Quote:
Originally Posted by Xurtio
Thanks, much appreciated. As a hobby masterer, do you have any caveats for recording that you come across when mixing and think "I wish they wouldn't have done that..."
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Yea, people have a tendency to record too hot. I noticed it in a couple of your songs. Basically, this is recording into a digital recording medium where certain parts exceed 0db, and you get a really nasty distortion sound. This can't be removed, and is often exacerbated during mastering because of compression and limiting. Most mastering engineers will mandate that the tracks that have overlimited be re-recorded, but then again, most mix engineers worth their salt won't ever let that happen to begin with.
So, the biggest thing would be to record each element where the highest peak is well below 0 decibels on the mixer, specifically in digital world. Ideally the entire track when I receive it should be peaking no more than -6db. But the recording phase is most important, because if say, a bass is recorded too hot and overlimits, but everything else is fine, and upon mixdown the stereo bus isn't too hot, that recorded overlimit of the bass will still be there and you'll still hear the nasty distortion. Because it was recorded into the track and can't be taken out, even if the volume of the recorded track is reduced.
Another one is mix engineers putting a lot of compression on the master bus. This gets exaggerated a lot during mastering, and most mastering engineers will ask for another version with no compression (or anything else) on the master bus. This is a lot easier to manage than the previous issue, because it just requires the disabling of effects on the stereo channel rather than re-recording an instrument. (I didn't notice this problem with your songs)
Those are really the main two things, other than the main volume at the stereo summing bus being too hot and not allowing enough headroom for the mastering engineer. Your songs don't have that problem. I can tell just by the level at which I needed to listen to them at.
Your songs weren't mixed great, but they're legible and they fit to a style, so that's personal preference. My only beef is the overlimits on some of the instruments on some songs. That can't be taken out, so any amount of mastering is only going to make it more apparent. Whether that's acceptable or not as an average of how much better the song sounds as a whole is really the thing, but no professional audio engineer is going to take a recording/mixing engineer seriously if they record instruments too hot and creating digital distortion, and it's negative for the listener as well.
HTH