Audio Mastering in Your Computer

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Original Photo by Mark Ewing. Golddisc used by kind permission of Karen

Kenney of SRT Mastering(www.soundrecordingtechnology.co.uk )

.

This buss in Steinberg'sCubase SX is dedicated to

mastering effects. As shown in

the routing view of the inserts,the EQ1 equaliser plug-in goes

before the L1 limiter; after thefader (shown in white) comes

the Double Delayand theUV22HRdithering plug-in. This

means that the level control

won't cut off the reverb tail orinterfere with the dithering.

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Audio Mastering In Your Computer : August 2004

Audio Mastering In Your ComputerHow to achieve classy-sounding results

Technique : Mastering

Many home recordists hope to perfect theirproductions by doing their own mastering ontheir studio computer. However, few seem toachieve the classy results they're after. Sohow much can you realistically achieve bygoing it alone, and what techniques will givethe highest-quality results?

Craig Anderton

Mastering is a vital part of the recording process, so much so that asubstantial amount of mythology is associated with it. We've all heardstories of high-pricedmastering engineers with mystical, proprietary gearbasedon gilded vacuum tubes salvaged from ancient Russian

submarines... or something similar. But we've also heard of computerstudio ownerswith a two-track editor and a few plug-ins who havestarted mastering their own material. What gives?

Can You Do Your Own Mastering?

Prior to the digital revolution, mastering had a very defined set offunctions. You brought your finished mixes on tape to a masteringengineer, who would often bounce them to another tape through varioussignal processors designed to sweetenthe sound. The tunes would thenbe assembled in the desired order, and acetate test pressings would bemade to evaluate the final product prior to mass-producing albums.Mastering was rightly regarded as an arcane, mystifying art. Fewmusicians had access to the high-end, expensive tools needed to domastering, nor did they have the experience of someone who hadlistened to thousands of recordings, and knew how to make themreadyfor the real world.

Today, the tools for qualitymastering are finally within the financial and technical reach of anyone who'sserious about recording. But 95 percent of mastering is not in the tools it's in the ears. Unlessyou have theears of a mastering engineer, you can't expect any plug-in to provide them for you. Besides, much of the pointof using a mastering engineer is to bring in an objective set of ears to make any needed changes prior torelease.

So does this mean only experts should attempt to do mastering? No. Firstly,not all mastering situations require a professional's touch. Maybeyou have alive recording that you want to give to friends or sell at gigs. Sure, you can justduplicate the mixes, but a mastered 'veneer' will give your listeners a betterexperience. Or perhaps you've recorded several tunes and want to test howthey flow together as an album.Why not master it yourself? After you've sortedout the order and such, you can always take the individual mixes to a promastering engineer. And when you do, you'll be able to talk about what you wantin more educated terms, because you're more familiar with the process, andyou'll have listened to your work with mastering in mind.

Besides, the only way to get good at anything is practice. For years, I used only

professional mastering engineers; I would never have dreamed of doingmastering myself.But I learned a lot from observing them, started mastering myown material, and now people hire me to master their recordings because theylike the results I get. Still, if you have any doubts whatsoever about yourabilities, seek out a professional who can present your music in the bestpossible light.

Most mastering is done with specialised digital audio editing programs such asSonic Foundry Sound Forge, Steinberg Wavelab, Bias Peak, Adobe Audition,and so on. These offer good navigation facilities, the ability to zoom in onwaveforms, pencil tools to draw out clicks,and plug-ins for mastering tasks(along with the ability to host third-party plug-ins). However, if your requirementsaren't too demanding, there are several ways to master using conventionalmultitrack recording programs. And, interestingly, some can even do tricksconventional digital audio editors can't.

Before You Master

The mastering process should actually begin with mixing, as there are several steps you can take whilemixing to make for easier mastering. You should do these whether you plan to mastermaterial yourself, orhand your project to a mastering engineer. If you recorded your music in high-resolution audio, then mix ashigh-resolution files. Maintain the higher resolution throughout the mastering process, and only dither down to16-bit at the very end, when you're about to create CDs. Do not dither individual mixes, and don't add anyfades while mixing fades and crossfades should be done while mastering, when you have a better sense ofthe ideal fade time.

Can You Do YourOwn Mastering?

Before You Master

Does It Work InMono?

Real-timeMastering WithinYour Sequencer

Adding OutboardProcessors To AMultitrack Host

The Best Of BothWorlds

Splitting TheStereo Channels

ProcessingIndividual Mixes

Assembling YourAlbum

Master EffectsRouting

Mastering ForVinyl

Managing YourLevels

MasteringMastering

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Normalising a track before you master it is

not necessarily a good idea the extraprocessing will slightly degrade the sound,

and you'll probably need to adjust levelsbetween the different tracks at a later stage

anyway.

Automation envelopes can reduce the oddrogue signal peak, thus opening up more

headroom and allowing a hotter soundwithout you having to use as much dynamics

processing.

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As for trimming the starts and ends of tracks, with some music youmay decide it's better to have a little room noisebetween cuts ratherthan dead silence, or to leave a few milliseconds of anticipatoryspace before the first note to avoid too abrupt a transition fromsilence to music. Another consideration involves the possible needfor noise reduction. Sometimes there may be a slight hiss, hum, orother constant noise at a very low level. If you can obtain a cleansample of this sound, it can be loaded into a noise-reductionprogram that mathematically subtracts the noise from the track.Even if this noiseis way down in level, removing it can improve thesound in a subtle way byopening up the sound stage and improvingstereo separation.

Don't add any processing to the overall mix, just to individual

channels. Processing completed mixes is best left for mastering. Asyou mix, you should also watch closely for distortion a fewoverloads may not be audible as you listen to the mix, but may beaccentuated if you add EQ or limiting while mastering. It's better toconcede a few decibels of headroom rather than risk distortion. It'snot necessarilya goodidea to add normalisation, as that meansanother stage of DSP (which may degrade the sound, howeverslightly) and you may need to change the overall level anyway whenassembling all the mixes into afinished album.

Finally,always back up your original mixed files prior to mastering. If the song is later remastered for anyreason for a high-resolution re-release, a compilation, or for use in any other context you'll want a mixthat's as easy to remaster as possible.

Does It Work In Mono?

As a final reality check, switch the master buss output to monoand make sure that there's no weakening or thinning out of the

sound. At the mastering stage, there isn't much you can do to fixthis; you'll need to go back to the mix and analyse the individualtracks to see where the problem resides. Typical culprits includeeffects that alter phase to create a super-wide stereo spread, butproblems can also occur when miking an instrument with twomics spaced at different distances from the source. You canalways try flipping the phase of one channel, and if that fixes thephase issues, great. But the odds are against that doing anygood. In any event, don't forget to switch the bussing back tostereo when exporting the file or burning a CD!

Real-time Mastering Within Your Sequencer

A major difference between mastering in a MIDI + Audio sequencer and using a digital audio editor is that youhave the option to adjust mastering processors (which affect the final mixed output) as you mix. With digital

audio editors, you are always working off-line with a previously mixed file. However, there are advantages anddisadvantages to both methods. The process of mixing is daunting enough without throwing mastering intothe equation; however, mastering while you mix means you know exactly what the final version will sound like.

But remember that a huge part of conventional mastering is about involving someone who can be moreobjective about what needs to be done with your music. Unless that personcan sit in on the mixand adjust themastering processors, you're better off giving themyour files and some space to do their job right.

If you decide to master as you mix, you'll be putting your masteringprocessors in busses. This is because when you create a non-surround multitrack project, eventually all the tracks are going todump through a mixer into a master stereo output buss. As withindividual channels, this should have provisions for adding plug-ineffects. How effects are accommodated depends on the program;for example,with Cakewalk Sonar, the busses have standardeffects slots, just like tracks. But Steinberg's Cubase SXhas a fewextra touches: both pre-fader and post-fader slots for effects, aswell as excellent dithering algorithms for cutting your high-

resolution audio down to a lower bit resolution. (If a programdoesn't include an effects slot after the main output level control,you maybe able to feed one buss into another to achieve a similarsignal chain insert the effect into the secondbuss, and controloverall level at the output of the first buss.)

Once your plug-in effects have been added and editedas desired,you have three main options to create amastered file:

Render (also called bounce or export) the track to hard disk. This reads the signal at the final output,including the results of any effectsyou've added, and writes the file to hard disk. This is your final, masteredtrack. However, it still needs to be assembledwith other tracks to create a complete CD.

Send the output to a stand-alone CD or DAT recorder. This will record the final, mastered song although,again, you'll still need to assemble these.

Send the output throughanalogue mastering processors, record their outputs into two empty tracks in yourmultitrack, then export those tracks to your hard disk. (See the 'Adding Outboard Processors To A Multitrack

Host' box for more on this).

Of course, if you chooseto do real-time mastering, you'd better get things right the first time, because if youwant to make any changes later you won't be working with the raw mix file. For example, if you decide there'stoo much multi-bandcompression,you won't be able to undo this, and neither will any mastering engineer;you'll have to do another mix.

Adding Outboard Processors To A Multitrack Host


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For most mastering tasks, a multi-banddynamics plug-in such as Waves C4 (bottom)will achieve the most transparent results, but

that doesn't mean that you can't use a full-band compressor such as Universal Audio's

1176SE(top) if you're after a more vintage'pumping' sound.

Digital emulations of classic analogue

equalisers, such as the TL Audio and Pultecrecreations shown above, will often produce

the most musical results when you're

applying broad and gentle processing duringmastering.

There are some superb hardware outboard mastering tools, both analogueand digital, that you may prefer to plug-ins with similar functionality. If yourmultitrack host has an audio interface with multiple outputs, there's no reasonwhy you can't use them. Martin Walker wrote a lengthy article on usingoutboard gear with computer workstations in the SOSMarch 2004, but thebasic idea is that you send the mix buss to a hardware output on your audiointerface, process the signal with the hardware processor, then blast the audioback into the computer's audio interface inputs. Once you've selected theappropriate inputs within your recording software, you can record theprocessed results and then replace the original mix with the processedversion. Voil hardware processing for your tunes.

The Best Of Both Worlds

There is another technique which makes a compromise betweenmastering as you mix and mastering off-line. After having a songmastered, you'll sometimes wish you had mixed the song a littledifferently, because mastering brings out some elements that mighthave been less obvious while mixing. For example, it's notuncommon to find out when compressing at the mastering stagethat the mix changes subtly, requiring you to go back and do aquick remix (another reason why mix automation is so useful).

So, to create a more mastering-friendly mix, consider adding somemulti-bandcompression and overall EQ (usually a little more high-end 'air' and some tweaks in the bass) in the master buss to createa more 'mastered' sound.Mix the tune while monitoring through

these processors. Then, when you render or otherwise save the file,bypass the master effects you used. This results in a raw mix youcan master in a separate program (or give to a mastering engineer)and which anticipates the use of mastering processors withoutincorporating their effects in the file. Should you do this, make surethat the levels remain optimised when you remove the processors you may need to tweak the overall level.

If you plan to use a mastering engineer, do not be tempted to present them with a 'pre-mastered' mixwhereyou've tried to take the sound part of the way towards whereyou want it. Always provide the raw, two-track(or surround) mix with no mastering effects. However, it maybe worth creating a separateversion of the tunethat uses mastering effects to give the engineer an idea of the type of soundyou like.The engineer can thentranslate your ideas into something perhaps even better, while taking your desires into account.

Splitting The Stereo Channels

I've also used a multitrack host to do audio restoration and remastering of a tune that was recorded in the '60s;this would have been very difficult to do with a conventional digital audio editor. One instrument was overly

prominent in only the left channel and this needed to be fixed. I split the stereo signal into two mono tracks, andloaded each one into the host. Through a combination of equalisation, dynamics control, and level automationin just the right spots, I was able to reduce the level of the problematic instrument. As this also reduced theapparent level of the left channel, I used a combination of panning on the individual tracks and balance controlon the output buss to restore a better sense of balance.

Processing Individual Mixes

Mastering a multitrack project in real time is a fairly new technique; it's definitely not for everyone, nor is itsuitable for all situations. So let's look at two traditional approaches to mastering that use your computer morelike a standard digital audio editor. The more old-schoolapproach is to take each tune, master it, then as aseparateoperation assemble all the tunes into a cohesive whole. A newer approach is to assemble all thetunes first and then apply any processing on a more global level. Basically, this combines both mastering andassembly into one operation. Let's look at the 'individual song' approach first.

Open up a new file and import the mix into a track. If you needtoprocess the right and left channels independently (for example, ifthere's an instrument in the left channel that has excessive treble,and you want to EQ just that channel a bit without processing theright channel), then separate the stereo file into two mono files(typically using a digital audio editor) and import each one into itsown track.You may also be able to bringa stereo file into twotracks, use the balance control to separate the left and right tracks,then re-combine them.

Here are some of the editing operations you might want to do:

Reduce Peaks Using Automation: If some peaks are significantlylouder than the rest of the material, this reduces the chanceto havea higher average level, as the peaks use up much of the headroom.One solution is to add limiting, but another option that can affect thesound less is to use an automation envelope to reducethe levels ofjust those peaks. If the automation works on just a single cycle ofthe waveform,you probablywon't hear any difference compared tonot reducing that peak; but once the major peaks are reduced,you'll be able to raise the overall level. Furthermore, if you do addany compression, it won't have to work as hard.

Add Dynamics Processing: Generally,you'll use a dynamics plug-in for the track holding the file, or possiblyfor the buss it feeds.Multi-banddynamics processors are your best option; compared to standardcompressors, they're more transparent, because dynamics control in one frequency band doesn't affect otherfrequencybands. However,some people like slamming a stereo compressor, because they can hear some'pumping' and 'breathing', which gives more of a vintage sound.


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All the different song files on the album have

here been assembled into different tracks in

Magix Samplitude so that different styles oftrack can be processed differently. Once the

plug-in settings have been finalised, thetracks can be rendered into a single file.

A loudness-maximising limiter such asWaves L2 can increase the overall level off

your mastered track with surprisingly few

audible artefacts.

If you process and render one track at atime, you can use a dedicated audio CD-

burning utility such as Roxio's Toast WithJam to compile them into a finished CD,

complete with advanced features such as CDText.

Another popular option is a loudness maximiser plug-in, like the venerable Waves L1. This type of processorcan greatly increase the overall average level, producing a hotter sound. These plug-ins are often overusedon today's recordings, which creates distortion and degrades definition. As a rule of thumb, I adviseincreasing the amount of maximisation until you can hear the effect working.Then reduce the amount so youdon't hear it working. Eventually you'll find a sweet spot where you can increase overall loudness whileretaining good dynamics.

No matter what form of dynamics control you use, it will affect themix by reducing peaks and bringing up lower-level sounds. This isequivalent to having a more even mix,and might be desirable. But ifthe mix ends up sounding too uniform, reduce the amount ofmaximisation. Peaks and valleys are essential to a satisfyinglistening experience. A really loud cut may seem impressive at first,but it becomes fatiguing after a short period of time.

Add Equalisation: For mastering, you'll hopefullybe dealing inbroad strokes a mild bass cut, or a little high-end lift. This is whymany olderequalisers are favoured for mastering, because theyhave a subtle,yet pleasing,effect on the sound. Plug-ins likeSteinberg's TLA1, PSP's MasterQ, and the UAD1's Pultecemulation fulfil this role in software. Significant EQ problems, likelarge mid-rangeor low-end peaks, should have been fixed in themixing process. If they weren't, you're likely need to plug in a full-blown parametric EQ, and tweak out theindividual problems.

Your audio editor probablyalready includes EQ, but be careful about using it. Built-in EQsare usuallyoptimised so you can open lots of instancesat the same time, which means theycan't consume too muchCPU power. Mastering-oriented plug-ins,on the other hand, tend to eat more power, but it doesn't matterbecause you're using them on a simple stereo file rather than running a bunchof audio tracks and soft synths.

Other Processing Goodies: Some people swear by particular plug-ins for mastering, like enhancers, stereo-image wideners, and the like. I tend to avoid these because dynamics and EQ cover 99 percent of what's

needed in most cases.But I have found situations where a little high-frequencyexciter helps add a differentkind of sparkle than EQ, and once I even added a phasing effect in the middle of a tune during a spoken-wordpart (the client loved it). I think if a mixhas a certain direction, it's often best to enhance what you have ratherthan try to turn it into something completely different.

Assembling Your Album

You can do album assembly in a multitrack host, and once thetracks are in the desired order you render the whole thing to disk asone large file. If needed, you can then import this file into a CD-burning programto add track markers, CD Text, and so forth. Ifyou're editing within a multitrack application, the files can either beplaced end to end in a single track, or you can spread them overseveral different tracks. For example, one project I mastered hadthree distinctly different 'flavours' of mixes: some were mixed in astudio whichprobably had bad acoustics, because the bass wastoo heavy;anotherset of mixes was very neutral (just the kind I liketo work with); and the third set had compression applied to the

master buss, and were already somewhat squashed.

I sorted each type onto its own track, and applied the sameprocessing to like-sounding files. The bass-heavy ones needed a different kind of EQ to the neutral-soundingones, and I also added multi-band compression to both of these tracks. The songs that were alreadycompressed didn't get any multi-band compression, but did need a fair amount of EQ this created a fewpeaks, so I added a small amount of limiting.

As mentioned earlier, a multitrack host allows you to do tricks that maybe difficult with a dedicated digitalaudio editing program.This is particularly true with dancemusic, where you have a continuous streamofsound. It's easy to create crossfades, for example,either usingan automatic crossfade function whereoverlapping two tracks creates a crossfade, or by having the tunes on separate tracks and adding fadesmanually. You can also dedicate a separate track for transitions or sound effects when doing a dance mix, addtrack automation to bringeffects in and out (to increase a high-pass filter's cutoff as a song fades, forinstance, so it seems to disappear just before the next track comes in), and so on. This process essentiallycreates a 'meta-mix' where, insteadof mixing individual tracks to create a two-track file, you're mixing two-track files to create a f inal album.

Master Effects Routing

We noted that Steinberg Cubase SX's busses have slots bothbefore and after the gaincontrol. In general, you would place yourprocessing plug-ins prior to the gain control, and your ditheringafter the gain control. However, things get more complex when youstart using effects. Suppose you're mixing a tune that has an abruptend, but you want a delay or reverb tail to spill over. If the echo isgenerated before the masteroutput and you pull down the masterfader for the abrupt end, the echo will stop too. Therefore, you needto place the delay after the fader, and place dithering after thedelay. If there's only one post-fader slot, then chain two busses andinsert the dithering in the secondbuss.

Some multitrack hosts don't have an option to place effects afterthe final gaincontrol, thus making it difficult to implement the delayeffect mentioned above. For example, Cakewalk Sonar's masterfader is always at the buss output. But it also has a trim control that

can change the incoming level to the buss. This alters the levelgoing to the effect, but not the effect output. With the aboveexample of delay, you might even want to use both controls: pulldown on the input trim to create the abrupt end, then as the echoes fade out reduce the main buss fader.

Alternatively,you coulduse this technique if you had loudness maximisation patched into a master buss andyou wanted to push the sound harder on some tracks. For example, let's say I insertedWaves L1 into themaster buss in Sonar, with the threshold set to -3.0dBFS, and the output ceiling set at -0.1dBFS. Any signal


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It's extremely useful tohave access to exact

headroom and gainfigures while

mastering thesecan be seen on this

Sonic Foundry Vegas

master fader at thetop and bottom of the

meter, respectively.

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louder than -3dBFS will force the limiter to start attenuating the signal. Increasing the level of the input trimcontrol pushesmore signal into the L1, causing a greater degree of loudness maximisation. No matter howhard you push the input trim control, the clipping/overload indicators will remain unlit, because the L1's outputceiling has been set to -0.1dBFS, so you have to be careful that you don't overdo things.

Mastering For Vinyl

Although the market for vinyl is now minuscule at best, it remains important for DJs and some audio puristswho regard CDs as an invention of Satan that is destined to cause the end of Western civilisation as we knowit. So let's address the issue of mastering for vinyl.

Despite what you may have heard, mastering for vinyl is the easiest type of mastering you can do, as itinvolves only two steps:

Find a mastering engineer who has mastered a ton of recordings for

release on vinyl.Present your final mixes to that person and say "Here, you do it."

Vinyl is an unforgiving medium, and mastering for it is extremelydifficult. Its dynamic range is a puny 50dB or so, even with decentvinyl, compared to the 80dB or more we enjoy with even the mostbasic digital media. As a result, compression is essentiallymandatory to shoehorn music's wide dynamic range into vinyl'snarrow dynamic range. But vinyl has other problems. There's atrade-off between loudness and length. This is because a groovein a record is just a waveform, and a louder waveform will causethe groove to have a wider physical excursion. So, to get a lot of material on an LP, you have to cut the vinyl ata pretty low level.

Bass is also troublesome. Bass waveforms have a very wide excursion and, with stereo, if the left and rightchannels are even slightly out of phase, the stylus can 'jump the track' as it tries in vain to follow different curvesfor the right and left channels. We take concepts like stereo bass for granted now, but back in the days of vinylbass had to be mono.

And that's not all! As the record gets closer to the end, the tone arm hits the groove at more of an angle (except

with linear-tracking turntables), causing what's called inner groove distortion. As a result, song orders oftenused to be created with the softest songs coming at the end of an album's side, so that the inner grooves wouldbe less subject to distortion.

In the old days, recording engineers were well aware of the limitations of vinyl, and took them into accountduring the recording process. Many of today's engineers were brought up in an essentially vinyl-less world, anddon't consider the problems discussed above. This makes it more important than ever to use a masteringengineer who is an expert in the art. When it comes to mastering for vinyl, the advice is simple: don 't try this athome!

Managing Your Levels

Although most modern audio software packages use 32-bit floating-point audio engines and have lots ofheadroom, overloading can still occur unless levels are set properly, especially if the master buss is the sumof different channels. Clipping indicators are helpful,but programs that include a numeric read-out of howmuch a peak level is above or below 0dBFS are far more useful. This value, called the 'margin', is positive ifthe level is above 0dBFS and negative if below. If possible, I generally enable any kind of peak-hold featureso that I can see the highest level attained at the end of a song without having to keep my eyes glued to themeters.Note that if the margin indicator isn't reset automatically (when you click the transport stop button, for

instance), you'll have to clear the value manually from time to time.

The faders themselves should also be calibrated; here's an example ofhow to use this feature. Suppose the fader is currently set to 0dB gain,and you send in a signal that reaches -3dBFS. The margin indicatorwill also show -3dBFS. If the master fader setting is -1.5dB and youfeed in the same -3dBFS signal, then the margin indicator would show-4.5dBFS the original value, less the amount of attenuationprovided by the master fader. Ideally, the margin should indicate not0dBFS but slightly less say-0 .1dBFS. This is important, because ifa tune has peaks that hit 0dBFS for more than a few milliseconds, itmay be rejected by a CD pressing plant on the assumption that thosepeaks represent distortion.

To set the master fader for the highest possible level short ofdistortion, first reset the margin indicators, then play the tune throughfrom start to finish. When it's over, check the margin and note thereading. Let's say it's -4.1dBFS. As you want the margin to read

-0.1dBFS, that means the overall level needs to be raised by 4dB. Now note the fader reading. We'll assumeit shows 1.5dB. We want to add another 4dB of level, so if we set the fader reading to 5.5dB, then the nexttime the song plays from start to finish the margin should indicate -0.1dBFS.

Mastering Mastering

I certainly wouldn'twant to imply that following the above techniques will make you a mastering engineer.However, I believe that if you apply these ideas correctly you'll end up with mixes that sound better thanbefore and that's the whole point. Besides, if you start working on your mastering chops now, you justmight discover a whole new outlet for your creativity.

Published in SOS August 2004

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