Why you might NOT want to master your music - or get it mastered; when mastering ISN'T mastering; plus the problem with re-mastering; a brief tangent on Dave Grohl; can you master on the mix buss? And why deciding not to master is STILL mastering.
Links
LANDR: Automated online mastering – but is it any good ? My test
How the Loudness War is crushing Dave Grohl’s analogue ambitions
Highlights of this show were:
1 - da duh duh da "What's that song called?" "No one knows"
2 - Dave Grohl's Sausage Machine
3 - How dare you!
4 - that outro lol
On a technical note - I think this could have used a bit of editing. There were long pauses, some 'Ums' that could easily be skipped and a few extreme plosives that thumped my feet resting on the subwoofer.
Thanks for the feedback, Jon - glad you like the show 🙂 And, I hadn't spotted the irony of forgetting that particular song title until you put it like that - lol !
I love how drums sound on No One Knows, can't believe you didn't remember the title. Look up how they recorded the drums, the specific sound has nothing to do with mastering or even mixing.
Following your thought that decision not to master is mastering, I can record 10 songs, mix them and put them in order, decide not to master and they are mastered, right? But they are not actually mastered, are they? They just perhaps sound good enough so they don't need mastering. Regardless if that's a decision made by mastering engineer or not, they are still not mastered because nothing has been done in mastering stage. Seems like a lot of word play for no reason.
You're right, to an extent it's just word-play, but I think it's worthwhile wordplay. I would say in the example you cite, the songs are mastered, it's just that you made the decision not to do any sound work at the mastering stage. The next question is, do you feel qualified to make that call ? And would a professional mastering engineer make the same judgement ? If they felt differently, would you agree with their opinion ?
At the end of the day, a large part of all this is subjective - my aim with the topic was to get people thinking about the issues, not try and give a hard & fast judgement.
As far as the drum sound goes - let's agree to differ 🙂 And I did remember the title, it just took me a little while :-p
I agree that making people think about the issues is worthwhile. I still wouldn't call the songs in my example mastered. Going this route, if I just record them without performing any mixing, will the be mixed (and mastered as well)? They will have the levels and eq they were recorded with but I can't say I mixed and mastered them.
As for the sound, that's the beauty of music, it's very subjective and even though there is general agreement and boundaries to what is considered sounding good, there will always be someone who likes the songs that are considered bad sounding by majority.
Apparently in the mastering and production nowadays it's more important "to sound loud" and to target earbuds and mp3s than fidelity; if a band can play with a good DR in the studio AND if they care about their final sound to be uncompressed, unequalized and not destroyed by any other abusive practices, why dont they just produce at least an "audiophile" version, carefully (or not at all) mastered, just mixed with the right levels and let the sound come as naturally as it was in the recording session? Of course that rules out all the pop autotuned noise makers out there, but for the few true artists left, let us hear a crystal clear non-loud undistorted version in 24bit-96Khz
That's really interesting that the Steven Wilson albums have no master fx on them. So it begs the question - did you have a sneaky go yourself Ian?
I haven't, no 🙂
The Mastering Show podcast needs mastering! The last two podcasts had bits missing (intro) or parts repeated.
Sorry you've found that, but I listened to both via iTunes and didn't notice anything. Perhaps this is a download issue ?
There was some strange ending on the last episode I listened to ... I think it was number 13.
Great job Steve and Ian! I also have not noticed any missing parts of your audio. In fact, I just analyzed this show, and it also received a perfect 10, for Podcasts, as did your first Podcast! This score is based on analyzing Loudness, dbTP, Peaks over 0dbs, Noise Floor, Background Noise, DC Offset and Loudness range.
Your Podcast scored 100%, in each category. It is one of four, out of 450 Podcast, to do so. Keep the "Ums, auhs and studders", in your show. If I want perfect audio script, I will spend $30,000.00 and send it back 200 times for a redo!
I've check it from the "feed" and it was ok. Must've been a download glitch my end...
Croaky
Cool! It seemed that you have been a victim of "Picnic". Problem In Chair, Not In Computer! LOL.
Unfortunately, most of the musicians are simply not prepared to hear a mastering engineer say "your mix doesn't need mastering": a few years ago I followed a good progressive-rock band through their short career, shows, CD recording... When I heard the first trials of a so-called mastering engineer from the area, I was horrified! They made me listen to the result, saying it was a lot better than the original sound, but of course, it was just louder with irrelevant EQing. So I played them both versions at the same level and their enthusiasm waned for a while.
Nonetheless, in the end they still preferred having their CD destroyed to DR5 by that guy because they thought you need to hear a HUGE difference after mastering — even if I offered them to master it myself more dynamically for free! 😮
I must say that they were sent to that guy by the recording studio and, though I understood the band's decision was made out of FUD, I was doubly amazed that the recording engineer enjoyed his work ruined that way... :-/
The good side of that story is that it made me passionate about mastering and I would probably not be listening to your podcast without that misadventure. 😉
Sorry to hear, but glad you like the show 🙂