The Mastering Chain once again, let's get some input..

Basic Pitch · Post by **Basic Pitch** » Thu Aug 12, 2004 9:45 am

Greetings all,

Well as time goes on and I work on mixing technics and read as much as I can there are always subtleties in some mixes that I find myself wondering how they achieved that result, such as those extra wide stereo sounding mixes though maintain prefect low end and punch, for myself I had thought my mixes were starting to sound decent but last night I spent some time listening to different music and found many holes in my mixes, so what I am curious about is some of the different methods people use in there mastering chain.

A while back I read a thread from Izotope's Ozone site that was pretty informative I may need to give that a read again, basically what I am curious about is things like chain order, different spacial effects and things of that nature, do you feel you would rather EQ before or after compression etc etc.

For me all I usually do is a basic chain, and after hearing these songs last night leaft me with a desire to open up my mixes to a larger stereo field, but here is my typical chain:

- UAD-1: Pultec
- Creamware: OptiMaster
- TC Powercore: Assimilator
- Apogee: uvHR22

Thats about it, I plan to purchase the Sony Inflator this week and add that into the chain to squeeze out a little more from the mix and give it a fuller sound, but what I am lacking is that great over all wide sound that so many mixes have, I tried last night adding a stereo expander set to around 45% and that opened things up a great deal but I need to find the propper chain placement inorder to make that effective or even if thats the best way to achieve this effect, since the expander sort of makes the center thin out I am wondering where the best place in the chain would be to bring the center back up, maybe before the optimaster?

Anyways, share your thoughts and ideas, maybe we can get a nice pool of info going on here.

Thanks in advance!

Cheers!

AndreD · Post by **AndreD** » Thu Aug 12, 2004 9:49 am

Hi,
my mastering chain:

sonalksis eq
finalizer 96k (external)
steinberg loudness maximizer (style @ -3)

best,
andre

Basic Pitch · Post by **Basic Pitch** » Thu Aug 12, 2004 9:58 am

I found that link from Ozone's site:

The .PDF is bases on Ozone software but they state that the info inside is very helpfull to any one interested in learning about Mastering and Dithering, ill start with a few links..

Mastering: http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/o ... gGuide.PDF

Dithering: http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/o ... gGuide.pdf

The Perfect Mix Guide for Mixing & Mastering, this guide was helpfull when I was trying to understand the broader spectrum of mixing and mastering: http://www.tweakheadz.com/perfect_mix.html

Cheers!

Plato · Post by **Plato** » Thu Aug 12, 2004 11:07 am

If you want more width, maybe you should be panning things more in your mix, before you get to the mastering stage.....locating things in space, even by panning reverbs as well....eg, on guitars use a mono reverb panned to the same (or similar) position as the dry signal. The more 'glorious stereo' effects you have going on, the harder it is to pinpoint where a sound is coming from, so over use will actually narrow the perceived stereo field.
Remember the old days of extreme panning ?...Old Beetles records & a lot of old jazz stuff even had the entire drum kit panned to one side, bass to the other etc....maybe that's going a bit far by today's standards, but it makes interesting listening/learning

blazesboylan · Post by **blazesboylan** » Thu Aug 12, 2004 12:07 pm

Basic Pitch, I assume you have the device you think you have. However a "stereo expander" is a dynamics device with 2 channels that are linked.

Sorry I'm such a pedant.

Have you tried playing around with Neutron's mid/side encoder/decoder in the Devices forum? You could use it to send the side signal through heavy compression, with makeup gain to bring it up really high in the mix.

Background vox, little guitar or synth fills, and tasteful sound effects panned to one side or the other, are good ways of creating a wide image.

Incidentally a bit of "air" goes a long way in creating the impression of a space.

Cheers,

Johann

Basic Pitch · Post by **Basic Pitch** » Thu Aug 12, 2004 12:33 pm

Hi all,

Hrmm which device are we discussing hehe, I have tried using the stereo expander as I said, but as we known this will make the middle fall short, this eve I am going to try the mid/side encoder/decoder, and see what I can do with that, it sounds like a super little device, might make a big difference being able to effect the left and right sides while leaving the center standard.

As far as the panning goes, I do moderate panning to give percussion its space and pad tricks and use thing like chorus's and such, but I just cant seem to get this super wide stereo field I hear in some recordings, it just sounds so good to me.

Cheers!

spoimala · Post by **spoimala** » Fri Aug 13, 2004 1:06 am

Basic Pitch, I guess you haven't tried Psy-Q

Grok · Post by **Grok** » Tue Sep 28, 2004 7:41 pm

On 2004-08-12 13:33, Basic Pitch wrote:
Hi all,

Hrmm which device are we discussing hehe, I have tried using the stereo expander as I said, but as we known this will make the middle fall short, this eve I am going to try the mid/side encoder/decoder, and see what I can do with that, it sounds like a super little device, might make a big difference being able to effect the left and right sides while leaving the center standard.

As far as the panning goes, I do moderate panning to give percussion its space and pad tricks and use thing like chorus's and such, but I just cant seem to get this super wide stereo field I hear in some recordings, it just sounds so good to me.

Cheers!

Considering an AB stereo final mix, where A and B are the two mono signals combined in the AB stereo file.

You can MS decode this file in two stereo files CD and EF for the sides and the middle of the original stereo file; summing these mid and side files gives the original AB stereo mix.

C = [A + (B with its phase inverted)] minus 6 dB
D = [B + (A with its phase inverted)] minus 6 dB
E = F = (A + B) minus 6 dB

Now, say that we want to give an extra wide stereo field to the AB stereo file when mastering without touching the center/middle of the stereo field.

What we can do is to MS decode like above, and do this process:
- take the CD stereo file (the one that contains the sides of the original AB file), copy it and invert the channels of the copy to have a DC stereo file; invert the phase of this DC copy
- now we have three stereo files: CD; EF; and "DC with the phase inverted"
- listen to the sum of these three files while choosing an adequate level for the "DC with the phase inverted" one, the CD and EF levels remaining untouched... Amazing, isn't it?

Cheers,
Grok

PS: I think this is the process B. Katz uses in his "K-Stereo" processor. You will find that this processing gives exactly what he describes his "ambience recovery processor" does on stereo mixes. So you can give me 3000$, thanks

.

[ This Message was edited by: Grok on 2004-09-28 21:10 ]

Grok · Post by **Grok** » Tue Sep 28, 2004 7:52 pm

On 2004-08-13 02:06, spoimala wrote:
Basic Pitch, I guess you haven't tried Psy-Q

What the PsyQ stereo expander and the Creamware's Stereo Expander do to an AB stereo file is only to add an amount of "BA inverted in phase" to the signal. Consequently, more the stereo field is expanded with this technique, more the middle of the stereo field is lowered, until it disappears with the extreme setting (resulting with the above CD stereo signal which is the sides of the original stereo field).

[ This Message was edited by: Grok on 2004-09-29 01:01 ]

wolf · Post by **wolf** » Wed Sep 29, 2004 5:36 am

for adding/removing room ambience, you can also use my small (free) device with an easy interface, available on my website. It's called .. ambience

best
Wolfgang

kwild · Post by **kwild** » Wed Oct 27, 2004 4:39 am

This is my mastering chain :

Optimaster
Psy Q
ISON EQ (to remove very low freqs)
Timeworks Mastering Compressor (Hard)

After that i use Harball to do an harmonic
balancing of the mix.

http://www.kwild.com
http://www.balentia.com

[ This Message was edited by: kwild on 2004-10-27 05:41 ]

TOM.DJ · Post by **TOM.DJ** » Fri Nov 12, 2004 11:12 pm

OMG!

You should not use to much stereo expansion tools...

Just figure out how to get each sound perfect inside your stereo image.

For exampple on some HHs i will use a chorus, others i will just pan to left or right, and ad another (almost the same) to the other channel.

This kind of tricks give me a very good and width stereo image.

After that some slightly optimaster limiting/compression.

I also have got a regular suround 5.1 set in my studio (next to my KRK and Yamaha monitors).
So i can listen how it sounds when (crappy) people listening at their home theather systems. (mostly in HALL mode

)

GRTZ TOM.DJ
(Former CreamTeam)

interloper · Post by **interloper** » Wed Dec 08, 2004 6:48 pm

Careful with those panorama enhancement effects. They introduce phase shifts & comb filtering.

I get much better results by panning & reverb.

devastate · Post by **devastate** » Thu Feb 03, 2005 12:52 pm

if you're planning any tracks for release on vinyl, take into account that stereo effects cut quieter on vinyl, so don't over expand your mix too much (I had one of my tracks sounding fantastic at home but on mastering day ended up bringing it back for a fresh mix for vinyl).

for home mastering I use, 31graph eq, psy Q, tc finalizer 96khz.

firubbi · Post by **firubbi** » Sat Aug 06, 2005 4:41 am

Optimaster-> psyQ-> Dither.
but i want to know more how rest of us do this days.
thanks

[ This Message was edited by: firubbi on 2005-08-06 05:45 ]

alfonso · Post by **alfonso** » Sat Aug 06, 2005 5:09 am

CWA 31 band Graph EQ (but I try badly not to need it)
Optimaster
U22hr dithering (in Cubase)

I mix from scope to a 32bit track in Cubase where the song is recorded, without the above plugs, trying to get this way the best sound I can, then I open a dedicated mastering Project with the above plugs and a new Cubase where I load the 32bit mix, process in scope and record a 32bit finalized track, dither it down in final 16 bit export.

I own PsyQ, but I never need it. I'd use it only for premixed muddy stuff.

[ This Message was edited by: alfonso on 2005-08-06 06:11 ]

lovenara · Post by **lovenara** » Sun Oct 23, 2005 5:14 am

i always do pan on some leads,fills
which are fine in final mix from sequencer
but after mastering they are lost!
Is there any cure on this?
thnx