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The dreaded Sausage Waveform.

I’m going to begin this with a set of caveats (warnings).

1) Mastering your own music is a lot like doing your own dentistry.  I don’t generally master my own stuff, and I’ve taken classes, read articles and books, etc.  It’s really just a different skillset that isn’t as obvious as some of the principals of mixing.

2) Great mastering takes PRACTICE.  So if you’re gonna start mastering your own stuff, be prepared to do several versions of every mix, AND be prepared to start all over a few times.  It happens to us all.

3) Despite those first two things, you CAN get decent results that will help your tracks stand up to major releases in terms of ridiculous volume, if you work incrementally (apply processing gradually) and you don’t go overboard with cheap plugins.

So all that being said, here’s my simple mastering chain, that might be a useful starting point in trying to master your own work. This is a really easy set of plugins to use, and they all come with Logic Pro, so no extra $$$ required.  There are some great, not super expensive plugins to check out, but this article is gonna focus on Logic Pro’s tools.

1) Once you’ve got a stereo bounce of your song – you’ve mixed it and it’s ready for volume-slamming.  Make a whole new project with just one stereo track.

2) Put your final mix on that one track and route the output to your main output.

Plugins!

3) On your main output track (usually Output 1-2) put these plugins on the track in this order: Stereo Channel Eq, Stereo Compressor, Stereo Channel Eq, and Stereo Adaptive Limiter.

4) Opt-Click all of the plugins.  (This will gray them all out, which means they’re bypassed).

Channel Eq - No Additive Bands!

5) Play your mix through, and while it’s playing, un-bypass the first Eq.  Apply a lo-pass filter if you want to tighten up the low-end.  I usually try something around 50 Hz for recorded bands, but electronic music often calls for more low-end.

Also, this is the Eq to set up minor subtractions on.  Avoid ADDING anything with this Eq, because you’ll just be undoing that work with the compressor.  I use this as an opportunity to turn down anything that is sounding harsh or annoying in the mix.

6) Un-bypass the compressor and make sure your limiter is turned OFF.  Set the ration somewhere light like 4:1 or 2:1 and then set the threshold so that you’ve got something like 2-5 dB of compression (its the meter that goes from rigt to left over the square grid).

Compressor Settings - LIMITER IS OFF!

I usually like to bring the knee up, which makes the compressor work more gradually on your audio.  This is just to smooth our some of the peaks, and help get things louder.  If you’re seeing clipping, then pull back on the “gain.”  Avoid ADDING with the gain control, only use it to pull back a clipping signal.

7) Once satisfied, and hearing some overall gain and a boost in presence, then it’s time to un-bypass the second Eq.  This is your additive Eq, but it should be used SPARINGLY as in add 0-2 dB and with WIDE curves.  In fact, I generally only use the hi and low shelves if i think the mix needs some evening out.

Additive Eq - just a LITTLE bit.

8) Now TAKE A BREAK.  Seriously.  Leave it alone, and don’t listen to anything loud for ten minutes.  Give your brain time to reset. When you come back, bypass all the plugins again and listen to your mix before you started processing.  Then one-by-one bring the plugins back in.  If you’re pleased with your results, then continue on.  If NOT then undo the plugins in reverse order until you locate the plugin that you’re not liking.

In other words, if the compressor is set in such a way that you get nasty pumping.  Don’t leave the second Eq on while you tweak it.  Reset that Eq and turn it off and THEN tweak the compressor.  That way you won’t be doing weird over compression and THEN contradictory Eq.  If that didn’t make sense, just trust me on it.  If you have to back track, then just remove the previous plugins entirely and start over.

9) If you’re happy with things so far, then it’s time to do the final gain push.  Turn on the Adaptive limiter and set the output ceiling to -0.3 db.  That will stop audio from passing the ceiling of CD-R’s.  Next set the input gain up or down so that you’re getting the volume metters to peak near 0dB, but not clip.  Then turn up the output gain as much as you like.  If you hear things sucking away, or your bass going nuts then you went to far.

Limiter - Listen carefull as you adjust these settings.

Sometimes you haven’t gotten it loud enough after doing all these steps.  If you think that’s the case, then you probably need to have someone else master your work for you.

If you don’t want to do that, then you can try a couple of things.

1) On your first Eq, try bring your bass down a bit with a little lo-shelf Eq (-1 or -2 dB). The compressor and limiter will bring a lot of that bass back up while slamming your music.  It gives them more room to work with.

2) Try running the mix through the process with Eq-Compressor-Eq.  Then bring THAT bounce back in and start over.  Doing successive compression and EQ runs will steadily bring the overall volume up, although you’ll experience more weirdness and distortion over time.

3) If it absolutely has to be LOUDER, then try remixing with a louder mix.  Even try compressing the final mix a bit.

4) If it’s still not loud enough and you aren’t will to pay someone… then you’re s**t our of luck.  Unless you don’t care how terrible it sounds, you won’t be able to get it louder while still sounding like YOUR mix.

Final thoughts: this is NOT how I think mastering should be done.  I think it’s a difficult process that determines the finally aesthetic of an album as a whole – joining songs together, determining how the overall tone changes from song to song.  I think the LOUDENING just happens as a side effect, or at least it should.  If you want things to just be loud… then you’re missing the dang point with your music.  But that’s just me.

I figure if you have to get it loud, and a lot of artists feel like they have to, then at least study up on the tools you’re using, and try to do it as “gently” as you can.  For the sake of your own ears.

So after reading all that, if you still want to master your own stuff, then I’ll say “good luck.”  If you get good results then be proud, because it isn’t easy.  Not impossible…just not easy.

Making an 808 kick in Logic Pro from Sanjay Patel on Vimeo.

Sanjay here, from AskASoundGuy.com, showing you how to setup an 808 (Sine Wave) Kick using an Oscillator and Noise Gate with Sidechaining.

This is a cool, and easy way to add umph to your kick track/ get those sub-sonic LOWS for your club tracks.

Need more help? Something missing from the video? Send me an email at askasoundguy@gmail.com

Some Notes:

-You can use a anything that spits out a sine wave for your 808.  (it needs to be a plugin that lets you choose the frequency of the wave).  I used the “Test Oscillator” in Logic, but you could easily use a simple synth by using just one sine wave Oscillator and turning off most of the modulation/effects.

-Generally you’ll want to trigger the sine wave with JUST the original kick.  However, if you’ve got you’re whole drum beat on one track, like I do in the video, then being able to “filter” the sidechain becomes really important.  Filter out the high end stuff from the sidechain (don’t worry, eq on the sidechain isn’t audible in your mix)

-If you need help with Sidechaining, Ben’s done a video on Sidechaining in Reaper and an article on Sidechaining in Reason.

-There’s lots of extra/other things you can do with sidechains like parallel compression etc.  Hopefully we’ll be able to cover more topics soon.

Twentyfrets wrote:
I’ve been tryin’ to get these vocals for a song I threw down a couple weeks back
to sound a little more dreamy, but not extremely.. I want the reverb to come
thru, but not muttle the words, which happens sometimes for me. And then it
comes down to the mixture between the reverb on the guitars and the vocals
mixing too much and making it sound strange. Any ideas?

Thanks for writing in!  My first point would be that reverb is a tricky thing when you’re beginning to learn your way around mixing – this really has to do with the fact that reverb itself is a pretty complex phenomenon.  In any given space with any given sound, there are reflections and diffusions of that sound.  The reflections that arrive at the same listening point as the original sound at a later time basically make up your reverb (I’m oversimplifying but the basic understanding holds).

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Mix Mondays is our weekly mixing help column, that helps you start the week off with mixing advice.

I remember my first mix in Pro Tools. I was given a copy of multi-track recording of Trent Reznor’s “Only” so that I could try my hand at mixing something that I hadn’t recorded. (He releases the multi-tracks to encourage remixing btw, so no subterfuge was required).

I spent hours and hours with this song, carefully soloing each track, listening to the drums, bass, various keys, and guitars. I remember thinking… I’m not sure what I’m listening to. This was part of my first course in using Pro Tools so, an instructor would periodically pop into my little mix booth and take a listen to what I had done.
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The 3 Dimensions of a Stereo Image.

 Mix Mondays is our weekly mixing help column, which aims to take the sting out of Monday with a little audio talk.

Engineers like to argue.  We like to debate about pieces of gear, signal chains, techniques and tricks.  We disagree about everything there has to do with production – as we should.  It’s a creative industry, and we can’t all be doing the same thing.  

There is one thing all old school engineers would agree on though – Meters Lie.  They really do.  They are great for things like diagnosing clipping, verifying signal flow, and monitoring processes.  But they don’t show tone.  They don’t show quality.  They don’t show you a real mix.  So How do you really “see” your mix?  You’ve got to see with your ears.
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