with Ian Shepherd and Jon Tidey
Time for another Q&A episode ! As always you’ve been asking great questions, so in this episode we discuss:
TMS 65 – How to make money from mastering – with Graham Cochrane
Billie Eilish – loudness versus dynamics (Video)
Can you make money from mastering ? And if so, how ? If you’re already charging people for your work, how can you be more effective and productive ?
Our guest in this episode is Graham Cochrane from the Recording Revolution website, which has been so successful that he’s started helping other people use some of the same ideas and strategies to get them started making money in the audio business themselves.
You don’t have to be an audio blogger or YouTuber to achieve this – in this episode we talk about strategies anyone can use:
By Jon Tidey
There’s been lots of buzz and discussion about aliasing online recently, and lots of confusion, too.
Is it a flaw in the whole idea of digital audio ? Does it explain why analogue modelling plugins can never sound exactly like the real thing ? Or is it just inaudible mathematical theorising ?
In this episode we try to answer all these questions, plus Ian attempts to give an easy visual explanation of what aliasing is and how it relates to audio, with – er… questionable results.
Along the way discuss:
The wagon wheel effect
The wagon wheel effect – nerdy science version
What is aliasing and what causes it ?
Meterplugs Perception Plugin
Are high sample rates making your music sound worse ?
By Jon Tidey
Usually on the show we’re talking about mastering music for CD, download and streaming, but there’s another important final destination for the audio we work on – broadcast.
And the difference with broadcast audio is – there are standards. Having said that, there often isn’t a dedicated mastering stage !
In this episode we dig into the whole fascinating topic with our guest Dallas Taylor from Defacto Sound, and host of the superb Twenty Thousand Hertz podcast. Dallas has a wealth of experience in sound design and mixing for broadcast on trailers and ads for shows like Game Of Thrones and games like Fallout, amongst many others.
In a wide-ranging conversation we talk about:
TMS #49 – Great Audio Podcasts
Defacto Sound
Game Of Thrones (Promo)
Anomaly (Film)
Tesla Ghost (Ad)
Twenty Thousand Hertz podcast
The Booj
The THX Deep Note
Mother Of Dragons(ounds)
The Voice of Siri
By Jon Tidey
Everything gets streamed these days, and almost all streaming platforms use lossy data encoding: mp3, AAC, OGG etc (OMG!)
And these lossy codecs do a pretty remarkable result of preserving the quality, considering they strip out anywhere between 60-90% of the original data. But it’s not perfect – far from it ! In this show we talk about:
Video – Is Billie Eilish too loud ?
TMS #36 – Data versus dynamic compression – and sponges
Spotify recommends -2 dB True Peak for loud uploads
TMS #25 – Stereo, mid-side and how to process them
By Jon Tidey
You might argue that reading about audio is like dancing about architecture. Or something. But you’d be wrong! In these days of podcasts and YouTube it’s easy to forget how many great books there are about audio, and what a fantastic resource they are for getting inspiration, ideas and learning new topics and techniques. in this show we share some of our favourites, including:
The Daily Adventures Of Mixerman – the Audiobook Dramatisation
The Making Of Sgt Pepper – A Music Production Masterclass
TMS #49 – Great Audio Podcasts
Arena: Brian Eno – Another Green World
Probably the best Brian Eno interview in the history of the known universe
What makes a great music producer tick ? Brian Eno Interviewed
TMS #19 – Sylvia Massy – Recording Unhinged
Queen in the recording studio – videos
Imogen Heap – The Making of Elipse vBlogs (In reverse order, not sure why – but they’re all there !)
Adam Buxton – fantastic interview with Brian Eno
By Jon Tidey
This show is short & sweet – but essential listening if you’re interested in getting better results with online loudness – and balanced, musical dynamics for your masters.
In this episode Ian describes:
Episode 44 – Loudness Units 101
Episode 51 – What is Loudness Penalty?
Episode 52 – Don’t aim for LUFS targets online
Episode 54 – When loudness normalization goes wrong
Dynamic Range Day
Loudness Penalty
By Jon Tidey
It’s been a while since we had a Q&A episode, so – here it is ! In this show we discuss:
Configuring Voxengo Span – by Dan Worrall
Inter-sample peaks versus loudness (video)
Ethan Winer on speaker isolation
Bob Katz on speaker isolation (Facebook)
By Jon Tidey
We’ve all heard it – “the music is in the mid-range”. But what does that mean, exactly ? And if it’s true, is there anything we can do about it in mastering ?
We’ve talked about bass and high frequencies, but in this show we dive into the muddy, murky mess that is (often) the mid-range, and talk about how crucial it is for a great-sounding master.
Including:
TMS #55 – How bright is too bright ? Mastering top end
TMS #53 – Fear of bass
Leapwing Audio CenterOne
reFuse Software Lowender
Too Much 4k ?
By Jon Tidey
…comes great responsibility. And mastering engineers need to accept that.
If you take on the challenge of mastering someone’s music, you also accept a huge amount of responsibility for that music, and In this episode we tackle the question – what are the responsibilities of a mastering engineer – and even the ethics ?
Including:
Popular distributors:
Bandcamp
Distrokid
CD Baby
Tunecore
AWAL
Related episodes
TMS #37 – Does gear matter ? And if so, how much ?
TMS #50 – Mastering on headphones ? (Glenn Schick interview)
TMS #45 – Jonathan Wyner
TMS #23 – Balance (or, how to master an album)