Reason and Mastering

A friend sent me this question:

"Thanks for listening and comments. I notice my Reason tracks are not as loud as yours on myspace how do get um louder? Is it a mastering thing?"

Mastering...

Ah, yes. LOL.

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Caveat:
I do not feel that mastering is some black art reserved for some mysterious person with super high end gear with ears that no one else has and can hear things no one else can, blah-blah-blah, that you send your tracks to and pay a ton of money to so that he/she can save you and your tracks and make you and your tracks better and more wonderful. Unless of course that makes you feel better to do that !!! Mastering is not an end all, do all. It can't save you. It's part of the process.

It's an art, science and skill, like mixing records, playing an instrument, cooking, open heart surgery, etc. Put the time in, learn as much as you can, practice a ton, and you too can begin the path to being someone who does "mastering" also.

Mastering can help make good mixes sound better and bad mixes sound not so bad. It's not a cure all though.

A letter grade is a fair and doable expectation from the mastering process.

Mastering has and had existed as a final QC type of thing to better prepare tracks for the final medium to be delivered on, such as vinyl, tape, CD, etc. and to often help the album/collection of songs/material be more cohesive and consistent and for the different pieces of material to flow better together as a whole, to get more balance, and these days, often to make things louder.

This can be done in various ways such as dynamics, eq, noise reduction, sample rate and bit depth conversion, ordering of tracks, etc. It depends on what is needed to help the tracks tell the story and to prepare the material for the final deliverable medium.

A really cool and awesome resource to learn more, is the book "Mastering Audio, the art and the science" by Bob Katz. Good stuff !!!

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I use the Mastering Suite in Reason on my Reason tracks. It's really cool and useful !!!

But I process individual things also. To get that volume, the balance, good, bad or indifferent, it seems better done in stages as opposed to hoping it can all be done by a magical mastering device.

Often on drum kits or individual drum sounds I will use various compressors and limiters. But EQ helps a lot to remove frequencies that might otherwise cause the compressors and limiters to misbehave as in squishy or pumping sounds. I tend to cut more than boost frequencies.

Such as, I use more than one kick drum often. Usually a main kick and a doom kick for accents and to bring in some DOOM !!! The doom kick I will allow to occupy the lowest of frequencies and allow the main kick to live in frequencies just above the doom kick. Then the frequencies above that will live the basses. Then everything else. These are not hard and fast rules, just guidelines and starting points that seem to workout more often then not.

I do this by "cutting holes" in the frequency bands of the different kicks and basses. They can't all be heard very well if they occupy the same frequency ranges. They need space to do their part in helping tell the story. I'll use the PEQ2 or M-Class eqs to do this.

I like the PEQ2 to put dips in. With a lower Q it can act like a filtering equalizer on the low or high end. The M-Class has a nice set of gentle eqs including shelves with Q that I like to use. That little bump in the Q can make a heck of a nice difference around the cutoff frequencies. Using the Lo Cut can help clean up a mix a lot.

A couple other handy things are the Scream 4, D11 Distortion and the ECF42 Filter. I often use those on things as eq and dynamics devices.

These ideas are used throughout my Reason tracks and instruments, not just drums and basses.

In the end, these help to get a more balanced, dynamic and under "control" mix which makes it easier in the final "master" to get a big fat punchy track.

Hope this helps.

Thanks.