Over mastering tips heb ik op een forum dit ooit nog gevonden:
Alrighty, here is my guide to mastering your own music to use in a club.
this won`t replace proper mastering as the problem with mastering your own music is that, well if you knew what problems there were in your music, you would have sorted them at the mix stage, this is where the third party objectivity and experience of an engineer helps.
This guide should however allow you to get your tunes to a competitive "loudness" to allow you to use them in a DJ set to test them out, without absolutely destroying the music trying to get it loud.
I earn my money as a mastering engineer, so this is all based on my own experience in the industry.
EQ
You will need a spectrum analyser. Set the analyser on an average/RMS setting if possible, with a slow update. You want an average, over time, reading of the spectrum, not a moment to moment instant read of peaks.
Ok so once you have this set up you then want a nice clean EQ, free from too many artefacts, nothing too characterful. I use a massive passive, and brainworx EQ.
What you want to do is level out the average from roughly 100hz up to about 5khz. What I mean by this is you want to get your spectrum to read a roughly flat line between these frequencies. So pull down any peaks and push up any troughs. Dont go for any sharp Qs, you want to be making gentle movements here to roughly balance out spectrum, with a slight downward slope to the high frequencies. I`m doing this in terms of dance music, so from around 100hz down expect to have a big hump for the bass, this is fine, dance music is bass heavy.
Now you can flatten down above 5k, but be very very careful here as you can start to damage transient information, so only make broad and slight adjustments if you need to.
You might prefer a little smile EQ pattern, our ears like this, if so your dip will be around 800hz ish.
You can afford to really cut in to your low end, especially in the sub 30hz range, just kill that shit.
Compression
Ok, I'm going to advise using a standard 2 comp setup here over multiband. Multiband compression is fraught with problems, and unless you really really know compression (in which case you won`t need this guide) I would not advise multiband compression. It has specific uses, it can shred any sense of groove and can absolutely kill dynamic interest.
So the idea is you use one compressor to capture rapid peaks and control them, you then use another compressor to control overall changes in the body of the music, which will act more slowly and gently.
So compressor choice. Well for the main rhythmic compression the choice is up to you. I tend to go with something characterful for the fast comp, and something more transparent for the second comp.
Feedback compression is great for a full mix, it is gentle and musical, but stuff like an SSL buss comp will also do a nice job if treated right.
Settings?
You want a relatively gentle ratio, with everything in mastering, you want to be fairly gentle, unless you are trying to recover specific mistakes that can`t be fixed in the mix.
so a gentle ratio.
Attack needs to be fast, but not so fast as to kill the punch and the transients, I cant give any numbers here because 200ms on one compressor, wont necessarily be the same as on another. Use your ears, pull the attack down and listen to the front end of your kicks, high hats, punchy synths, stuff that has real snappy transient information, at the point you hear the compressor biting down on the transients, pull back, you want these to go through a little.
Release again, you need to tune this. You really want to watch your VU meter here. If your compressor lacks a VU or something that emulates the ballistics of one, then get a standalone in your chain. You want to tune the release so that the VU meter is moving in with the groove of the track, and other transients are smoothed out of this motion. You`ll never get a perfect swing unless you are mastering a tune that is only kick drums, but you want this to be a smooth motion on average.
the release should be relaxing enough where the compression is returning to almost non action, but not no action at all, before the next kick. If you set the release to fast you`ll really notice the comp too much and it will pump and possibly distort in a nasty way. Too slow and you will effectively be over attenuating the mix. You want the release to be just a little longer than each beat, so there is still a little compression acting by the time the next kick comes in, this will give a natural groove.
Now raise the ratio so that the compressor stops acting at all, and gradually bring it back down again until action begins, you really don`t want to go for more than 3db of gain reduction, but how much all depends on the sound. Some hardware comps can actually be right in the sweet spot with barely any movement on the meter. So just use your ears.
You may want to adjust the frequency of the sidechain input, if the comp has it, to take out some of the really low information that may effect the rhythmic movement of the comp. Use your meter and your ears combined to get this right. It applies if you have a lot of low end content, especially the big old low end techno rumble.
the second comp you want a much slower attack, you want to capture sounds with slower transients (not the drums) so again tune by ear, but a rough guide is to double the setting of the first comp. Release can be a little more gradual too, a lower ratio than the previous comp. This might capture big stabs, swells, filter sweeps that peak etc. Very gentle.
Clean Up EQ
You may want another Eq in the chain here just to tidy up any changes the compression has added, same rules as above. If you have done things right, you shouldn't need to.
Limiting
Right, to get your final level you want a limiter.
If you are in digital domain then you can use a lookahead, which is always a nice option.
If you can adjust the attack and release then you want to essentially follow the rules above for comp, really pay attention to tuning the attack, you don`t want to kill all the transients, something like 1100 ms on dance music will do the trick.
Again you dont want to be ramming your gain reduction here. I try to never let a limiter go beyond 2db of gain reduction. All limiters are different, but Ive never heard one that goes much beyond 2db without getting gacky.
Obviously at this stage dither down to 16 bit is fine.
that should do ya, as a rough guide.
With say 1-2 db GR with your first comp, another say, 1-2 db with the second and then another 2 on the limiter you`ve got 6db of gain reduction there, and if you have done it right and used your ears, it should be a relatively clean 6db of reduction.
With a peak of -0.5db you should be able to get your RMS to around -8 which is loud enough to use in the club.
