Mastering Blog

These little beauties have just come onto the market today. Priced at £250 available from the Apple store…

http://store.apple.com/uk/product/TX584ZM/A/Bowers-&-Wilkins-P5-Mobile-Headphones?mco=MTY3ODQ5OTY

I want them now, not only do they look cool but they are B & W who in my mind make the best hifi speakers around. SO I can’t believe that they wil sound rubbish…Can’t wait for them to come…I’m gonna look slick on the tube in these…or bruised after I’ve been mugged for them!!!

In the days of vinyl the High Pass Filter (HPF) was king, as really low (under 20hz)frequencies played hell with the lathe. another benefit of using it was you could also get loads more level onto the disk. For those of you old enough to remember buying all your compilation albums on vinyl ‘Top of the pops’ for example. You had about 25 tracks on each side, only possible because the level was mentally low and the mastering engineer had a used a bass cut at about 80hz. If you transfer one and play it on today’s system it’s pretty laughable.

Today’s systems and productions don’t need as much tailoring as digital formats don’t have the same limitations. When mastering a track for digital production I find that a cut low down works well for radio tracks / pop / light rock music. Mainly as I’m also adding / shaping the EQ around the bottom. So the HPF helps the compressors to work on the mids better with less pumping and can give focus when the bass and kick are muddy. When mastering dance / electronic music I don’t usually use the HPF as the bass frequencies have usually had a lot of attention due to them being of more importance to the tracks focus.

There is no real hard and fast rule as every track is different, as always use your ears, have a play and hear what happens. THe drummer will have the right hum if you cut his kick off!!!!

Well here’s my 2 pence worth on loudness…

I personally like loudness when it suits the music. It definitely sounds better when things aren’t compressed to death. (As this video explains).

However…

I think that everybody is now so used to hearing things at a certain level, it’s the norm to master things loudly. I also believe that with the right kit, mastering engineers can make things very loud whilst still keeping dynamics, punch and clarity. Usually achieved via small gain makeup changes (doing a little bit on a few pieces of kit rather than alot on one). Rather than 6db through a bad limiting plugin. A great example of this is the video below featuring Nirvana’s Nevermind album. I disagree with whoever bothered to do this as it’s a great example of bad mastering. If this album were made today it would still sound great with the right engineer. This bad mastering has just been put through a maximiser box or similar plugin etc; I’ve never met a good mastering engineer who works in that way.

Modern loud records are exactly that, a different type of sound to older quieter records. Whichever you prefer is just a matter of taste / style. I like both but on the right tracks. I think that if I treated my dads old Del Shannon albums with the same treatment as I would a Beyonce single today it would sound shit. Well maybe it would sound great but it would sound modern and not of it’s day…aka Re-Mastered.

It will be interesting to hear how they have treated the new re-mastering of the Beatles collection out this week. Lets hope they smacked it through a maximiser within an inch of it life!!!

When producing a master for vinyl there are many considerations due to the limitations of the cutting lathe and the space on the vinyl.

Firstly, A lathes cutter head doesn’t respond well to very high or very low frequencies.

If an engineer has left these frequencies untamed there is a high possibility that the finished vinyl grooves will jump or produce high frequency distortion. In the hands of an experience vinyl-mastering engineer there is no need to re-master the track for vinyl, as they will be able to use high pass and low pass filters, elliptical equalizers and many other tricks to get the vinyl sound identical if not warmer than the Digital Master.

This is true for the actual sound but there will always be a difference in overall level, as you cannot produce the same level to a vinyl lacquer as a CD master can handle. All these different factors add together change the amount of space you can fit on a disc. For example: Bass takes up more room as it makes wider movements across the face of the disk therefore adding this with loudness you will run out of space very quickly and not be able to cut a long side - Time + Level + Speed + Bass = Space On Disk.

So there are many things to keep in mind when mastering for vinyl, but the less you need to fit on the better it will sound.

One of the things we are required to do as a mastering studio is encode CD production masters (PMCD) or DDPi files with ISRC codes. This stands for International Standard Recording Code, and is the international identification system for sound recordings and music video recordings.

Each ISRC is a unique and permanent identifier for a specific recording which can be permanently encoded into a product as its digital fingerprint. Encoded ISRC provide the means to automatically identify recordings for royalty payments.

So, in other words, if you don’t have any ISRC encoded into your recordings once they’re released, you aren’t going to get any money when they’re played on radio or TV. A lot of people ask me about these codes when we’re doing a mastering job, so I thought I’d put a couple of links on a blog and turn people towards it from now on.

First off, here’s how to register to get codes - it’s free and pretty easy!

RIAA

Second up, the IFPI’s page with lots of FAQs

There, now you know all you need to about ISRC!