Pre-Mastering at The Dustbowl
What is Pre-Mastering?
Read the magazines, scan the forums, and you will find that for everyone who who is delighted with their mastering experience (strictly speaking usually pre-mastering) there are many complaints that the mastered version is not as good as the original mix - and that's a waste of your time and money. A top line ME (Mastering Engineer) will know when to leave well alone, but that judgement doesn't always carry over the the more affordable end of the market.
It can be simple; deliver the bits that most people want most of the time at an affordable price.
What I will do
Read the magazines, scan the forums, and you will find that for everyone who who is delighted with their mastering experience (strictly speaking usually pre-mastering) there are many complaints that the mastered version is not as good as the original mix - and that's a waste of your time and money. A top line ME (Mastering Engineer) will know when to leave well alone, but that judgement doesn't always carry over the the more affordable end of the market.
It can be simple; deliver the bits that most people want most of the time at an affordable price.
- Make it louder (yes, it does matter to a degree)
- Sequence, edit, fade and gap your tracks ready for production mastering
- Make the tracks sound as though they belong together
What I will do
- I prefer to deliver your tracks with at least 8dB of dynamic range which allows for a good solid loud modern CD track level with good dynamic balance. If the programme material doesn't warrant this then I'll tell you what I think is reasonable and let you have some samples to decide on.
- Where appropriate I will send you a -10dBFS RMS version - this is getting into relatively loud territory and may not sound as good, but it might be just what you want - it's your choice.
- I can also do REALLY LOUD and shouty, it almost certainly won't sound as good but if it's what you want I can do it and minimize the damage.
- I will balance dynamics and EQ across your tracks so that they sound as though they belong in the same collection of music.
- I will fade your tracks out (and in if required) and gap them in your preferred sequence.
Here's an example of the difference between a mastered and a non-mastered version of the same track - they're edited together starting with the mastered version. The track is "O Que Te Faz Vivier" by Conrado Dess; example 1 is the intro. All of the examples are 320 mbps mp3s which do lose some of the nuances of the full resolution tracks but you can still hear the differences. The pictures to the right are of the waveform of these examples, the first one clearly shows the peak that holds the level of the whole piece down so far.
Obviously there is a significant change in level between the mastered and non-mastered tracks which tends to overwhelm the other differences, so here's the same sample with the levels made more comparable. Note that it isn't possible to exactly balance the levels of the tracks without applying additional processing which would defeat the object of the exercise, and that the overall level is limited by the peaks of the non-processed version so it is quieter than the first example.
...and here are a couple of examples from later in the same song, again, eg 1 is not volume levelled, eg 2 is.
Unmastered Track
This waveform is of the intro audio above, you can clearly see the peak that limits the level of the whole piece.
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Mastered Track
This is the same section of the song after the mastering process, you can see how the peaks have been restrained so that the overall endergyof the track can be increased.
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Master Clip Sample
Single track, clip before and after MP3 sample
£
0.00
Master 1 track
Single Track - eq and dynamic balancing of each track, loudness processing, fades as needed
£
25.00
Master EP
Up to 4 Tracks - eq and dynamic balancing of each track, loudness processing, fades as needed, sequencing, eq and dynamics balance for the collection
£
85.00
MAster Album
Up to 12 Tracks - eq and dynamic balancing of each track, loudness processing, fades as needed, sequencing, eq and dynamics balance for the collection
£
200.00
