Hi Make sure your monitors are accurate and listen to stuff you know and like thru them to get a feel for what your room does to the sound.
Just make sure everything is EQd to your own taste (remember you don't have to stick to guides - jeez, how boring would that be and peeps would never experiment with distorted sounds if everyone used freq tables to make music). Make the track as loud as possible FROM THE START using your samplers, modules, gates, compressors and mixer to give a decent signal to your recordings. I have found that gently compressing the main mix through a ALesis Nanocompressor (minature, but does actually sound good, RMS, Soft Knee, 2.1 ratio, +2db output) then putting it thru a Behringer Ultrafex to polish it up as the 2 last stages before the sound goes to the monitors/recorder makes a track noticeably louder, cleaner and shinier for only �100 - which is damn cheap for the good work they do (would kill for a Focusrite Mixmaster or a TC Finalizer tho). If it sounds cool to you then keep it in the track, unless trying to copy styles for fun or money ;-) Try setting up the mixer as in the manual - theres a knack to getting the best signal to noise ratio and ensuring the levels are just peaking with the trim control when the faders are at 0db Try using the low cut filters on yr mixer to cut the mud from high frq sounds. I like using T Racks cos I personally think it sounds good and makes a decent difference, but its definitely good advice from Brian not to use the presets cos for the most part they just don't sound right. Just use the reset button and set the whole lot to neutral. Then just tweak away gently a little at a time to get your own best mastering settings. Even just making the output louder till its soft clipping just into the red and gently using the compressor to raise the track up overall in volume then widening the stereo image a little is a good start and will make a normal track start to approach the presence of a track you hear on vinyl or CD. Then you can decide whether you want to make more drastic alterations later... Laters Dan -----Original Message----- From: Brian J. Haag [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: 15 May 2002 18:00 To: Drum & Bass Arena Discussion List Subject: [dnb-prod] Re: mastering The best results you're going to get are just doing it by hand. Sit down with your track and start EQing EVERYTHING ... avoid the presets on all the 'mastering software' out there, and you're better off not using them at all. I say do NOT use T-rackS, but others like it. I've gotten some decent results out of Ozone, but still, nothing is as good as doing it by hand. b ===== Brian J. Haag [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience http://launch.yahoo.com --- Drum&Bass Arena Producers Discussion List http://www.breakbeat.co.uk You are currently subscribed to dnb-prod as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] DISCLAIMER: The Information in this message is confidential and may be legally privileged. It is intended solely for the addressee. Access to this message by anyone else is unauthorised. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure, copying, or distribution of the message, or any action or ommision taken by you in reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful. Please immediately contact the sender if you have received this message in error. This E-mail and any attachments are believed to be free from viruses but it is your responsibility to carry out all necessary virus checks and Vertase Ltd. accepts no liability in connection therewith. --- Drum&Bass Arena Producers Discussion List http://www.breakbeat.co.uk You are currently subscribed to dnb-prod as: [email protected] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
