Ready to master but...

[laaba]

Hi gang,
i am finishing up my CD project but i am still uncertain of how a good mastering should be done.I have T-racks but sometimes doesn´t seem to be ideal compared to other pro recordings.Sometimes i do it with wavelab or sound forge and it sounds better etc. sometimes it sounds fine with my monitors but then in my normal stereo it lacks clarity or in my auto stereo it sounds different etc. I don´t know how professionals accompish this so that their finish products sound good in almost every sound system!
So how can i accompish a true mastering myself do i need better software or just my ears and compare it to other recordings? how much compression,how loud is it supposed to be etc. or am i better off sending it to mastering professionals? can someone guide me through this?
thanx!

[This message has been edited by laaba (edited 01-21-2003).]

[usul]

Hi I am not a sound engineer but I have worked with t-racks and I am pretty happy. It is easy to use and the results are not too much different from using waves plugins. I don't think that wavelab or soundforge plugins for mastering are better than t-racks.

[C9]

T-racks doesn't MASTER... takes more than just a simple eq, ok compressor and a multiband limiter..
i've tried track 24 before.. it add color...

if your gonna master on your computer, i'd use Waves plugins.. or Get a Powercore or Uad-1... i've mastered some of my artist projects on HD3 systems

[Robert D]

Originally posted by laaba:

So how can i accompish a true mastering myself do i need better software or just my ears and compare it to other recordings? how much compression,how loud is it supposed to be etc. or am i better off sending it to mastering professionals? can someone guide me through this?
thanx!

[This message has been edited by laaba (edited 01-21-2003).]

Laaba - Well, yes you would be better off sending it out to a mastering professional, that's not a question. The question is can you afford to? I'm at the same crossroad right now. I know my project deserves professional mastering, and I know there are people who can do it better than me, but the ones I can afford probably would do about the same job as me, and the ones who really could do a better job of it are very expensive. I don't want to risk several hundred dollars to get a master back that is a little different, but not necessarily better than my own mastering, and I can't afford a couple thousand for the guys that I know would do a stellar job of it.
So, if you want to tackle this yourself, you need to take a crash course in mastering, which is very different from mixing. And since you don't have the perfectly tuned room/monitor system that a real mastering house has, you need to listen to your project on as many stereos as you can, taking notes each time and correcting things till it sounds good on everything. Get a couple of reference CD's together, ones that sound like you want your project to sound, and check your project against them on all those stereos. Expect to burn a lot of CD's till you get it right, and don't hesitate to go back to fixing things in the mix, rather than trying to pull off the tricks that mastering engineers use to work with only the stereo tracks.
Don't get locked into one tool or one approach. The warmth that T-racks applies to one song will be the mud that mucks up another song. Mastering is all about critical listening and fixing specific things for a specific reason. Be creative during mixing, be surgical during mastering.
Here's a link to some good articals on the subject, which may help provide the crash course. http://www.studiocovers.com/articles9.htm
Be sure to read "secrets of the mastering engineer", by Bob Katz. (it's one of the articals)

Also, go here http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/ozone/ozoneguide.html and get the Ozone mastering guide PDF. It's written for non Ozone owners as well, and is very good.

Best of luck, RD

[laaba]

Thanx a million for your input fellows!
Which Wave plugins do you use and is there a particular preference or order they should be used? i start compressing tracks in the mix stage although i am not sure compression should be always used at the end as well.I ive used some of the presets of t-racks but some of them sound too compressed to me, almost artificial. I am also curious to know which CD brands are used to burn a final master i understand this plays an important roll as well
cheers