inexpensive mastering anyone?

[drewbass]

is up-and-coming mastering engineer willing to "master" a 45 minute rock-folk album?
I usually hear that you are not supposed to try to master yourself. but where do mastering eng's start if they don't have immeadiate access to $, the right gear, or a mentor?

we have exactly $75.

drew

[fuu drakka]

what are you releasing? a 50 run burned CD to sell to five friends, or a much larger run that you plan on touring heavily behind, and promoting the hell out of. how proud are you of your record? how many people are in your band?
if your just doing a small 50 run, you could probobly get by without hiring a mastering engineer. I feel like, if you really care about your music, you will be able to find a way to aford to get it mastered. (it should really be in the budget from day one). it really does make 'the final difference'. good mastering doesn't have to be outragously expensive. I have had great experience with west west side, alan douches does a fantastic job, and if every one in your band could come up with 50-75 bucks on his/her own, you would probobly have enough to get the job done.
ever met a junkie? you'de be surprised how easy it is to find 50 bucks in a day even without a job. (referenceing this without theft in mind).

[@?,*???&?]

Only crack usage would make one think they could master their own album.

Stop using crack.

Call Capitol Mastering. Speak to Beatrice about some amazing after hours mastering. 323-971-5003

Really.

[@?,*???&?]

Two things, too many pints of Franziskaner made me type the phone number wrong- 323-871-5003.

Second thing, for $75, you'll get next to nothing mastered. Do you plan on replicating this or this only a recording a band that says,
"I am cool". If so, don't bother mastering it. If you are going to replicate at a reputable facility, then spend the money and do it right.

Really.

[optionshift3]

$75? Not to be a downer, but there is a really good chance that you will get exactly what you pay for on that one. I wouldn't want to inflict a $75 mastering job on any project that I had poured blood, sweat and tears into, but I guess you do what you have to.

[Cellotron]

but where do mastering eng's start if they don't have immeadiate access to $, the right gear, or a mentor?

I started in 1991 with no $ or gear - but luckily with a couple of engineers that knew their stuff - at $6.00/hour (and very lucky to get that), taking out the trash & making cassette dupes and finally getting the chance to push the buttons on a Quadra running Sound Designer II back in the day when a studio would need someone to stay overnight to make a deadline for the digital edits because it would take hours of processing just to normalize a few tracks. I was very lucky in that my pop's helped me out to get my first own DAW in 1993 (a 386-40 and a Card D+ running the original SAW) and saved for other gear for years (a process which continues to this day). I sought teachers every chance I got. After 13 years working in audio I can say that I'm finally truly getting "started" as an ME in that I now get to work at a great facility.

For $75 if you're lucky you might be able to find someone getting started with a project studio with a fairly mediocre monitoring environment running a DAW with some plugs that can do clean up the heads and tails, order things together for you, balance the levels with a little compression and peak limiting and possibly do a little more help than harm if they actually know a little bit about eq'ing. Ask them to go conservative with the levels and you might even do ok as far as the sound. If you're unlucky the end result will actually be worse than what you started with - just depends on the guy operating the gear a little more than the gear itself.

I personally don't even know of anyone doing even "gully" mastering for less than $150 an album - but again, maybe you'll get lucky.

Personally - my advice is to either save the $75 for some beers and a dinner and just put your release out as is - or save a few more hundred and go to a facility where they have decent enough monitoring and experience so that they can definitely make a positive impact for your final product. As far as raising the cash - I've noticed that patience and persistence of effort are both pretty big keys to success as far as making things come out the way you want them to - you just have to judge for yourself whether it is worth doing in this case.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

[wayne kerr]

Call Capitol Mastering. Speak to Beatrice about some amazing after hours mastering. 323-971-5003

Ohmyfuckinggod.

"We have exactly $75."

"Oh, well, you should call Capitol."

Dude what color is the sky in your world?

[wayne kerr]

Only crack usage would make one think they could master their own album.

You're a troll, right? That's got to be what this is.

[bigtoe]

i agree with the don't master it. 75 dollars? too low for something decent...but you know- in this day and age...

Mike

[Mark Alan Miller]

At this point I've seen all types of mastering jobs - cheap, free, top-of-the-line and the most common, relatively affordable - and the only ones that have held up with very few exceptions are the ones that were 'relatively affordable' and up in cost. I've even done some of the cheap and 'relatively affordable' ones myself. My cheap ones are actually embarrasing and now refuse to do them. My 'relatively affordable' ones have had praise from my ME friends.

You do get what you pay for. Period.

Bad mastering tends to be the only kind that can be had for cheap.

Cheap mastering tends to only make the tracks LOUDER without actually making them BETTER.

I used to believe that it was possible, but I don't anymore, and thusly, unles the client is just pressing 50 CD-Rs for promotional use, I demand they just knuckle down, save up the cash, and do it right. I remind them that they are putting a work of their own out there in the world for potential immortality, and a bit of short-term savings on cost should not be consider against a long-term sonic emberassment and a life of 'only-if's.

Only got $75? Wait a while - your only deadline is likely your own. Save up a few hundred dollars for the sake of making the record the best it can be.

[JES]

I gotta say, for $300, you're starting to get into some decent engineers on the low end of the mastering price scale. If you can save your $$ and wait a month or two, go for it.

OTOH, if youi're stone broke and just want it LOUDER, edited, etc., find someone with a DAW who's eager to do it for you. I've occasionally seen ads from beginners who want to get into mastering on other sections of this very BBS. Just understand that it simply won't sound as good as a true professional job. These days, anyone can claim to be a "mastering engineer" with a basic bedroom DAW and a waves native power pack. What separates the pros is ears, years of experience, good rooms, and top notch analog signal paths.

You get what you pay for, but like everything else in recording these days, the low end of the scale sounds a whole lot better than it used to. I've heard some indierock albums that were not mastered by real mastering engineers that I still quite like. But after paying for a real mastering engineer myself, I'll never go back.

Best,
--JES

[twitchmonitor]

Well, I'd like to chime in with an unpopular opinion.

I've done cheapo mastering for a few projects and I think that in some cases, it's just what the doctor ordered. For example, if the band scraped together the meager recording budget (and I mean recording a record for $500 or so) and they just don't have ANY more money, home mastering can be good. Unless they're getting a run from a cd pressing place, in which case redbook issues would probably be enough reason for them to go to a real ME.

As far as I understand it, a mastering job is supposed to :

Sequence the material for an album
maintain the highest quality audio
keep all tracks at a consistent perceived volume from the start of the album to the end
make the audio translate as best as possible across different systems
and ....raise apparent loudness (these days)

And for releases that the band is going to reproduce themselves and self distribute, I don't see why a home mastering job wouldn't be appropriate

[@?,*???&?]

The thing everyone forgets about the 'mastering process' is that it creates the master that the glass master will be made from at the manufacturing plant. Believe it or not, the error rate and a program like Toast simply do not make a master of the 'highest integrity'.

A legitimate mastering facility will have the software and hardware to ensure that this gets done to the highest standard without compromising program material. The item a mastering studio creates is called a PMCD and you can't make one of these at home...

The main question is this- does the artist plan to manufacture (stamp discs) and sell 'real' product or do they simply want to pass around a bunch of burned CDs to friends? If the latter is the case, don't bother mastering.

[tiger vomitt]

Only crack usage would make one think they could master their own album.

Stop using crack.

Call Capitol Mastering. Speak to Beatrice about some amazing after hours mastering. 323-971-5003

Really.

jeff you are a serious jerkoff. at least online. really.

[wayne kerr]

Hey Drew,

Seriously, your $75 would prob'ly be better spent taking your girlfriend (or boyfriend ) out for a nice dinner. But you don't have to spend $1000/song for a good mastering job. Contact John Golden Mastering in Ventura, CA. I have sent many many projects to them and they are utterly professional and very reasonable. You'll spend about $700 for a whole album and you will walk away with an outstanding master. Their # is 805-648-4646. That is money well spent.