Cheaply Soundproofing Your Room For Audio Mastering
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Written by John Rogers
I had to write a quick note on this, as I was reminded about it while thumbing through a popular mixing book that had a 15 page section on speaker resonance and room sound proofing.I must say, a very exciting 15 pages!Ha!
Way too much is made out of room sound proofing!I can audio master songs to perfection in an untreated basement, a huge studio room, in a bathroom, anywhere.I've done it all before.I can even master in my own backyard, with no walls!
Now, I would have to listen to a few reference tracks to learn a new environment.And some client feedback might be required.But after a couple hours, I could master anything in any space.At least 15,000 of the songs I've mastered were done in an untreated room.And my clients LOVED them all!
The proof is in the number of highly satisfied clients I've serviced, over 7,500.And the THOUSAND who were totally blown away by what I did with their music. You don't need foam or sound proofing on your walls.The important thing is to learn your environment, whatever it is.
If you want some foam or acoustic treatment in your room, buy it.You'll still have to learn how the room sounds after you install it.My point is you don't need it for audio mastering.
I've gotten in hundreds of remaster jobs that were originally mastered at studios with thousands of dollars worth of foam on their walls, and these masters were HORRENDOUS!A mash of distorted noise trainwreck!The foam did a lot of good here.Ha! {article 170}[layout]{/article}
The Music Production Secrets Series by John Rogers
I had to write a quick note on this, as I was reminded about it while thumbing through a popular mixing book that had a 15 page section on speaker resonance and room sound proofing.I must say, a very exciting 15 pages!Ha!
How much headroom before mastering should you leave in your mix? Here's the correct amount of headroom you should leave, using detailed graphic examples.
Here are the series of audio mastering software processors I've used on the over 30,000 songs I've mastered since 1999. In this video, I use mostly izotope ozone plugins because it's easier to explain using them. In real-life, I do mix in a few hardware pieces, and a waves plugin.
If you're looking for the best website hosting for musicians, bands, and music recording studios, here's my own personal experience with website hosting companies.
What does mastering do to a song? Your main goal in audio mastering is to replicate the sonic qualities of a well professionally mastered commercial song, in the same genre and style as the song mix you are working on.
In this video I do a quick A/B comparison of a few songs. In my audio mastering secrets video series, I get a lot more in-depth into exactly what you are trying to achieve sonically for your genre/style of music.
How to set mixing levels for each instrument is a question I see all over the Internet. I'm going to explain exactly how to set mixing levels in this article.
Since the begining of his solo career in 2008, I mastered over 80 songs with the top French recording artist NYLS. Great pop dance music with a lot of remixes. During his entire career (as of now), I mastered most of if not all the song he released. It was a great pleasure working with NYLS and Nico at Icon Records!
If you're into "do it yourself projects" my mastering book will show you EXACTLY how I mastered every style of music on this website. Get it here Audio Mastering Secrets!
The sound engineer scam, the online recording studio ripoff, whatever you want to call it. I hear about it 3-4 times a month from my clients, since 1999. It never changes!
The vibrato and tremolo effects both have their differences. But the vibrato and tremolo effects also sound very similar; both slightly wave and pulsate the pitch of an audio track. You have to hear it for yourself to understand the sound.
I would say YES, most people can become a great mastering engineer. I say this because most of the mixes I receive from clients are pretty good and I know the audio engineer (the band member with a computer) has only minimal training.He could easily be great if he put a little more study and practice time into it.And if he had this book to teach him what took me over 17 years to learn!Ha!
I started my career using the old analog stuff, since that was the only option.I incorporated digital software plugins as soon as they became available, but it took many years before computers were fast enough to run them in realtime.And also before they started making very high quality plugins.
If you've mixed songs in the past, you more than likely can use that same software for audio mastering. As long as you can add effects to the stereo/main out bus, you're good to go. Read more....
A lot of mastering engineers are afraid to make drastic changes to a mix they are working on. That, or they're stuck in the familiarity of always making only small changes.
In this video I show how you can turn a weak mix (definitely wouldn't call it bad) into a great sounding master, simply by pushing your levels a little more than you might be used to.
