Here we are, wandering around the NAMM show, looking for all of the new guitars, keyboards and recording gear to make our songs into hits. When I classify musicians, I usually split them into two categories. The players and the owners. In the keyboard department, my wife and daughter are players, and I am just an owner. I can still make some music, I just need lots of time (not real time) and lots of computer power.

When it comes time to do the actual recording and mixing, I thankfully can cross the boundary into playerdom. There are many great musicians, players, who crossover to owner status when it comes time to record or mix. There is also a lot of "friend of the band who owns all of the sound gear" who should also be grouped into the owner category. Just because you own a Ferrari, doesn’t mean you are qualified to race in the Mia Miglia..

Why do I bring this up? Well, it seems that as more and more digital audio workstations and digital recorders and digital outboard gear pop up in garages, the audio quality of mastering projects is getting worse and worse. One guitar player told me how much time he spent trying different guitars and how much time he spent making sure that each section was exactly in tune… and then he compressed and EQ’d it so much it sounded like a leaf blower more than a guitar. He was disappointed that I couldn’t fix it in mastering.

Plug In This

Plug-ins are great inventions. I think they started with Adobe Photoshop. Prior to plug-ins, you had to import your drawing into another program that had the effect you wanted, then import it back into Photoshop. Sometimes the secondary program didn’t directly support Photoshop files, so you would have to export your work in some common denominator format that both programs would understand. On top of all the hassles, you had to pay full price for all of the secondary programs just for one or two features.

Before Pro Tools plug-ins, and VST plug-ins, it was the same way. You had to save your files in some other format, import them into another audio program, do whatever it is you wanted to do, and then get your audio back intact. Or maybe you had to run your audio out to an external piece of hardware that did what you wanted, and then record the audio back into the original program on a new set of tracks.

For Better or Worser

Plug-ins are good. Each plug-in emulates a piece of hardware that costs two to four times as much as just one piece of gear. Copies of a plug-in can be used in many different places at the same time. You can buy one compressor module and then limit every single instrument to make your mix louder. And then you can use another copy on the final mix to make it even louder. I’ve seen mixes that are compressed so much I could use them for test tones.

When you only had two hardware limiters, you were pretty picky about which instrument got processed,. "Yeah, we don’t need it on the guitar, let’s save it for the vocal." If you had to spend hours exporting your audio to another program for noise reduction, maybe you didn’t need to process 11 tracks.

With plug-ins, you no longer have to make those decisions. The flip side of the coin is that you now have to make better decisions about how to use each of those limiters. I can always tell when someone buys a new reverb, because everything they do for the next six months has too much reverb on everything. The same thing seems to happen with plug-ins. "Wow, that’s great, let’s AutoTune everything! Run the vocal through the AmpFarm! Now put the Aphex on the whole mix and run it through the multi-band compressor!" No, I wasn’t recording your conversations, but I know you have said the same thing at one time or another.

All Things in Moderation

What the Hell does that mean? It means "After you turn it up for awhile and get your jollies, then turn it down." Most effects don’t need to be used to excess. Less is more. Sometimes a separate compressor on each background vocal helps to smooth out the balance, but they start to sound bad real fast if you over-compress.

The worst offenses I have seen (I have been in contact with the limiter police) are the ones where a multiband compressor/limiter is used on the final mix. The mix is pushed up higher and higher until it sounds louder than any other CD. The person doing the mixing doesn’t have any idea about the correct settings for the limiter or the compressor. Sometimes they are mixing while listening through the compressor. They can’t understand why the whole mix goes up and down in level when they turn up the guitar solo, or why the rest of the track disappears during a drum fill. This mix is then sent to the mastering facility after it is too late. There is not much that can be done to a mix that has been abused.

The best way to approach a mix that you want to limit to death is to first get a good mix without the limiter. Then run the mix through the limiter/compressor to hear the effect that you are trying to achieve. When it is time to send your final mixes to the mastering facility, send them the original mixes without the death limiter, and send the mix you made with the limiter as a guide so the mastering engineer can get an idea of how much louder you want the mix to be. The mastering engineer knows how to use his equipment and can easily make mix six to ten dB louder without hurting the mix much at all. It is much easier if he has the original to work with.

More Mastering Pointers

There are three key points for successful mastering. Documentation, documentation, and documentation. Each cut on your master DAT (or whatever format you send to mastering) should be labeled with its ID number and time on the tape where it is located. This avoids problems with skipped or erased start IDs. Do not label "1) TUNE ONE 3x. 2) TUNE TWO 4x." This was supposed to mean that the first thing on the tape was TUNE ONE and it was on there three times. Then came TUNE TWO which was on the tape four times. Were they exact copies of one mix? Were they different mixes of the same tune? Which one was supposed to be the master? The client sent additional DATs of the mixes, but the labels showed what he was planning on putting on the DAT, not what was actually on the DAT. The compiled tape was a DAT to DAT copy, Two of the songs had lots of digital error noises, but the error lights didn’t flash. He said that he copied the bad tape so that the error lights would go away, and then I could just fix the digital noises. I had the 75 original mixes of each song, but he couldn’t remember which mix version was used as the master. No documentation. Some DATs had no labels, so nobody knew what was on them. To top it all off, all of the tunes were instrumentals, so I couldn’t figure out which tune went with which name.

That’s Enough

Tools like limiters, compressors, Eqs, plug-ins, and whatever else you use can add to your recordings and mixes. I use this stuff every day. Just be careful. Listen with fresh ears. Take your mixes to someone else for input. Print versions with less effect in case later on you wish you had. Always print a version of your mix without overall limiting in case the mastering house can do a better job. Make backup copies of your mixes, either by printing the mix again on another DAT tape, or by digitally copying the mix to a computer or another DAT tape. And spend some time documenting what is what. It will be a lot easier and I guarantee you it will be a lot cheaper.