Audio Mastering In One Easy Lesson

[Doktor Avalanche]

I should preface this by saying you can click your mouse on the song waveform at any part of it if you want to advance (or fast-forward) the track. You don't actually have to sit through the whole thing.

And, oh yeah...you gotta hit "Play".

Before audio mastering.

After audio mastering.

Ah, yes, I can hear it now...

You just made it louder somehow!

No, actually I didn't. To wit:



See? Both tracks are nearly identical in volume and loudness.

[Judge Roy Bean]

...

The fun of being able to manipulate audio tracks with all manner of adjustments/effects on a single computer and edit them out at will.

There was a time when echo/reverb involved huge, sometimes cavernous spaces and hours of microphone and speaker placements.

If only I could take the technology back to the 60's.

[Doktor Avalanche]

The fun of being able to manipulate audio tracks with all manner of adjustments/effects on a single computer and edit them out at will.

There was a time when echo/reverb involved huge, sometimes cavernous spaces and hours of microphone and speaker placements.

If only I could take the technology back to the 60's.

To be honest, I'm glad the technology today wasn't around in the 60s for the simple fact that if you think today's music is mastered too loud they really would have gone off the chain with it back then.

I wouldn't want to contemplate what The Beatles would sound like at today's levels.

I'm really in a bind over this. On the one hand the customer is always right - and I would love to get paid - but I also know that what I'm doing by mastering at those levels is killing the dynamic range of the music.

The most egregious offenders of this are the labels themselves.

[Doktor Avalanche]

Here's what I'm talking about.

This is a waveform of Metallica's "My Apocalypse" off their album "Death Magnetic" and the very album that drew my attention to the Loudness War.

Above is the CD mastered version, below is the version put out for Guitar Hero.



As you can see, there are no dynamics in the top picture. Everything is at the same level of volume and loudness.

And it sounds like crap.

The bottom one is much better. The loud parts are loud, the soft parts soft. The song breathes and soars.

It's bad enough we're subjected to the tastes of the music industry - they're pretty much free to foist as much crap off on us as they want - but what they've done here is taken away our volume knob, too.

This level of mastering is also responsible for hearing damage of consumers who like to listen to their music on their iPods and personal MP3 players.

If I want it loud I should be able to make that choice for myself.

So should you.

[Doktor Avalanche]

Dat be da white man's juju.

[Doktor Avalanche]

The guy I simultaneously praise and pity is Ted Jensen, the mastering engineer for Metallica's "Death Magnetic" album.

I praise him for finally drawing attention to The Loudness War and how out of hand it has become. He had the guts to come forward afterwards and admit it was a horrible thing to do mastering the album that loud though he was pressured by the label to do it.

I pity him because now he's That Guy - the mastering engineer who made a bad master.

Ted's mastered over 2400 albums, including Norah Jones album debut album - which also garnered him a Grammy and has been in the biz since 1976.

But he's only going to be remembered for the hatchet job he did on "Death Magnetic".

That's him on the right.

[Doktor Avalanche]

As an older listener, a graybeard if you will, I was raised on an era of vinyl and radio, where often loudness and high volume were often recipes for distortion and every little hiss and pop being nearly painful to hear. Ditto using headphones. So, a lot of people my age, even with digital recordings which lack the old hiss and pop, do not crank up the volume because of experiences in our youth.

You definitely wouldn't want to now. Thanks to The Loudness War, CDs now sound like the vinyl and radio of old there's so much clip and distortion these days.

Case in point, I recently acquired a remaster of Tears For Fears' "Songs From The Big Chair" and, sure enough, it's been mastered to near today's levels.

But, when CDs and digital music came out, when coupled with small light earphones and earbuds allowed kids to really crank up the volume and it also allowed digital recordings to clean things up, so that volume could be maxed out. After all, why worry about hiss and pop making the listener flinch, when you can digitally remove it?

I was listening to a Nicki Minaj CD a few days ago and it blew out the left pod on my earbuds.

Damn shame, too - I really liked those earbuds.

I could also be completely off base, but I wonder how much of the loudness issue has been brought about by a convergence of technology and kids (now adults in decision making positions) who grew up never knowing the penalties of playing something too loud?

Excellent question and you might not be too far off the mark.

This actually started in the 1950s where 45s were mastered hotter to overcome the jukebox's preset volume that would make the song "stand out". Motown was famous (infamous?) for this - theirs were the hottest mastered 45s around.

Pretty soon, all the record companies were doing it to compete.

The thing about vinyl is that if they were to attempt a master on the medium at today's levels the needle would literally jump off the record. There's only so much they could do with it.

Vinyl's dynamic range is about 60dB, analog tape is 55-60dB and CD is 96dB.

In the meantime, enjoy some blues.

[JamesVincent]

That has got to be doing some hearing damage.

Not only that but when you start hitting bass and sub-bass levels it can do incredible physical damage as well. Years and years ago, when I was but a wee lad of 23 or so, I used to do stereo competitions. With some of the systems that are in competition you start hitting 140db or higher bass and start hitting below 5hz bass. Theres a risk everytime you do that that if you are exposed to it long enough and loud enough that your heart can change rhythm to match the bass line. My ex didnt believe me when I told her not to turn on the amps in my car when she drove it until one day she was cranking Ace of Base on her way somewhere and decided she wanted the full system on. She never did it again. Twin 15"s in a bandpass with 1k watts each at 1ohm 4' away from her cured her of ever wanting to have that experience again.

[Doktor Avalanche]

What kind of scares me is when someone has their iPod/MP3 player on, their earbuds in and I am sitting 2 to 4 feet away and can hear what they are listening to. Not superloud of course, but I can still make out the tune and the words.

Or, when I am in my car with the windows rolled up and I can still hear the slap of all the bass coming from a car next to me.

That has got to be doing some hearing damage.

It is and they're going to pay for it 20 years down the road when they're sleeping with a white noise generator to cancel out that constant ringing in their ears.

And it's not just the mastering. This I encounter quite a bit:



This is just the MIX. We haven't arrived at master yet and they threw a mix at me this hot - and if you see the meter on the left side it's telling you in no uncertain terms this mix is way too hot.

I am astounded the guy who mixed this can still hear.

I did an analysis of just how hot it was. At it's peak point it rang the bell at +6.8dB which no CD duplication house would touch as the duplicator would projectile spew the disc across the room.

A lot of artists, especially the ones who record at home (and a majority of my clients) think they have to mix this hot to get a good sound.

Yeah, thanks Loudness War! I now have to go through the added step of explaining what mastering is, why it's important and why you shouldn't run your mix that hot if you expect to get a CD quality master out of it.

If you tried to turn this up to "crank it up" level, it would sound like garbage. If nothing else, I predict a fulfilling career in mixing sound for television commercials.



They call that process "sweetening". I have some words to call it, too, but none that can be safely printed in the newspaper, appointed for use on the Sabbath or repeated in front of the kids.

Not only that but when you start hitting bass and sub-bass levels it can do incredible physical damage as well. Years and years ago, when I was but a wee lad of 23 or so, I used to do stereo competitions. With some of the systems that are in competition you start hitting 140db or higher bass and start hitting below 5hz bass.

I've been to a few of those! I've actually seen speakers blow out and a few people drop to the floor from irregular heart rhythm.

[ArthurWankspittle]

I'm trying to understand all this stuff but it's like have a translation dictionary but not knowing the grammar. What am I looking at in those graphs (OK x axis is time, I got that bit)?
Secondly, did you mean 5hz? That's very very low. I didn't think music, even what I call fake music, bothered going as low as that. 20-30Hz maybe, but doesn't below 20Hz start doing things to the human body? I've not seen many competitions or the information from them, but the "bassheads" seem to get the highest noise levels at 30-50Hz. (Oh and 150+ db is common these days, seen/heard/felt it.)
The other point is that people don't have sophisticated set-ups these days. I don't know what the upper and lower limits are on say iPod earphones or small speakers but I suspect that some bass and sub-bass are non-existent and the upper limits are compromised too. I think I can hear it with some of the mp3 tracks one of my children listens to when in my car, it all sounds squashed into the middle of the hearing range.

[Doktor Avalanche]

I think I can hear it with some of the mp3 tracks one of my children listens to when in my car, it all sounds squashed into the middle of the hearing range.

You have a good ear, Arthur.

That's exactly what's going when a song is mastered hot: it's heavily compressed and all the sound gravitates toward the middle range.

It sounds kind of awesome on headphones, but not nearly as good on anything else.

[JamesVincent]

I'm trying to understand all this stuff but it's like have a translation dictionary but not knowing the grammar. What am I looking at in those graphs (OK x axis is time, I got that bit)?
Secondly, did you mean 5hz? That's very very low. I didn't think music, even what I call fake music, bothered going as low as that. 20-30Hz maybe, but doesn't below 20Hz start doing things to the human body? I've not seen many competitions or the information from them, but the "bassheads" seem to get the highest noise levels at 30-50Hz. (Oh and 150+ db is common these days, seen/heard/felt it.)

Anything below 90hz is dropping and below 30hz or so is the cutoff for what humans can hear. Sub-bass is just that, bass levels below normal bass and when I was doing it it was not uncommon to have someone hit that at every competition. You cant hear it but you can feel it. And, yes, it messes up the human body and does quite a number to vehicles also. The people that were doing that kind of competition had specially built boxes with serious subs and power running through them.

[ArthurWankspittle]

The people that were doing that kind of competition had specially built boxes with serious subs and power running through them.

I've met this: http://www.projectbigblack.co.uk/
I'm still trying to get my head round what I'm looking at and hearing with those mastered tracks. What is actually being done to them? Is it the volume being tweaked around certain frequencies? What is the actual process being applied?

[Doktor Avalanche]

I'm still trying to get my head round what I'm looking at and hearing with those mastered tracks. What is actually being done to them? Is it the volume being tweaked around certain frequencies? What is the actual process being applied?

Mastering is...

1. Transferring audio track mixes to the workstation
2. Laying out the sequence of songs (or tracks) as they will appear on the final release.
3. Process the audio to maximize sound quality for it's medium, which involves...

a. editing minor flaws
b. applying noise reduction
c. adding ambience
d. equalizing the audio across the tracks (to impose consistency)
e. adjusting the volume
f. adding dynamic range or compression
g. adjusting stereo width
h. imposing a peak limit to the CD (i.e. how loud the overall CD will be)

Once that's taken care of, track markers are inserted along with International Standard Recording Codes (ISRC, the digital fingerprint for each track that denotes who owns the music) along with time code that delineate start & stop times for each song and the spaces between.

Mastering is audio adjustments performed to the final stereo mixes unifying the overall sound and sonic impact of the tunes in the album (CD, demo, DVD, LP, MP3, etc.) before going to manufacturing, replication or uploading songs for end listeners (the fans).

In other words, it is the opportunity to make sure each song has the same tone, bass and highs, and the same overall volume so the end listener never has to touch their volume knob song to song and plays back evenly over radio and on the multitude of consumer playback systems and environments (from cars to headphones to supermarkets boom boxes, computer and so forth).

On a unmastered mix, you would have to adjust your EQ and volume controls from song to song as mixes don't come out of a studio sounding the way they do on CD. Some are too loud, some aren't loud enough, some are thin across bass/treble, etc.

As for what is being done to them:

Yes, there's some EQ adjustments going on but there's also harmonic, dynamic and stereo image processing. The compression/expansion is what gives each song it's loudness/volume consistency across the entire CD.

This is generally what a mix sounds like in the studio prior to mastering.

This is what the same mix sounds like after it has been subjected to the mastering process.