Subject: Re: mastering questions
From: Louis Dufort (siuol@sympatico.ca)
Date: Thu Sep 07 2006 - 21:27:33 EDT
le 9/7/06 8:04 PM, Greg Eustace à greg.eustace@gmail.com a écrit :
> 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?
>
>
> Hi Greg Iıve been mastering for about 8 years now. I consider myself a good
> engineer but Iım above all am a composer, so I do mastering professionally but
> Itıs not my main activity. My philosophy about mastering is that when I have
> to do sound correction instead of enhancing the sound I donıt call that
> mastering but controlled damage. In the very specific case above, itıs really
> a big problem. I would then strongly suggest to remix the piece if possible.
> Itıs normal to make some eq corrections but when itıs that specific especially
> at 5k at 25 db itıs a real problem because this range of frequency is very
> critical to our ear so even if you have a very good filter you will
> significantly damage the signal. It can be done but not very satisfying as a
> mastering engineer because the overall product will be poor.
>
>
> 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.
>
> I normally leave the artist with what ever eq and compression they want to put
> on their track. My only requirement is that the final mix (or the bounce)
> should always be eq free and compression/limiting free. In other words
> nothing on the master output and leave a 3 db headroom. AND PLEASE NO L1, L2
> or L3 waves limiting!
>
>
> 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?
>
> Normally this type of stuff is done at the mixing stage.
>
>
> 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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