Subject: Re: mastering questions
From: Greg Eustace (greg.eustace@gmail.com)
Date: Thu Sep 07 2006 - 20:04:23 EDT
I have a couple more questions for the mastering engineers. If you were
given a piece to master that contained a peak at 5 Hz that was 25 dB louder
than the average level of the piece, how would you deal with it? How about a
similar peak at 100 Hz? Let us assume that these peaks where not intended
for by the composer. In this scenario, the composer is doing all his/her own
mixing. Let's say that in both cases the peaks result from spectral
anomalies which are inherent to a bass-synthesizer track (a poorly designed
Max/MSP patch perhaps). Considering how big these peaks are, was it the job
of the composer to limit them? If so and the composer has neglected his/her
job, will you attempt to fix these problems?
In general, I'm wondering what degree of EQ and compression should be
undertaken by the person doing the mixing. It is my understanding that
subtle changes in spectrum and dynamics should only be made by the mastering
engineer, because only their system has a frequency response that is flat
enough to do so reliably and only their tools will introduce the minimum of
noise. But I'm not clear where the line should be drawn between problems
that should be addressed by a mixing engineer and problems that should be
addressed by a mastering engineer.
As a second example, let's say we have a piece consisting of a single
recording of a male singer and a bass drum. There is a producer, a recording
engineer, a mixing engineer and a master engineer working with the vocalist.
The vocal recording happens to contain some low frequency noise that is
below the vocalist's range (e.g. below 80 Hz); it also contains a 3 dB peak
at 1000 Hz that is an artifact of the microphone being used. I would guess
that it is the job of the mixing engineer to attenuate the low frequency
noise (using a lowcut filter), assuming the recording eningeer could not
avoid recording it. Would it be the job of the mastering engineer to limit
the peak at 1000 Hz? Would you need to check with the producer before doing
this?
Please forgive me if I am leaving out specific details which make these
questions impossible to answer definitively. I am just trying to understand
by example.
Thanks for all the replies so far.
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