I’ve been doing a little mastering lately and a thought occurred to me that you should know. It’s about the subtlety of mastering, and why it’s actually not so subtle at all! The 1 dB Boost and Cut We stress the importance of doing subtle boosts and cuts during mastering but if you really think about...
As you know, we’ve been rapping on about mastering this week because of Ian Shepherd’s Home Mastering Masterclass. If you didn’t see the video I posted with him helping me improve my mastering on Monday But that’s not all we’ve done together. When it opened up before I actually interviewed him a couple times. I...
In my video with Ian Shepherd, which you can see part of right here, he brought me down to earth with a few things. First of all, it’s not about the amount of plug-ins you slap on the master bus. It’s how you use them! He counted six plug-ins in my mastering chain and he only had...
In anticipation of Ian Shepherd’s Home Mastering Masterclass opening up again (affiliate link: http://www.audioissues.com/hmm) we did a little video together. In the first part of the video I go through the methods. I then sent this to Ian and in the video he gives me feedback on what he likes and what he thinks I...
Ian Shepherd’s Perception mastering plug-in is real helpful when it comes to pseudo-mastering engineer like myself. If you’re anything like me you probably consider mastering to be a bit of voodoo magic. You might be a little scared about doing something wrong, like squashing your mixes or making your songs too loud! That’s why it’s nice...
Today’s video over at The Long Wait Youtube channel is about making our 2-track recording sound a little bit better. It’s hard to do much with an already mixed 2-track but with a little bit of EQ, compression and tape emulation (along with a separate audience mic) you can make your audio sound a little...
When I repeat myself, there’s usually a reason behind it. The reason is usually that you either haven’t heard it before, or the knowledge was so good to begin with it doesn’t need to be repackaged. This week Ian Shepherd is opening up his Home Mastering Masterclass for new students. If you’ve been following my...
I’ve gotten into the habit of releasing singles very frequently with my band The Long Wait. It’s actually been a longer wait (pun intended) for the next one because my professional life went on hold while I bought a house, moved into it and got married within the span of one month. It was…hectic. But...
I get a lot of feedback on some of the doubts and fears you engineers have when it comes to mastering. So much that I put together a quick test to see if you’re ready to overcome some of those fears and start mastering your own stuff. Ready? Let’s dive in. Answer yes or no...
The mastering process can be a little intimidating. The whole process, understanding the meters and what plug-ins to use. Presets can go a long way, especially if you’re working with powerful plug-ins, but it’s also great to actually know the “tricks of the trade” and what’s actually happening to your audio. I’ve gone into this...