preserving drums at mastering

[MoreSpaceEcho]

If you think your mixes sound very complete before mastering, consider trying to make sure their peak pressure on them is like your favorite mixes from other bands have BEFORE you send your stuff to mastering.

what does 'peak pressure' mean?

and how do i know what it was on my favorite mixes from other bands? all i have is the mastered cds.

[JohnDavisNYC]

dude, turn off pre-emphasis. then you can hear what the mixes sounded like.

duh.

that'll be $35.

john

[MoreSpaceEcho]

you take paypal or shall i send cash via my private fleet of boston-nyc carrier pigeons?

[JohnDavisNYC]

i'll get on the roof of the studio and prepare the pigeon retrieval system.

john

[trodden]

this is crazy to me (warning - i am a little cranky)

i would never let a project that i produced go to a mastering engineer that i wasn't satisfied with.

i usually present a few options for the band/artist for varying budgets and then they can select the one that makes the most sense.

Well I do exactly that, and sometimes bands still go elsewhere...

[ashcat_lt]

and how do i know what it was on my favorite mixes from other bands? all i have is the mastered cds.

I think that's part of the point.

Everybody's happiest when the ME has very little to do. He should be there making very minor adjustments to get all the various tracks to sound somehow like one cohesive record.

If a mix really needs a lot of mix-buss l compression, it can usually be better dealt with at the track or sub-buss level.

[mangoose]

loudness/compression is just one part of the mastering equation. if you already know you want it loud, then mix it loud - the ME will still have plenty of work to do w/ EQ, fades, authoring files, hitting tape etc...

it always amazes me, the ability of mastering engineers to EQ a full mix with insane precision and usually with good results.

[lyman]

maybe this is more of a philosophical question....but you folks who record and mix, how often do you get something back from the ME and think "hey, that sounds better than before!"? I mean, presumably you've spent hours to get it sounding as good to you as possible, so by definition isn't anything that a ME does to it gonna sound wrong to you? Just curious....it seems like there's an interesting dynamic (no pun intended) between the mix/mastering folks. Like you build this house of cards and then have to sit and watch somebody monkey around with it.

[Waltz Mastering]

does anyone have any mix recommendations to help preserve lively, present drums when they go to mastering? I've just had a lot of results lately where the mastering results are so drastically different than my mix in the drum department, it almost feels like a remix. This is mainly on modern, loud rock sounding stuff, with parallel compression already on my drum bus. Conventionally, I push my drums up slightly in the mix to compensate for mastering, in general, and I've had great experiences with certain MEs but, all too often, they just get killed.
Any tried and true techniques for this?

You can print alternate versions with the snare and kick up an extra dB, but I don't think you should have to mix and and try to anticipate what is going to happen in mastering.
I would mix like you hear it and find an ME, who won't screw it up.
It probably comes down to finding the right ME.

[Gregg Juke]

I will probably continue to do a lot _more_ "ghetto mastering," mostly because of what lyman intimated in his question. At the mastering level that many of us indie-folk can afford, I have been disappointed as often as I've been wowed. Perhaps I will get a chance to have some Tape-Oppers take a cost-effective swing at it in the not-too-distant future, but we did have a pretty big international hit with the ghetto mastering job we did in the studio, and I have had quite a few of the local "mastering guys" (with all the gear and the specially-designed rooms) ruin mixes by destroying bass, "brittlizing" everything, and trying to use every toy at their disposal to change carefully constructed mixes, by "widening the stereo image" for us; stuff like that.

I've sent stuff out to ME's, and I've sat through a session or two. My partner and I know how to sequence an album, how to make a record reasonably loud, how to do decent fades, and give everything an overall EQ that we're pretty happy with. The glowing recommendations that residents like MoreSpaceEcho have been getting definitely have me reconsidering, but I had basically resigned myself to doing it all myself until I could afford Bob Ludwig. Too many bad/expensive experiences, then you wind-up re-doing it yourself anyway...

GJ

[VivaK]

hey green dc.
I've found that overmixing the dry drums helps a ton dealing with methods of uber smash-hit mastering. I just finished a record that was crushed to holy hell - in a great way & specifically asked to be crushed as such - and things that were completely buried in the mix become crystal clear. It's trippy, but I found that overmixing the dry signals helps a lot if you plan on giving it the hellasquash. Sometimes all roomy drums, or wide open distorted drums loose their punch and pop when they get flattened like a penny on the tracks.
For what it's worth.
- kr.

[MoreSpaceEcho]

I have had quite a few of the local "mastering guys" (with all the gear and the specially-designed rooms) ruin mixes by destroying bass, "brittlizing" everything, and trying to use every toy at their disposal to change carefully constructed mixes, by "widening the stereo image" for us; stuff like that.

i think a lotta guys default to doing Way Too Much. this viewpoint makes me somewhat unpopular with other ME's, but i'm just calling it like i see it.

I had basically resigned myself to doing it all myself until I could afford Bob Ludwig.

man, all of us combined couldn't afford bob!

[@?,*???&?]

If you think your mixes sound very complete before mastering, consider trying to make sure their peak pressure on them is like your favorite mixes from other bands have BEFORE you send your stuff to mastering.

what does 'peak pressure' mean?

and how do i know what it was on my favorite mixes from other bands? all i have is the mastered cds.

With Peak Pressure Meters. This is all about apparent loudness.

Simple metering like this free plugin will give you a great starting place for that:

http://www.pspaudioware.com/plugins/too ... tagemeter/

I mentioned the peak pressure thing because it will force the original poster to see the effects of using compression in a different way- rather than just hating the sound of his drums coming back from mastering.

Import some tracks from a production disc into a Pro Tools session and pop these meters across the buss. Compare Peak Pressure from a commmercial release to the same from his mix and I think he'll see a significant difference. Even metering with the UAD Precision series plugins give good, varied metering.

If he can see the meters a mastering engineer is looking at, he may be able to piece together why an exceptionally loose mix being sent to mastering is detrimental.

As general rhetoric, do you think the mastering engineer blames themselves when a record they work on comes out sounding bad? I'm just guessing they blame the mix engineer...

[MoreSpaceEcho]

could be either the mixer or the ME, could be the band...

[drumsound]

Don't forget to have good communication with the ME and the band. Explain to the band what making a loud record will do to the mixes and explain to the ME that you and the artist have had the discussion and that a "Loud commercial Bar coded radio ready cluesless lemmings type record" is NOT what you are after.