Mastering??????

[wrxfiend]

So i'm smashing out beats and loops on my Maschine, once i get to a point where i'm happy with the track, it sounds good on the monitors nice and balanced, so I export the file as a wav, drag it on my ipod and go listen in my car.

The track sounds muddy, cloudy etc has booming bass but very quiet mid and high range?

Now i'm no engineer, but i'm slowly learning about decay, attack etc. I put a limiter on my master out in the Maschine daw, which stops any clipping if i boost certain groups output. but adding compressors and gates is where i lose it.

Searching on youtube for mastering techniques is like asking which car is better holden or ford?

Any ideas where i might find some decent knowledge on this subject?

Do any of you guys use Maschine or an MPC, would love to have some help

Cheers fellas

oh and when i export from maschine should i do it 24 bit or 16???????

[legunner]

Hmm have you tried exporting it before you start mastering so it'll be really quite? That should pretty much sound perfect because that's your mix down. Usually people would send that to pro mastering places but if you're doing it at home then it's a bit more difficult.

[JonnyB]

you have to mixdown your tracks first. you have to make sure that the master output is NOT hitting above -3db at the maximum (-6db is preferable)

The way i do this is i mute all the tracks and solo the kick drum, and have that peaking at around -10dbish or there abouts, i then slowly unmute more sounds and adjust their volumes to match the kicks, while always checking on the master output, continue doing this to all your tracks and sounds so that all their volumes are matching up to that of the kick drum, in the process of doing this if your master is starting to creep up to 0db, try eqing some things or lowering the kick a bit more then adjusting everything else accordingly.

your aim is to have everything eventually unmuted and the loudest part of your track hitting no more then -3db.

you then export this and this the (Mixed down version) you can not play this, it will seem pretty quiet to everything that has been mastered.

Now to master a track is a mind fuck, i just follow youtube video's or ask someone that knows how to do it to master for me (you just send them the mixdown and they can take it from there)

[overit]

+1 swiss

also if you can while mixing down try and swap between using your reference monitors and using some pretty normal hifi rig.

Because your car and most end users will be using basic hifi which colours the sound you really need to know it sounds ok played through both types of system too.

FYI: I dont produce though, my ears aren't good enough, I learnt the theories, tried a lot, gave up/ran out of time.

I do still bash togetehr ideas but I always collaborate with someone else to do mixdowns and mastering.

[russell]

Because your car and most end users will be using basic hifi which colours the sound you really need to know it sounds ok played through both types of system too.

unless you know someone who owns a club with a proper system and you can test your tracks out there.

[yizzle]

That was some solid gold from jonny b. Damn, gunna read that over and over.

[wrxfiend]

Wow cheers guys! JonnyB top stuff, will def try those techniques.

Have to keep reminding myself that ive only been at this production thing for about a year, its just frustrating when you know how you want it to sound and you think your on the right track, but it comes out shit.

Im gonna hit up my old man and his mates for info, they've been pro musos for years, its just daunting playing my stuff to them as they dont get the whole hip hop thing lol.

Again cheers for all the replies