> PS: Have you noticed the volume level on your home sound system or car > radio lately? Mine is indexed from 0 to 48, though with recent loud > music I hardly ever set it above 8. > With dynamically mastered music, I set it to 28, and the experience is > just so much better than the bland wimpy loud masters of the others.
I always need to adjust the volume level, because I listen to different kinds of music. I don't listen to any music that is loud mastered, the most hardcore loud mastered music I'm listening is Peter Gabriel's music, excepted of music that occurs like loud mastered music by it's nature, e.g. Jello Biafra's Lard recordings from the 90ies. Again! How the music appears on different equipment depends to this equipment and the equipment that was used when doing the mastering. The listening facility comes with different saturations and response characteristics. It's impossible to stick to rules that are fine when doing a mastering in a professional studio, while you do it at home. Meters and monitors etc. for professional mastering studios are fine. Is there just any meter for a studio in the box that is fine? This is impossible, even if the coder did perfectly stick to audio standards, the software can't be tuned to the outputs of your card. I don't belief that a phase correlation will show the same images if you are playing an audio source by using the same computer, but different sound cards. Katz's book might impart needed basic knowledge, okay, so it can't be wrong to read it, for people that don't have this knowledge. My last note to this thread should be this one: "Don't be surprised if you know everything about audio engineering theory, you did a mastering stick to that knowledge, but it sounds muddy." If you record classic music you are not allowed to do something you are allowed for popular music. My tip is to use weak points of the equipment as part of the production ... How weak points can become advantages might be a book I should write, resp. it can be a help to read a book like Katz's book and than to become aware if he's writing about mastering with the available capabilities and if a book that is 10 years older or 10 years newer, assumed there are such books, will refer to the same standards. For classic music final results I guess the audio engineer is less important. More important is the maestro. E.g. I HATE Herbert von Karajan (* 5. April 1908 in Salzburg; † 16. Juli 1989), but I LOVE Sir Neville Marriner (* 15. April 1924 in Lincoln, England). Sir Neville Marriner only is 16 years younger, but he is interpreting classic music in a complete different way. For popular music final results the audio engineer is much more important, but also for popular music the views how to do a mastering won't hold for 5 years or even longer. Dirk Brauner once met his friend Bruce Swedien at one of those odd SAE institutes. He told me that it was a pity that I didn't was there too. Bruce demonstrated how to do a production and the students made notes what EQ settings Bruce used for what instruments. Dirk laughed his self to tears, okay, it's funny, but it would be better to teach people not to carry over to much of production techniques. Btw. the SPL guy once told me, that he don't like the usage of compressors, because everything a compressor can do, can be done by using good EQs. I guess, we understand what he wanted to say, even if it's not true, because I can use a compressor as a dynamic special effect for stuff that can't be done by an EQ. My upshut: I never read Katz's book, I never read any book, but I got my engineering knowledge by working for different professionals, e.g. for Brauner Microphones or film maker Werner Nekes and in addition by my different cheap home-recording studios, e.g. by recording with a Yamaha MT44D. Mastering at home has less to do with mastering by using equipment that fits to professional standards. It doesn't matter if you are using RFT B3010 HIFI monitors like I do or Genelecs for more than 1000.00 EUR for just one monitor. In both cases not the monitor can be the reference for the final sound, but only your experience and a referring to meters is very stupid. If somebody will learn how to do a mastering by any studio standard that is written in any book, he first should learn to do the adjustments for his mixing console, his microphones etc., to fine tune everything for the recordings that come before the mastering. _______________________________________________ 64studio-users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.64studio.com/mailman/listinfo/64studio-users
