Finally a bullshit free tutorial. Rather than a tutorial its just a concept discussion. Everyone from every level of production can get something from this. Great keep up the job.
Awesome, been waiting for your concepts on this in depth, It's hard to dive into mastering without going into a million things, and I mean a million. Alot of my mastering is going back into the mix, making changes, and finding the most spacial leveling i can get out of my textures. It's a battle between hitting the right RMS and not destroying the transients and dynamics, I make mostly spacial stereo wide atmospheric music though, so it's a little different than hard hitting 4/4, but honestly the true definition has changed from the older days.
Hey @SeamlessR, names CJ. I have a quick question if you have a moment. You say that you run all the audio into the master within the main project file, then print the audio to wav-file or format and your done. But how do you normalize all the audio to zero db from the main file to run into the master bus? Do your normalize all your audio files or track channels after everything is done, the arrangement, mix down and etc., then have them run into the limiter? Or is there another step to normalizing that I'm just unaware of that you are doing? It looks like from this tutorial that you may be able to just normalize a file with in FL, if that was what you where doing when you where switching the "pre master's" size. I use ableton live and the only way to normalize in it I believe is to export audio then bring it back into the project so. Should I do that when the whole mix with out the limiter on it. Or do you have another idea as to how I can solve this issue.
Best video on mastering I ever saw. Really. Everything makes sense and I improved the final result of my mixes a lot with the stuff you talked about here. And all these people bitching about compressing too much... YOU don't need to compress too much, in fact you don't even need to compress at all and maybe your songs will be good if you do the rest well and compensate with some other technique like volume automation track by track or whatever. But I bet that most of you can't get shitty results out of and compressor, and that is most of the reason of so much bs.
I have a question. First, thanks for the awesome tutorial, really appreciate it!!! When you tweeked the different bands of the premaster you said that we should really have a feel for it and that the kick and bass peeks were at 0 and -6dB totally by accident and so on, but the master's ceiling was set to 0dB. This may sound stupid but is that kind of like a standard, like the ceiling should always be set to 0dB for mastering, or we should go by feel here aswell?
I use clip distortion to push the drop area over the 0db limit for soft clipping. Only for the drop though. Helps make the drop more impactful and saves dynamic range in the break
nice vid thanks , ... hey seamless do you play at clubs or raves ? if you do , how does one start booking shows , and how does someone tour to other countries , for example let's say I was ready to start playing , and I want to tour Europe but I live in the USA ,do I contact a club in Europe first and ask if I can play and that I live in the u.s and I'm willing to fly/travel, or do I save money ,rent an apartment ,AMD ask around once I'm their ...IDK maybe I'll google it , ...
Why do we use separate sub bass ? I mean sometimes i would like to keep the patch's original bass because it has some small movement in it. In what cases, we should prefer using sub ?
We don't, if the sound you use already has enough subbass than there is no need to eq it and replace it with a new sub. But sometimes or quite often actually, if you don't frequency split, you can get some troubled peaks in the sub region if you've done lots of modulation on the sound. So one way to have a stable sub that is a part of the original sound is to split frequencies into at least two bands, so you can leave the sub intact.
PrivacyEnt Well, using a separate sub bass is nice when it comes to mixing... It's easier to mix a sub bass that is alone, in a single audio channel, in my opinion... Plus, to make your bass more significant having a sub layer + another bass layer (between 70Hz/130Hz) is very nice, as well... This way you have two bass layers and your whole track will sound more "full"... That's the way I do it, and I think it's okay to do it that way... But one thing production has taught me is that there is no real rules when it comes to inventivity... You just do your stuff and make sure it sounds nice enough ! :) Hope I helped you ! :)
I don't use templates. You could probably make one but that would only work if your music doesn't change much track to track. Don't focus too much on the visuals. They are helpful for understanding what's happening, but I advise against trying to adhere to a certain shape over going by what you're hearing. As for referencing, if you want to compare your master to something, I recommend comparing it to a track done by someone you like that you KNOW sounds good in the genre that you're making.
SeamlessR I don't mean I want to base my song entirely on fancy curves from analyzer, but sometimes my music sounds like shit outside of my headphones on different devices (or should i say even shittier). As to referencing to other artists in similiar genre, I find it kinda hard cause I'm trying to do a thing called "electronic rock" (but it's actually DnB) with lead guitar which is not really popular in the music industry I guess and makes mixing a pain in the ass. That's also the reason I find your tutorials insanely helpful mainly the part when you use guitar and mix it with talking bass and really looking forward for the incoming ones
21:35 That would be called upward compression though, not expansion. You're bringing up the valleys. So to expand a signal in Maximus you'd need to pull the lower-left curve down and the upper-right curve up.
Confused on something. You said you cut the low end off of your kick drum. How did you single out the low frequencies and retain the quality of the high frequencies? Did you just duplicate the sound and have them set to two different mixer tracks with one having the low end and the other having the high end? Or was that sound when you were soloing the low end through maximus just the product of purely having the low end playing solo? Also when you said you high passed the low end of everything did u literally cut the entire low end off of every other sound around 150 hz or something? I've heard some tracks from artist that it really sounded like this was the case but the last time I tried something like that it came out sounding like junk lol. I'm def not very good with compression tho. I either end up with too much or not enough. Also on the low end of maximus you have the graph cut off low and then a straight shot up a bit near the middle. Was the lower part with upward curved transient touching more the sub base and the top part just preserving the peak of the kick drum or something? It made me curious because you had your sub on a shelf and I don't quite have studio quality speakers or headphones to test my bass with and I've wondered for a long time how that would affect the difference in peaks between sub bass and kick drum. One more thing. You use soft saturation as a limiting tool in a way but on the master your track is sitting at like +6db. Does the saturation literally override the compression ceiling and distort it or does it still boost over 0 db and compress the distorted sound? It was hard to tell because the purple over hang above the celing made it look like the normal compression was still taking effect, even with the saturation distorting things. Would much appreciate any input and this was a really good vid all around. Two thumbs up and keep that bass kickin!
Okay! So I have a question, Where does the soft saturation knob inside maximus add its effect in the signal route through the compressor? Does the effect get added AFTER the compression or before the compression? Reason is - I may want to try some 3rd party compressor/saturation plugins for mastering at the end of the signal chain. What would you suggest, before comp or after comp? Thanks.
what i dont get is: u have the maximus running when u write your song/track to avoid "surprises" when done, so how do u set up maximus before u have some writen ??
I don't know whether you still respond to the comments section on this video, but it'd be appreciated if you could, struggling to find a way to crossover two Maximus chains without them creating a problem or phase in the song, like I can't figure out a way to smoothly cross Mastering chain A into Mastering Chain B? I hope that makes sense, I'm wondering how you go about doing that kind of thing? Like my volume automations into the chains just create issues with the original audio.
i have a question. i use Ableton, but i hear you can buy Imageline products and use them as plugins. in your opinion, or anyone's opinion in the comments even, is it more worth my money to get Maximus, or Ozone 7 Standard? i can't afford Ozone 7 Advanced atm.
I love your tutorials. The tips on how to use Maximus' waveshaper to create distortion saved me a few bucks (Yes, it's not as sophisticated as Ohmicide or other specialized products, but it's enough to get experimental and have fun). However, I keep thinking that, if Kids in the Hall's Gavin grew old, he'd kinda sound like you right now. Probably it's a certain Canadian thing we foreigners are unaware of. Take care.
When you normalized the track, the db went up past 0, and then you compressed with the Maximus multi band compressor. How does someone master a track that has an original mix under 0 db?
+TheAptimn Eh. This is not good advice at all then. Regardless of whether you are mastering within the project or mastering an exported file, the more you saturate, the less dynamic range you have. The sounds will not compliment each other. It will just be noisy and unpleasant to the listener's ear. The master wave shape should look like the original one we see in the vid, but it should have the volume level of the second one he shows that he had already mastered. I figured out how to do it
AZKILLER01 Don't try to copy SeamlessR's mastering, even if you're using Maximus. He mastered his song the way he did because it makes sure the drums and the rest of the song have less of a volume difference. Try to use Maximus like that.
Mix the track until you think it sounds good, keep the master channel to max -6dB without limiting, export as wav, load wav file so you cant mess around with leveles of your mixer tracks anymore so if you screwed up somewhere, you learn where you should pay more attention next time you mix, put compressor on it, make sure you compress just enough to have peaks max at 2db so the sound doesnt feel as squashed as if you had peaks over it, but thats max u are aiming for, put eq on master channel, cut frequencies lower than 30hz or whatever you think sounds better to you, because those frequencies we cant hear can make track muddy for some reason, cut 20khz, put multiband compressor, compress lows, mids and highs to what sounds good for you, open eq again, boost wide areas to max 1-1.5 db and reduce max -2 db where you think it sounds muddy, most of the times you want to reduce mids, because there is where mud of the track usualy is, put limiter, set you limit to -0.3db, boost gain until you have peaks max at 3-4 db on the loudest part, just listen to the track, you will be able to tell if you are squashing the sound too hard or not, you can even go with higher peaks if your track feels and sounds the way you wanted it to sound, if you start losing some elements, just reduce gain, or bring treshold up. Im not the professional, this is just the way i am doing this, try it out, and correct me if im wrong. And if you are selling beats, you dont want to compress it that hard, because there should be a dynamic range for rapper to rap over your beat, so he doesnt have to scream as a madman, you want to keep everything including peaks at max -0.3db, so their engeneer has enough space to master it later when vocals are laid.
For me my computer struggles with processing and cpu and so i tend to do mastering in another project. Do you think it is worth the cpu and latency just to get that bass sound? Is the difference of mixing into compressors that major?
You should do another episode of production basics on music theory. I want to know how to build 4,5,6-note chords, and in what order it is better to put them.
can someone please explain to me why some producers say not to boost any frequencies on the eq, or not to eq anything at all except for cutting out the low ends... and then I come here and seamless does the exact opposite of that? I'm kinda lost at what I should be doing now :/ any advice?
+Bren Right. Okay, so sometimes, boosting a frequency is necessary, sometimes cutting them is necessary. During production, a lot of sounds that are strongest in higher frequencies, rather than the lower ones, say...(this is an example, mind you) between 1-3kHz, right? So for such a sound(between 1-3kHz) to be processed without much overlap into unwanted frequencies, suppose that those frequencies, in this case, are the lowend, one would want to cut off the lowend from this synth/sound using EQ. Which appears to be what you have picked from what producers advise. Now, if the sound is stronger in the lower freqs, then the vice versa would be done; you could cut some of the higher frequencies, for example in a subby bass, or a subbass, to avoid freq overlap (see picture: download.autodesk.com/us/systemdocs/help/extensions/2009/flame/images/MED/VxF/Help/English/audio_desk/ink_svg/AUD_EQ_editor_1.png). Now that's for basic mixing. Cutting frequencies means you want to hear less of them, or none, whilst boosting means you want to hear more of them, or all of them, each dependent on how much cutting or boosting you make. That is the basic purpose for cutting and boosting with EQ. So to get into slightly more complex mixing, one can consider boosting freqs. Which is up to the producer himself, regardless of what you might have heard. If you the producer, feel like you want to hear more click in a kick, you could boost at about 200Hz for a nice click. Boost too much, and it might start to sound too sharp. But that's up to you, and you alone, if you want it to sound like that. That's the gist of my comment here, I want to emphasize that as a producer, you have so much freedom with your DAW, so you could do something to a sound, that would be frowned upon by some, but if it sounds good to you, and you understand what you did(knowing exactly what you are doing to the sound is important), you should be good. By that I mean, you should know that you're adding click to a kick, not just playing around with different knobs carelessly, though experimenting is good, in some cases, but that's a whole other thing. I'll use myself as an example. The way I master would have sound engineers losing their heads, they would probably give me a handful of not so friendly words. But it sounds good to me, and I know exactly what I'm doing to the mixdown, so i do it anyways, because it's my way and I like it. Hope I helped answer your question. Regards, Kojau
+kojau MUSIC You're a legend man, thanks for going so out of your way to explain so in-depth to me, I did a bit more research and found that mid/side stereo eqing also helped me find a few answers. I did a test project and boosted what frequencies I thought needed a little more lift in the synths and the results were amazing when I compared the two in the final process of mastering. Thank you again for being a bro!
+Peters Zeug clearly it is important to be loud in order to match your tracks against other producers especially with DJ mixes. also it just makes the whole track sound fuller with less power
***** To me, mastering means giving a song a balanced sound. If the mix is already balanced, you just need to limit it to 0db. Of course, the master is louder than the mix, but not so much, just a little.
EricTheYounger No, that's exactly not what you should go for. In a club, you have big bass heavy speakers. A dynamic track with a lot of bass works well in a club, and a DJ always matches the loudness of tracks. If you make your track uber-laut, you destroy it, and it won't like a well mastered song in a club.
+Peters Zeug clearly it's the dj's fault if the speakers are blown out every time a properly mastered track comes on. and if loudness isn't so important then why does every single professional track ever spend 90% of it's time at 0db? just look at the waveform. the common misconception is that dynamics correspond directly to amplitude of the waveform; this isn't true because dynamics are actually a complex psychoacoustic process...the pros can master a track to spend more time at 0db AND STILL show more dynamics in their tracks.
Danny Rash it depends. if you do it like him (master while mixing), then yes you should have the mastering plugins (maximus, fruity limiter etc) on your master channel during the making of the track. If you master a rendered (unmastered) audio file in a separate project then only have a limiter. for the second method the limiter should NOT be limiting on the unmastered project as that would mean it was peaking at 0db like the mastered track should. you want no compression on your pre-master.
I really liked this video, great explaining. btw have you used Ozone? I would really love to hear some scientific style explanation, and I am sure lot of people are using ozone and are willing for at least short video about it
I think he already answered this in a stream. if i remember correctly he said that maximus can pretty much do everything ozone can, and even more, its just more complicated. i would pretty much say the same. maximus is freakin awesome
is there a reason why so many people have an avatar with a semicircle, filled in with dots, with something in the middle? is this in reference to something?
im confused about one thing. u had it normalized then you un normilized it to 0 db. so if i mixed it to -6 db do i normalize it to 0 db when i render it out then master? sorry if this is a dumb question.
I don't mean this to be critical, but the mastered version to me, has a lot of dampened areas as if there is a high volume of sound being squeezed under tremendous pressure. Is that normal?
lol I knew you would make a video about mastering after that rude comment from someone on your last video..... I respect you educational approach on a topic that is always confused....
at 6:17 you say ''This guy spends more time at 0 db'' you had a little pause after it, i think you realised as well that wasn't the clearest explanation, i dont know anything about mastering, and this point made me feel like you skipped a part
Yes. I have the mastering chain on as early as possible and build the track with it engaged. "as early as possible" is usually whenever I've got a significant amount of the sound design for whatever drop there is done + drums.
Do you accept taking requests for looking at someone's track, hearing what they have so far, and how they went about doing so, so you can spot what's missing, or something that they're not doing right/well, and give them them pointers and tips on how they can improve as an artist on that certain area they're weak on? You know, kinda like helping them out a bit, letting them know if they're on right track?
it was a quite good tutorial, you explained very much, in a way i could understand it, but i first thought and hoped this tutorial would show like, how you achieved that mastered example from the mixed example or maybe i just forgot it or didnt here it :p
pls seamless can u show us slowly ur settings used to achive this sausage shaped wave i love ur craft and i compare other ppls song on my fl studio playlist and they always do appear in that block form...pls i beg u just show me carefully ur diff settings for it on the diff bands....and ur really fast with ur english men lol...but i admire u a lot
if someone sees this and can answer me it would make my day. When i look at my master channel its peaking 0db after i've boosted the volume within izotope and such. But how come when i listen to other tracks, they sound so much louder? How do I achive this? Because if i higher the volume on the intruments and my synths the mix goes way beyond -4b, how do I achive a louder track?? Someone who understands this? :)
It's just that those other tracks you're talking about are compressed af thanks to, usually, a brickwall limiter with high gain at the very end of the master chain The "other people's tracks sound louder" feeling is actually a real problem, search for Loudness War on the web; and even tho it is more commonly accepted to have a smaller, narrower dynamic range in EDM than in other genres I beg you to not over-compress you tracks, not only if you set your limiter incorrectly you'll be rewarded with clearly audible unwanted distortion but above all it will make your track unpleasant to ear because of how loud and constant it is (as in it's always nearing 0 db). Tho that's probably not the straightforward answer you wanted so here's my trick on how to make your track sound as loud as possible: instead of using a simple brickwall limiter at the end of the master use a multiband compressor… but, you'd want to set it so that the 200 Hz - 3 kHz area stand out a bit from the rest
Well apparently I can't fit more words into a YT comment… But yeah turns out this frequency range is the one we're the most sensitive to. But if you're not feeling too hot about using a multiband compressor, or simply don't have one, I'm sure a simple eq coupled with the aforementioned limiter could do the trick.
It is one of the default templates you can choose from when starting a new project. Open FL Studio, go to "File" > "New from template" and there you go. (You've probably figured it out after two months :P)
Totally what I expected, you kept my opinion that mastering isn't that big deal. Also, SeamlessR : in Reaper there is Rea-XComp (you can get their plugins for any DAW for free), which has unlimited bands (so has EQ). Also FabFilter stuff.
I find it difficult to understand how to use maximus no matter how many tuts I watch on it. I know how a basic compressor behaves but I find that all the visual information + graph manipulation in maximus adds confusion. :/
Thanks a lot sir .. for this video i was looking for a better stuff ... and this is dope ... keep teaching us .. love ur work i also want to produce edm and the midrange bass stuff.... i am learning a lot from you .... respect 👆💪💣🎵🙏
You can use WaveShaper for compression on the master, right? I don't have Producer Edition and Maximus, I crie evritim. Oh wait, you just not to, okay, oops.
Nice video, but sometimes it was really hard to follow you :D I'm not a native english speaker, so when you started speaking really fast I didn't understand you :D
Rewatching this after many years. Still the gold standard. The quality of your advice and teaching is in a league of its own. Kudos.
9 years, and this information is still gold!!
Thank you so much, Seamless!
You reminded me of Sponge Bob. "So if we play loud people might think we're good. *Note Plays*." "Maybe we should play so soft nobody can hear us."
Finally a bullshit free tutorial. Rather than a tutorial its just a concept discussion. Everyone from every level of production can get something from this. Great keep up the job.
Awesome, been waiting for your concepts on this in depth,
It's hard to dive into mastering without going into a million things, and I mean a million.
Alot of my mastering is going back into the mix, making changes, and finding the most spacial leveling i can get out of my textures. It's a battle between hitting the right RMS and not destroying the transients and dynamics, I make mostly spacial stereo wide atmospheric music though, so it's a little different than hard hitting 4/4, but honestly the true definition has changed from the older days.
original drop - 1:47
Mastered - 2:39
hear the difference
Holy shit. That's a huge difference
PlxxRotMG yeah
"You can't polish a turd." Work on your mixes, people! Great video Seamless.
I made it 10 minutes in before getting lost... I'm proud of myself
If you have any questions just holler.
Don't feel bad even he gets lost at 30:48
My way of mastering: Produce/mix with a -6dB headroom, sausage fattener on the master + limiter, done
13:40 was the best part
+Radiant Rayv lol what happened to his voice?
That part just made my day! XD
I went to that part and died! lol
im dead
amazing
Best way to describe mastering in one word. Enhancement.
15:07 THE PASSION IS REAL
Hey @SeamlessR, names CJ. I have a quick question if you have a moment. You say that you run all the audio into the master within the main project file, then print the audio to wav-file or format and your done. But how do you normalize all the audio to zero db from the main file to run into the master bus? Do your normalize all your audio files or track channels after everything is done, the arrangement, mix down and etc., then have them run into the limiter? Or is there another step to normalizing that I'm just unaware of that you are doing? It looks like from this tutorial that you may be able to just normalize a file with in FL, if that was what you where doing when you where switching the "pre master's" size. I use ableton live and the only way to normalize in it I believe is to export audio then bring it back into the project so. Should I do that when the whole mix with out the limiter on it. Or do you have another idea as to how I can solve this issue.
Best video on mastering I ever saw. Really. Everything makes sense and I improved the final result of my mixes a lot with the stuff you talked about here.
And all these people bitching about compressing too much... YOU don't need to compress too much, in fact you don't even need to compress at all and maybe your songs will be good if you do the rest well and compensate with some other technique like volume automation track by track or whatever. But I bet that most of you can't get shitty results out of and compressor, and that is most of the reason of so much bs.
Only thing is how do I know how my master should sound before the song is completed? Do you create most of the track and then apply the master chain?
I have a question.
First, thanks for the awesome tutorial, really appreciate it!!!
When you tweeked the different bands of the premaster you said that we should really have a feel for it and that the kick and bass peeks were at 0 and -6dB totally by accident and so on, but the master's ceiling was set to 0dB. This may sound stupid but is that kind of like a standard, like the ceiling should always be set to 0dB for mastering, or we should go by feel here aswell?
Thanks! Mastering is a tough concept for me so a pt.2 would be very helpful.
I use clip distortion to push the drop area over the 0db limit for soft clipping. Only for the drop though. Helps make the drop more impactful and saves dynamic range in the break
nice vid thanks , ...
hey seamless do you play at clubs or raves ?
if you do , how does one start booking shows ,
and how does someone tour to other countries ,
for example let's say I was ready to start playing , and I want to tour Europe but I live in the USA ,do I contact a club in Europe first and ask if I can play and that I live in the u.s and I'm willing to fly/travel, or do I save money ,rent an apartment ,AMD ask around once I'm their ...IDK maybe I'll google it , ...
Love the philisophical discussion on mastering too, most people miss out on that aspect.
I hope I didn't lose you... I was asleep 3 hours before watching this and after I just wanna go back to bed
Why do we use separate sub bass ? I mean sometimes i would like to keep the patch's original bass because it has some small movement in it. In what cases, we should prefer using sub ?
Do whatever you want, man... There is no rules :)
Spoke yes it is correct but sometimes I just don't know what to do :D
We don't, if the sound you use already has enough subbass than there is no need to eq it and replace it with a new sub. But sometimes or quite often actually, if you don't frequency split, you can get some troubled peaks in the sub region if you've done lots of modulation on the sound. So one way to have a stable sub that is a part of the original sound is to split frequencies into at least two bands, so you can leave the sub intact.
PrivacyEnt Well, using a separate sub bass is nice when it comes to mixing... It's easier to mix a sub bass that is alone, in a single audio channel, in my opinion...
Plus, to make your bass more significant having a sub layer + another bass layer (between 70Hz/130Hz) is very nice, as well... This way you have two bass layers and your whole track will sound more "full"... That's the way I do it, and I think it's okay to do it that way...
But one thing production has taught me is that there is no real rules when it comes to inventivity... You just do your stuff and make sure it sounds nice enough ! :)
Hope I helped you ! :)
Excellent phrasing and emphasis on so many things man keep going
Is there some kind of template how should the ending spectrum analyzer curve should look like, is it advised to use a pink noise as a base shape?
I don't use templates. You could probably make one but that would only work if your music doesn't change much track to track.
Don't focus too much on the visuals. They are helpful for understanding what's happening, but I advise against trying to adhere to a certain shape over going by what you're hearing.
As for referencing, if you want to compare your master to something, I recommend comparing it to a track done by someone you like that you KNOW sounds good in the genre that you're making.
SeamlessR
I don't mean I want to base my song entirely on fancy curves from analyzer, but sometimes my music sounds like shit outside of my headphones on different devices (or should i say even shittier).
As to referencing to other artists in similiar genre, I find it kinda hard cause I'm trying to do a thing called "electronic rock" (but it's actually DnB) with lead guitar which is not really popular in the music industry I guess and makes mixing a pain in the ass. That's also the reason I find your tutorials insanely helpful mainly the part when you use guitar and mix it with talking bass and really looking forward for the incoming ones
can you put the parametic eq and maximus presets in the description?
I might have missed something, with all the multiband compression where does he do the post-gain?
Alex blue knob
use bitcrusher
not when mastering
On a master? DEAR GOD.
21:35 That would be called upward compression though, not expansion. You're bringing up the valleys. So to expand a signal in Maximus you'd need to pull the lower-left curve down and the upper-right curve up.
Confused on something. You said you cut the low end off of your kick drum. How did you single out the low frequencies and retain the quality of the high frequencies? Did you just duplicate the sound and have them set to two different mixer tracks with one having the low end and the other having the high end? Or was that sound when you were soloing the low end through maximus just the product of purely having the low end playing solo? Also when you said you high passed the low end of everything did u literally cut the entire low end off of every other sound around 150 hz or something? I've heard some tracks from artist that it really sounded like this was the case but the last time I tried something like that it came out sounding like junk lol. I'm def not very good with compression tho. I either end up with too much or not enough. Also on the low end of maximus you have the graph cut off low and then a straight shot up a bit near the middle. Was the lower part with upward curved transient touching more the sub base and the top part just preserving the peak of the kick drum or something? It made me curious because you had your sub on a shelf and I don't quite have studio quality speakers or headphones to test my bass with and I've wondered for a long time how that would affect the difference in peaks between sub bass and kick drum. One more thing. You use soft saturation as a limiting tool in a way but on the master your track is sitting at like +6db. Does the saturation literally override the compression ceiling and distort it or does it still boost over 0 db and compress the distorted sound? It was hard to tell because the purple over hang above the celing made it look like the normal compression was still taking effect, even with the saturation distorting things. Would much appreciate any input and this was a really good vid all around. Two thumbs up and keep that bass kickin!
Okay! So I have a question,
Where does the soft saturation knob inside maximus add its effect in the signal route through the compressor? Does the effect get added AFTER the compression or before the compression?
Reason is - I may want to try some 3rd party compressor/saturation plugins for mastering at the end of the signal chain. What would you suggest, before comp or after comp?
Thanks.
how do you make those peaks on same repetition level bro?
what is going on with the panning knobs in the different band sections? why is the bass not mono?
I believe the low-end is not mono'd because the rendered version was already in said stage.
what i dont get is: u have the maximus running when u write your song/track to avoid "surprises" when done, so how do u set up maximus before u have some writen ??
Niculta [official] he said he set it up when he has enough goin on say like a good 15 seconds of drop
I don't know whether you still respond to the comments section on this video, but it'd be appreciated if you could, struggling to find a way to crossover two Maximus chains without them creating a problem or phase in the song, like I can't figure out a way to smoothly cross Mastering chain A into Mastering Chain B? I hope that makes sense, I'm wondering how you go about doing that kind of thing? Like my volume automations into the chains just create issues with the original audio.
If I put a maximus on the master half way through a track when I've already mixed the peak/climax, would it be okay leave it there...?
i have a question. i use Ableton, but i hear you can buy Imageline products and use them as plugins. in your opinion, or anyone's opinion in the comments even, is it more worth my money to get Maximus, or Ozone 7 Standard? i can't afford Ozone 7 Advanced atm.
Whats your tips for mastering vocals after all the mixing has been done?? like blending vocals in with a beat from youtube
TheGumpyKid that would be done in the mix down
Please answer, im spanish and i dont understand it. With saturation B I get clipping. Then? What i have to do?
I love your tutorials. The tips on how to use Maximus' waveshaper to create distortion saved me a few bucks (Yes, it's not as sophisticated as Ohmicide or other specialized products, but it's enough to get experimental and have fun).
However, I keep thinking that, if Kids in the Hall's Gavin grew old, he'd kinda sound like you right now. Probably it's a certain Canadian thing we foreigners are unaware of.
Take care.
One question : make mono all below around 400Hz is just for the Master or it's good to do it on a single channel too?
Wat is the attack time for the lowend.?
When you normalized the track, the db went up past 0, and then you compressed with the Maximus multi band compressor. How does someone master a track that has an original mix under 0 db?
I think he shows how to do it - he simply saturates the track bands using Maximus.
+TheAptimn Eh. This is not good advice at all then. Regardless of whether you are mastering within the project or mastering an exported file, the more you saturate, the less dynamic range you have. The sounds will not compliment each other. It will just be noisy and unpleasant to the listener's ear. The master wave shape should look like the original one we see in the vid, but it should have the volume level of the second one he shows that he had already mastered. I figured out how to do it
i have the same problem :/ i tried adding more low, mid and high freq. but it turned out shit :c
AZKILLER01 Don't try to copy SeamlessR's mastering, even if you're using Maximus. He mastered his song the way he did because it makes sure the drums and the rest of the song have less of a volume difference. Try to use Maximus like that.
Mix the track until you think it sounds good, keep the master channel to max -6dB without limiting, export as wav, load wav file so you cant mess around with leveles of your mixer tracks anymore so if you screwed up somewhere, you learn where you should pay more attention next time you mix, put compressor on it, make sure you compress just enough to have peaks max at 2db so the sound doesnt feel as squashed as if you had peaks over it, but thats max u are aiming for, put eq on master channel, cut frequencies lower than 30hz or whatever you think sounds better to you, because those frequencies we cant hear can make track muddy for some reason, cut 20khz, put multiband compressor, compress lows, mids and highs to what sounds good for you, open eq again, boost wide areas to max 1-1.5 db and reduce max -2 db where you think it sounds muddy, most of the times you want to reduce mids, because there is where mud of the track usualy is, put limiter, set you limit to -0.3db, boost gain until you have peaks max at 3-4 db on the loudest part, just listen to the track, you will be able to tell if you are squashing the sound too hard or not, you can even go with higher peaks if your track feels and sounds the way you wanted it to sound, if you start losing some elements, just reduce gain, or bring treshold up. Im not the professional, this is just the way i am doing this, try it out, and correct me if im wrong. And if you are selling beats, you dont want to compress it that hard, because there should be a dynamic range for rapper to rap over your beat, so he doesnt have to scream as a madman, you want to keep everything including peaks at max -0.3db, so their engeneer has enough space to master it later when vocals are laid.
For me my computer struggles with processing and cpu and so i tend to do mastering in another project. Do you think it is worth the cpu and latency just to get that bass sound? Is the difference of mixing into compressors that major?
You should do another episode of production basics on music theory. I want to know how to build 4,5,6-note chords, and in what order it is better to put them.
can someone please explain to me why some producers say not to boost any frequencies on the eq, or not to eq anything at all except for cutting out the low ends... and then I come here and seamless does the exact opposite of that? I'm kinda lost at what I should be doing now :/ any advice?
+Bren In the mastering phase?
+kojau MUSIC During the production of the track I meant to say sorry!
+Bren Right. Okay, so sometimes, boosting a frequency is necessary, sometimes cutting them is necessary. During production, a lot of sounds that are strongest in higher frequencies, rather than the lower ones, say...(this is an example, mind you) between 1-3kHz, right? So for such a sound(between 1-3kHz) to be processed without much overlap into unwanted frequencies, suppose that those frequencies, in this case, are the lowend, one would want to cut off the lowend from this synth/sound using EQ. Which appears to be what you have picked from what producers advise. Now, if the sound is stronger in the lower freqs, then the vice versa would be done; you could cut some of the higher frequencies, for example in a subby bass, or a subbass, to avoid freq overlap (see picture: download.autodesk.com/us/systemdocs/help/extensions/2009/flame/images/MED/VxF/Help/English/audio_desk/ink_svg/AUD_EQ_editor_1.png). Now that's for basic mixing. Cutting frequencies means you want to hear less of them, or none, whilst boosting means you want to hear more of them, or all of them, each dependent on how much cutting or boosting you make. That is the basic purpose for cutting and boosting with EQ. So to get into slightly more complex mixing, one can consider boosting freqs. Which is up to the producer himself, regardless of what you might have heard. If you the producer, feel like you want to hear more click in a kick, you could boost at about 200Hz for a nice click. Boost too much, and it might start to sound too sharp. But that's up to you, and you alone, if you want it to sound like that. That's the gist of my comment here, I want to emphasize that as a producer, you have so much freedom with your DAW, so you could do something to a sound, that would be frowned upon by some, but if it sounds good to you, and you understand what you did(knowing exactly what you are doing to the sound is important), you should be good. By that I mean, you should know that you're adding click to a kick, not just playing around with different knobs carelessly, though experimenting is good, in some cases, but that's a whole other thing. I'll use myself as an example. The way I master would have sound engineers losing their heads, they would probably give me a handful of not so friendly words. But it sounds good to me, and I know exactly what I'm doing to the mixdown, so i do it anyways, because it's my way and I like it. Hope I helped answer your question.
Regards,
Kojau
+kojau MUSIC You're a legend man, thanks for going so out of your way to explain so in-depth to me, I did a bit more research and found that mid/side stereo eqing also helped me find a few answers. I did a test project and boosted what frequencies I thought needed a little more lift in the synths and the results were amazing when I compared the two in the final process of mastering. Thank you again for being a bro!
+Bren You're most welcome. Glad I could help out
If you want something to be loud, turn up the volume of your speakers or headphones ;)
***** It isn't.
+Peters Zeug clearly it is important to be loud in order to match your tracks against other producers especially with DJ mixes. also it just makes the whole track sound fuller with less power
***** To me, mastering means giving a song a balanced sound. If the mix is already balanced, you just need to limit it to 0db.
Of course, the master is louder than the mix, but not so much, just a little.
EricTheYounger No, that's exactly not what you should go for. In a club, you have big bass heavy speakers. A dynamic track with a lot of bass works well in a club, and a DJ always matches the loudness of tracks.
If you make your track uber-laut, you destroy it, and it won't like a well mastered song in a club.
+Peters Zeug clearly it's the dj's fault if the speakers are blown out every time a properly mastered track comes on. and if loudness isn't so important then why does every single professional track ever spend 90% of it's time at 0db? just look at the waveform. the common misconception is that dynamics correspond directly to amplitude of the waveform; this isn't true because dynamics are actually a complex psychoacoustic process...the pros can master a track to spend more time at 0db AND STILL show more dynamics in their tracks.
What's the difference between a premaster and the final mixdown?
Destin Moffett same thing
very good advice about the consistency of the bass :)
Now that the new LUFS Protocol is in effect. Will Mastering compression see a drastic change? @SeamlessR
This is an old video so you may not reply, but should we not have a Maximus or Limiter on the master track while we are still making the track?
Danny Rash it depends. if you do it like him (master while mixing), then yes you should have the mastering plugins (maximus, fruity limiter etc) on your master channel during the making of the track. If you master a rendered (unmastered) audio file in a separate project then only have a limiter. for the second method the limiter should NOT be limiting on the unmastered project as that would mean it was peaking at 0db like the mastered track should. you want no compression on your pre-master.
I really liked this video, great explaining. btw have you used Ozone? I would really love to hear some scientific style explanation, and I am sure lot of people are using ozone and are willing for at least short video about it
I think he already answered this in a stream. if i remember correctly he said that maximus can pretty much do everything ozone can, and even more, its just more complicated. i would pretty much say the same. maximus is freakin awesome
is there a reason why so many people have an avatar with a semicircle, filled in with dots, with something in the middle? is this in reference to something?
noncanadian It's the edm district
Fever Factory
ty
Considering this video is most likely aimed at beginners, you sure do have a very intricate way of explaining things
You lost me, man. But I did get to understand mastering a bit better. Thanks for this
So how do we know when to use mastering, and how do we know when we do it right?
Is Saugaging a good thing or a bad thing?
what happend to you in 13:42 ???)
im confused about one thing. u had it normalized then you un normilized it to 0 db. so if i mixed it to -6 db do i normalize it to 0 db when i render it out then master? sorry if this is a dumb question.
***** Thank you!
13:35 what happened???? :'D
OMG I'M DEAD THX FOR THAT❤️
I don't mean this to be critical, but the mastered version to me, has a lot of dampened areas as if there is a high volume of sound being squeezed under tremendous pressure. Is that normal?
lol I knew you would make a video about mastering after that rude comment from someone on your last video..... I respect you educational approach on a topic that is always confused....
at 6:17 you say ''This guy spends more time at 0 db'' you had a little pause after it, i think you realised as well that wasn't the clearest explanation, i dont know anything about mastering, and this point made me feel like you skipped a part
Okay just to clarify, Do you have anything on the master channel when building the initial track ?
Yes. I have the mastering chain on as early as possible and build the track with it engaged. "as early as possible" is usually whenever I've got a significant amount of the sound design for whatever drop there is done + drums.
Gaaah, I dont want to hear this track before the EP comes out. Guess I'll have to learn about mastering when it comes out.
Thanks for an awesome tutorial! It helped a lot :)
Oh no way! Love your music man, why no more uploads though?
you my inspiration brotheeeeeeeer
wait I don't get it. When you master you shouldn't use clipping distortion because speakers will react different to it, is that correct?
Yes.
its been allmost a year.. thx man, much love
Again, all the time comments i want to answer to are year+ old ._.
Do you accept taking requests for looking at someone's track, hearing what they have so far, and how they went about doing so, so you can spot what's missing, or something that they're not doing right/well, and give them them pointers and tips on how they can improve as an artist on that certain area they're weak on? You know, kinda like helping them out a bit, letting them know if they're on right track?
it was a quite good tutorial, you explained very much, in a way i could understand it, but i first thought and hoped this tutorial would show like, how you achieved that mastered example from the mixed example or maybe i just forgot it or didnt here it :p
Awesome. I re-watch this from time to time and I allways learn something new :D
Anyway, thanks a lot!
Yea man! Big up from Tel Aviv
Hahahah 13:40 xD Wtf was that?? x)
I can't stop laughing at the CC/subtitles it doesn't even make sense of what he's talking about in this video LOL
um.... sir ! i have a question , please tell me what an AMP vst doing ?
Judging by it's name, it does the same thing that happens when you turn up the volume knob.
Captain Topkek im not black
pls seamless can u show us slowly ur settings used to achive this sausage shaped wave i love ur craft and i compare other ppls song on my fl studio playlist and they always do appear in that block form...pls i beg u just show me carefully ur diff settings for it on the diff bands....and ur really fast with ur english men lol...but i admire u a lot
do you make trap beats
Hey seamless, just wanted to ask, when mastering, the main point is to hit 6 DB or 0 DB?
Richy Brosive! 0dB
if someone sees this and can answer me it would make my day.
When i look at my master channel its peaking 0db after i've boosted the volume within izotope and such. But how come when i listen to other tracks, they sound so much louder? How do I achive this? Because if i higher the volume on the intruments and my synths the mix goes way beyond -4b, how do I achive a louder track?? Someone who understands this? :)
Ozone i mean***
reply me tomorrow and ill explain
ok:)
It's just that those other tracks you're talking about are compressed af thanks to, usually, a brickwall limiter with high gain at the very end of the master chain
The "other people's tracks sound louder" feeling is actually a real problem, search for Loudness War on the web; and even tho it is more commonly accepted to have a smaller, narrower dynamic range in EDM than in other genres I beg you to not over-compress you tracks, not only if you set your limiter incorrectly you'll be rewarded with clearly audible unwanted distortion but above all it will make your track unpleasant to ear because of how loud and constant it is (as in it's always nearing 0 db).
Tho that's probably not the straightforward answer you wanted so here's my trick on how to make your track sound as loud as possible: instead of using a simple brickwall limiter at the end of the master use a multiband compressor… but, you'd want to set it so that the 200 Hz - 3 kHz area stand out a bit from the rest
Well apparently I can't fit more words into a YT comment…
But yeah turns out this frequency range is the one we're the most sensitive to. But if you're not feeling too hot about using a multiband compressor, or simply don't have one, I'm sure a simple eq coupled with the aforementioned limiter could do the trick.
My CPU goes nuts when I slap ozone 7 on the master bus.
Alex W. Lol
so do I and so does mine X)
Did you ever release this? Is it a song? Cause I wanna listen to it!
He did, its called Truck Puncher on "The 'R' Is Silent"
Good song btw. lol
CMoIsDaNam3 Ah, thanks!
+CrimsonTek Np.
can anyone explain why is there fruity limiter in master channel as default?
I dont use fl, but I can only guess to protect your ears/equipment in case the amplitude gets ridiculously high
Modic That actually makes sense!
+Electric Forest Lol, thanks
It is one of the default templates you can choose from when starting a new project. Open FL Studio, go to "File" > "New from template" and there you go.
(You've probably figured it out after two months :P)
Seamless brother you are a fucking legend, I have learned soo much from you, thank you
Totally what I expected, you kept my opinion that mastering isn't that big deal. Also, SeamlessR : in Reaper there is Rea-XComp (you can get their plugins for any DAW for free), which has unlimited bands (so has EQ). Also FabFilter stuff.
I find it difficult to understand how to use maximus no matter how many tuts I watch on it. I know how a basic compressor behaves but I find that all the visual information + graph manipulation in maximus adds confusion. :/
Try Multiband compressor instead. It is pretty much the same thing.
Seamless homeboy, what monitors do you use/recommend to playback through?
I had already watched the vid twice, but with the third shot I actually understood a few things :DD
I've heard dat song!!! Wats the name? :)
I appreciate your videos so much!!
Song name??????
SeamlessR - Boombox Jive
Great Seamless!
@15:10
well meme'd my friend
Thanks a lot sir .. for this video i was looking for a better stuff ... and this is dope ... keep teaching us .. love ur work i also want to produce edm and the midrange bass stuff.... i am learning a lot from you .... respect 👆💪💣🎵🙏
You can use WaveShaper for compression on the master, right? I don't have Producer Edition and Maximus, I crie evritim. Oh wait, you just not to, okay, oops.
Nice video, but sometimes it was really hard to follow you :D I'm not a native english speaker, so when you started speaking really fast I didn't understand you :D
I'm a native English speaker myself and I still find it hard to follow myself lol you're not alone
I learned a fuck ton of english by just watching his tutorials. I can understand him just fine :D
Yeah he could talk more calm, really disturbing ;/
Lets Fly To Pluto! lol that's awesome.
Novalight Damn.. you're so right!
Thank you so much.
Thank you for these videos, i learned a lot. : )
13:59 It's Lester from GTA V
I learned so much thnx
WHERE IS MY FRIEND PICTURE :(
Watched the whole 35 minutes of it and understood nothing :D
haha I see what you mean XD
Watch it again, until you get it
I understood that you have to master your tracks before recording/production.
Watch other guides and examples, this one is pretty bad in ideas expounding imho
Same. It's so hard man
Love this guy :) always gives amazing típ.