Need some mastering help on this WIP track

Amnestic

Member
Joined
Dec 14, 2013

As the title says, i am trying to get my mastering locked down. I am hoping to get any feedback I can regarding the mix, especially the bass. Feel free to leave feedback regarding the composition as well, though it is in it's early stages. I know the final mastering should be saved until the end, but I am trying to get a nice clean sound as I go along, just for practice.

Thanks for listening!
 
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Hi mate, gave it a listen without having an unmastered version to listen to it's hard to really say. I assume your putting a limiter on your master bus? The track is quite loud but IMO needs to sound fatter and could use some more sub in there obviously it's a delicate balance between getting the track loud and getting the sub present. I also work with a limiter on my master bus which divides opinion as some producers like to leave plenty of head room for a specialist mastering engineer. For the purpose of creating a demo and showcasing your stuff then it's worthwhile trying to get the track loud yourself as getting your own demos mastered can get expensive. In reality if you're mix down is good then all you really need to do at the mastering phase is apply limiting, EQing the master and multi band compression aren't necessary if you're mix down is spot on. Obviously mastering for vinyl and other specialist mediums is a little more involved but generally now days this is not something most producers have to worry too much about.
In terms of the composition there is a lot going on, and the track is quite busy. There are some good element so you may want to think about actually subtracting certain elements especially in the main body of the track, I often find that sometimes less is more in this regard, this or actually maybe replace some of the synths sound with some tops percussion. This is quite hard as often as we build a track we get attached to various elements and want to incorporate them all into the final track, however sometimes you have to get rid of things you may have thought were a key element but that don't work in the wider context. I've just had a very similar thing happen to a track I made, a label came back to me and said they liked the track but weren't keen on certain elements that I personally really liked, once I got rid of these elements the whole track actually sounded much better.
Anyway boss hope this is of some help, keep up the good work.
 
Hi mate, gave it a listen without having an unmastered version to listen to it's hard to really say. I assume your putting a limiter on your master bus? The track is quite loud but IMO needs to sound fatter and could use some more sub in there obviously it's a delicate balance between getting the track loud and getting the sub present. I also work with a limiter on my master bus which divides opinion as some producers like to leave plenty of head room for a specialist mastering engineer. For the purpose of creating a demo and showcasing your stuff then it's worthwhile trying to get the track loud yourself as getting your own demos mastered can get expensive. In reality if you're mix down is good then all you really need to do at the mastering phase is apply limiting, EQing the master and multi band compression aren't necessary if you're mix down is spot on. Obviously mastering for vinyl and other specialist mediums is a little more involved but generally now days this is not something most producers have to worry too much about.
In terms of the composition there is a lot going on, and the track is quite busy. There are some good element so you may want to think about actually subtracting certain elements especially in the main body of the track, I often find that sometimes less is more in this regard, this or actually maybe replace some of the synths sound with some tops percussion. This is quite hard as often as we build a track we get attached to various elements and want to incorporate them all into the final track, however sometimes you have to get rid of things you may have thought were a key element but that don't work in the wider context. I've just had a very similar thing happen to a track I made, a label came back to me and said they liked the track but weren't keen on certain elements that I personally really liked, once I got rid of these elements the whole track actually sounded much better.
Anyway boss hope this is of some help, keep up the good work.

Thanks for the solid feedback man. I will take this all into account as I move forward with this one.
 
My pleasure man, would like to hear the final version. Will have a listen to some of your other tracks maybe later.
 
From my experience (different genres though) you do achieve a more punchy master by using the classic vocal compression trick - that is, fast attack/slow rel compression 3-4 db -> EQ -> slow attack/fast rel compression 3-4 db. You get 8 dB compression and it doesnt sound like you just slammed a compressor and cranked it to eleven.

I typically use comp -> eq -> comp -> c4 to do nothing else except get the bass tight -> limiter and it has worked quite well. You of course want to have dynamics to keep things interesting but the low-end shouldn't have much movement dB-wise - if there is, it will end up sounding confusing.

Unfortunately I am unavailable to listen to the song now, but will do so later. Hope any of this helps :)
 
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