ant1
Offline
uhajdafdfdfa

ok i used to just dump my tunes out of schism tracker, but i want to go a bit more serious now, i've changed my style a bit and i want to take it all a bit more seriously

when i listen to some chiptunes it has that warm professional tube sound on it, almost like a dream theater record or something, like when you listen to danimal cannon or any of the ubiktune guys, how can i get that tube sound on my tracks

what plugins do you recommend? do i need a good compressor like ozone?

tell me all your mastering advice please

(edit: i know you guys are busy with the election right now etc, no worries!)

Last edited by ant1 (Nov 7, 2012 2:51 am)

chunter
Offline
Brunswick, GA USA

This isn't a subject that has easy answers, as learning to master is as difficult as learning to mix.

I will take the raw output of schism or a played NSF file or similar and, if relevant, compare it to other tracks in the release. I'll usually start with a very subtle, nearly inaudible reverb that damps out almost right away, ringing in emptier parts of the audio spectrum. If the result doesn't blend with other tracks in the release, I'll put in an EQ next that adjusts to make the song "agree" with the others. Then I'll use a compressor, maybe a multiband, maybe a mid/side, maybe both... to bring out a little bit of "click" in note attacks. For that sort of music, that's all I do.

I use many of these:
http://varietyofsound.wordpress.com/vst-effects/

and sometimes these:
http://www.x-buz.com/BuzCompFree.html

My understanding regarding some of those artists you named, some of them have access to higher level stuff (though some of them don't,) and that if you have a bad arrangement and a bad mix, no amount of mastering will improve the song, it can only enhance its badness. I hope that was helpful.

Invisible Robot Hands
Offline
Playboy Man-Baby

ant1 wants to be serious about music?

Telerophon
Offline
Austin, Texas

That's such a hard question to answer because there are a billion ways to master, and none of them are "wrong."

This is generic and debatably useless advice, but I think it might be a useful guiding principle: Your mastering has to suit your aesthetic needs, sonically speaking. If it sounds right to you, it's right; if it sounds wrong, it's wrong. Keep experimenting with new tools and you'll find ones that leave you with a master that reflects the record you wanted to produce.

(As qualification, most of my mastering experience is more towards archival audio, such as cleaning up noisy or poorly recorded audio or converting degraded analog media recordings to digital formats. I learned a lot from that, but the skills may not directly lend themselves to recording that begins digitally or as output from a tracker's WAV export.)

Last edited by Telerophon (Nov 7, 2012 3:36 am)

chunter
Offline
Brunswick, GA USA
Telerophon wrote:

This is generic and debatably useless advice, but I think it might be a useful guiding principle: Your mastering has to suit your aesthetic needs, sonically speaking. If it sounds right to you, it's right; if it sounds wrong, it's wrong. Keep experimenting with new tools and you'll find ones that leave you with a master that reflects the record you wanted to produce.

This is good advice considering that typical ant1 music may lose some of its edge if another process is put on it.

The other thing I forgot to mention, I know many people who simply finish their mixes and pass the result to a friend to master/polish.

sugar sk*-*lls
Offline
nashville,tn

do you mean mastering or mixing? if mastering, its better just to hire out. if mixing, well i guess it helps if you have specific area you'd like to improve-there's a number of techniques to achieve the same effect-panning, reverb, eq etc.

smiletron
Offline
Nashville, Tennessee

practice, you'll get better at it. a few main things to pay attention to are compression, eq, reverb, and stereo imaging.

hiring out your mastering jobs keeps people like me housed and fed n____n

Zomvor
Offline

.

Last edited by Zomvor (Apr 2, 2016 2:17 pm)

godinpants
Offline
hardcore, Australia

Here's the official godinpants trupunx™ mastering suite.

InactiveX
Offline
England

I'm not sure some of you understand quite what mastering is, and how it differs from mixing. It's a common misconception.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_mastering

Last edited by InactiveX (Nov 8, 2012 11:19 am)

celsius
Offline
Melbourne, Australia

InactiveX is on the money. You master for a medium.

Vinyl mastering for example consists  of a several preventative measures, as well as the standard mastering steps, for the protection of the cutting head (such as ensuring the lower notes are in phase).

Sure, you can do more dramatic changes during the mastering process for "wow" factor and many mastering engineers have made their careers out of having a very distinct aural fingerprint that is represented in their masters. Really though most of the things mentioned (reverb, comp, stereo expansion/widening) can and probably should be done during the mixing stage if you feel it is part of the artistic expression in your work, even if you apply these effects to the entire tune (on the master channel, just to confuse people more).

Feel free to disagree, correct or debate the points I've made. I'd be very quick to suggest that I probably have less experience than most on this board when it comes to this subject. I have however been involved in the mastering process of several releases across multiple genres and the above have been my impressions. smile

Krubbz
Offline
Fargo

Some of my favorite plugins are made by SoundToys

Telerophon
Offline
Austin, Texas
celsius wrote:

InactiveX is on the money. You master for a medium.

Vinyl mastering for example consists  of a several preventative measures, as well as the standard mastering steps, for the protection of the cutting head (such as ensuring the lower notes are in phase).

Thank you both for clarifying this; it refocused my own use of the word as well as my concept of what mastering is and can be.

Downstate
Offline
shanghai

brickwall that shit through izotope. it makes sick drops

DJCactus
Offline
D D D Detroit, not the burbs

oh i suck at masters, though ive been practicing.  My usual technique is to throw a master limiter on an auxilary bus before a stereo print track.  Without getting too technical i use the limiter to push up some of the quieter frequencies, make sure the limiter isnt clipping on the in or out and make sure not to over-use it or your dynamics will be vanquished to the x dimension.

edit:  And ive been getting to use the McDSP suites at school.(you were curious about plug-ins, though im no expert the master limiter did add some luster to many of my projects.)

Last edited by DJCactus (Nov 9, 2012 7:40 am)

chunter
Offline
Brunswick, GA USA

Do- have many stages of compression

Don't- think your EQs and compressors need to be set the same through the whole song