers or maybe digipaks.
Is it difficult to find a place that will do this if I obviously do not have clearance on all the cuts/samples?
I see that a lot of online places make a point of stating that they will not do the work without sample clearance. Are there any places you all can hip me to where this isn't a problem?
Any help would be appreciated!
Peace.
It is getting difficult to find places that will duplicate these if they know the rights are not cleared. Also be aware that digipaks are nice, but very expensive.
I usually fix up some tracks that stand out sonically (in a bad way),
EQ a bit & limit a little. Perhaps also throw on a tubesimulator to make the entire thing sound bigger...
After all it really depends on the style..
Avoid too much compression! Always do before/after listening checks (one-click in wavelab
of course not all of the records on your mix were mastered the same so there is going to be a need for some tweaking. but try it yourself. use your ears and critically listen and make notes of things that stick out...levels, pops, eq discrepencies, etc. trust your ears! then try to manually fix those issues so that your ears don't notice them. if you reach this point, you are in the clear. anybody listening on a whim will not notice the minuteia you are picking up on when being hyper-critical.
you can still go a step further if you have any decent pro-tools plug-ings like the Paz Frequency Analyzer...run your mix through that and you can see where you have issues along the frequency spectrum and any phasing issues. how you fix them is up to you...not sure if the Paz only analyzes or if it has the capability to fix these problems. if i remember correctly you can use it as a frequency compressor on your stereo mix and that might smooth things out a bit and make it pump a little more evenly frequency-wise. if you have big pops in level you can run the stereo mix through a good stereo compressor.
try to error on the lite side when doing processing like this though, you don't want to suck the life out of your mix with a digital compressor...especially if it's a crap one like an rtas...if you have some waves plug-ins those should be fine.
http://www.masterbymail.com
[email]guntherb@freshsites.com[/email]
myspace.com/guntherbeats
Works wonders.
Plus if you're selling your stuff to distro, sending it out to reviews, and just want it to be seen as something serious you have to go the extra step. Same goes for artwork, have someone dope do it (HI MIKE 2600!) and boom...you're a frickin' millionaire with buckets of chandon being held by bikini clad babes.