Mastering Audio (Again)

I know this is a topic that comes up a lot so sorry .
As a relatively new user of recording/production software I would say that it is mastering that I am finding the most difficult skill to master.
At present all I have is the plugins that come bundled with Logic, so my first question is to what extent can these be used to get a decent sounding final track master?
Secondly I have read a lot of how many people seem keen on the PSP Vintage Warmer and Izotope Ozone for mastering. So how do these compare with the multipressor and Apple AU Multiband Compressor?
I guess I'll get the demos for the mentioned plugins and check them out, though I have also read good things about the Liquid Mix which I beleive is also hardware, so how do people think this compares?
All answers greatly appreciated
Sam

At present all I have is the plugins that come bundled with Logic, so my first question is to what extent can these be used to get a decent sounding final track master?
Yes, but it's all so subjective. If you're planning for a release, then I'd suggest you go to a mastering engineer. It's not so much the M.E.'s equipment, it's more about buying fresh ears that have experience of what sounds best in comparison to similar music.
Having said that, there's nothing wrong with trying out different processing, and Logic comes with some good plugs that will help.
First, get your mix as good as possible. Bad mixes can't be fixed later. The least amount of processing that you do at the mastering stage, the better. Look upon mastering as final, subtle, adjustments, as well as getting the levels right, both song-to-song and the overall perceived volume of the entire CD.
I have both PSP VW and Ozone, and like them both. I don't think there's any 'better' or 'worse' - they're just tools, and as I can't hear your tracks, I couldn't suggest which one you would find best for your songs. There are many other plugs too - get the demos and have fun. Same with Liquid Mix (which I don't have, but have tried).
I'd suggest you get your mix as good as possible, and then open a copy up in a fresh Logic session and experiment, comparing the results to comparable releases to check what you're doing. Check listening to results on a wide variety of systems to see which approach sounds best on most systems.
There are many books on this out there if you want to read more. I'd still suggest a trip to a mastering studio at some stage, as it can be a very valuable learning experience and you can ask lots of questions - worth every penny.

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"Mastering Audio".... for mixers?

Hey-
I just started reading Bob Katz's book "Mastering Audio" which seems to have nothing less than universal praise throughout the sound engineering field. But I'm quickly learning that it is, in fact, meant for mastering engineers - perhaps I read the title a little differently.
Not that I don't want to finish the book - in fact, I imagine there's a lot I'll be able to take away from it as I read on, particularly with the specifics of tools and 'what the knobs do.'
Thing is, I don't really intend to go into mastering - I don't have the ears, or the studio, for that sort of thing. I'm a mixing guy...
That said, what is the recommended reading for mixing engineers? Would it also be Katz's book? Or is there another equally well-written book thats more suited for the techniques and challenges of the mixing engineer? Mixing guys and mastering guys do two very very different things.
Or maybe I'm looking at this all wrong - will I learn everything I need to know about how to manipulate the waves from Katz? And if you ask me, thats when the art kicks in, regardless of who've you read or what consoles you've mixed on...
Any help?
Thanks!

I feel that the best way to learn how to mix properly is by learning from a mentor. That mentor doesn't have to be in the flesh. A program like Charles Dye's *Mix It Like a Record* is helpful in that you can basically sit in on the mixing session and see/hear the mixing process. As a plus, Dye often explains the reasons behind his mixing decisions. This DVD's production has an annoying, "artsy" style to it, not to mention a distracting music bed that plays constantly in between examples, but you do learn how an engineer/producer approaches mixing, and I think it's helpful. The website is http://www.harddisklife.com. Oh, and while he demonstrates everything with Pro Tools, what you take with you is the experience of sitting in on a mixing session--in the end, it doesn't matter what the tools he uses. The concepts are the same.
But no one way is the best way. I also like *Mixing Mastering with Waves*, which comes with session files on CDs (including Logic). If you don't have Waves plugins, it comes with demo versions. This is a book that does a pretty good job of explaining the "why's" behind the plug-ins' settings (EQ, compression, etc.) Even without the book, if you play around with the session tracks by soloing, disabling/enabling the plug-ins, tweaking, etc., you'll get a sense of how the tracks sound in isolation and how they fit within a mix.
Universal Audio also offers a mixing course on discs (QuickTime). It's a bit on the pricey side and it's not English (it's dubbed in various languages). I haven't had a chance to look through this one, but the concept is the same: watch/listen/learn.
-droo

Hello, Please Help! When I bring the mastered audio from Soundtrack pro back to final cut pro 7, the audio plays well at the beginning 3 mins later it doesn't sync. Please Help!!!

Hello, Please Help!
When I bring the mastered audio from Soundtrack pro back to final cut pro 7, the audio plays well at the beginning 3 mins later it doesn't sync.
Please Help!!!
Edgil

Make sure your easy setup has the correct frame rate for your sequence. Seems crazy but somehow or other fcp assigns a frame rate to audio files. I've found this can sometimes be tricky to get right. Here's what I've done to force the issue. Make sure the easy setup frame rate reflects that of the target sequence in fcp. Create a new project. import the audio in the new project. And then copy the clip from the new project to your main project.
Good luck

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I've got a problem with premiere CC which is always conforming audios time & again & again. Although this problem is not new in Premiere and I did face it in previous versions. But I've never found a good way to avoid it, especially when I work with much heavier clips or with some formats like mpeg or mov....
What should I do? Is that a network issue?
Thanks, Jim.

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I've mastered an audio track, peaking at -0.2 dB and sounding good, with zero digital or analog clipping. When I Import this track into iMovie the loudest parts of the track become distorted, sounding over-driven.
I've deselected the Normalize Audio option, and tried dragging overall track volume down, but still there are parts of the audio sounding like I haven't got a clue how to master a song.
Is this a bug in iMovie, or is there a maximum loudness of audio track that it will tolerate, (say peaking at -1 dB for example)?
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It's been a long day.....somehow I accidentally turned my ducking to zero also, then when I applied my audio settings to all clips, obviously it also applied my ducking mistake. Just not my day!

When I play a video in youtube then go back the video plays audio again

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Mastering audio for impact...

I am mixing a video for a large screen display in a 1000 seat auditorium.
Program will be projected from a DVD source (amongst 5 other programs).
My video /audio content includes presenter (synch) plus FX and music.
Music is percussive , bassy , fast , dynamic. ("U2 like sound"). FX. are clean and clear and distinctive. Presenter is cleanly recorded on location.
I am looking to maximise audio impact to support the images ...and ensure it is played loud. ( I wont be there and have any control of the volume).
All tracks pre mix will start at Unity and are 48khz - 32 bit
What should I set or maximise peaks to? ( 0db, -3db, -6db ?)
Should I use some compression on the Master Mix?
Will use some dynamics and Parametrics to clear the SYNCH out from the music. Is this good practice?
Tips appreciated.
BTW - normally I would leave this to my pro audio colleagues in their ProTools Suites but this job was bit budget constrained and I also wanted to learn a bit more about audio engineering and ake on a new challenge.

Some good ideas so far.
I do a lot of theatre work, both producing tracks for playback and also doing the FOH mixing itself.
When doing things for PB in an auditorium, I tend to use a bit more mastering compression than I normally like--there's always a bit more background noise going on--audience shuffle and coughing, background hiss and rumble from the ventilation, sometimes noisy moving lights, etc. A normally wide dynamic range often means the quiet bits get lost in the shuffle.
For your mix of voice and music, yes do add a bit of light compression on the voice at that point as well--just enough to keep the necessary clarity compared to the music. I'm going to disagree with some previous advice here--I do tend to use EQ to take down some of the midrange in the music, just in the frequencies that aid intelligibility in the voice. Just a little of this goes a long way--you don't want the music to sound obviously "wrong" but a bit of EQ can really help the voice to stand out. You mention parametrics but I'd normally use the graphic EQ for this--guess either would work but I'm a creature of habit.
Yes, at the end of getting it to sound right, you can normalise to -0.1dB. As has been said, whoever is running the PA will control the overall level and may tweak your dynamics so mainly make it sound good in the edit suite...but don try for too many subtleties

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A couple of questions: how long is the first play
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No audio again ... !

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I ran through the whole nine yards yesterday and nothing worked, so, I finally just unplugged/re-plugged the FireWire cable and everything works again. Strange how that worked when numerous restarts failed. Too bad you can't just disconnect/reconnect the internal sound device on a Computer. Something weird going on here...

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Do two tracks go to the timeline or one? Are both tracks connected in the path panel at the head of the timeline? Are the clips stereo pairs or dual mono?

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Have not changed any settings at all but had a lot of smokers in the room over the weekend while the mac was running. I'm not a smoker myself and cant imagine that this would cause issues with the machine but previous experience has led me to question anything different with the mac environment! really dont know what has suddenly caused this so ......Help?
Marto

I don´t understand anything of this....running a single 15 min. track should cause problems like this? On an intel iMac? No way! Even with stock Ram (512) onboard. I could do that 10 years ago on a PM 8200, 100 mhz...OK! only 16 bit/44.1.
And now you suggest disabling widgets and networking and more....What the H...?
Right now I´m doing nothing but writing this, Cpu use: Kernel tasks, 5.5%.
Activity monitor, 2 %, Windowserver(?) 0.3 %, safari 0.10 %, that´s about all.
Then I open a Logic project -only 10 audio tracks and few plug-ins.
Logic: Cpu 20%, Memory 152 mb.
There´s a lot of headroom here, even if I had only 512 mb Ram (I have 2GB).
And the suggestion to have buffer set to 256 or higher is not acceptable/usable or neccessary. Apart from Sculpture, Ultrabeat and direct monitoring
using Space D. I have no problem to go 64... But I set to 128 for safety.
(And sometimes 512 for mixing)
I don´t know why this new macintel behaves like this, but it should in fact be more powerful, than my dp 1.8. If my (fantastic!) pm will not playback a single 15 min. track, I will not consider disabling dashboard. I will dig deeper.
Maybe, just maybe, you could try to open Garageband and change buffer,
low, high, whatever. I´ve experienced conflicts here before.
Yours
JanD

Managing and mastering audio

What's the best way to master audio for a project in CS5.5? (It's never felt very effienct...)
For this particular project, I have 34 interviews that I want to make sure are all equal in their audio levels, but don't necessarily want to add 34 audio tracks. In previous projects, with fewer interviews, a dedicated track for each subject worked well, but I can't see how this would be manageable with so many interviews, especially when there are only small snippets from each person. (total project length is around 25 minutes)
I have also wondered if there is a way to import the entire sequence audio into Audition for editing rather than just on a clip by clip basis?
Thank you

You could break the files into three categories high volume, medium volume, and low volume. Then put all clips that are loud on a track that has no gain applied to it only compression using the dynamics effect. Then put the medium clips on a track with a little bit of gain and a bit less compression than the loud clips. Then take your lower volume clips and put them al on a track with more gain and almost no compression at all. Then on your master track put the dynamics effect but don't use any compression only turn on the limiter and set it to whatever you want your absolute max audio level to be.
Basically if you do this it will work wonderfully once you figure out exactly what your target volume is going to be you set everything else accordingly. So this your loudest clips are getting compression but no gain and also a limiter to stop them from going over your desired peak volume. Then your medium clips are getting a bit of gain from their dynamic effect on their own track while not compressing them hardly at all if any, then putting your lowest clips on a track with the dynamics effect with enough gain to make them = to the loud clips and also the medium. Then make sure not to compress the lower level tracks at all and then you're ready to go.

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Oh no, I assumed that it was just a burning software. I will look through and see if it does what I am looking for. Thanks!

Mastering Audio?

So I finished the video edit of my short project and I'd like to spend some time fine tuning the audio.
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Adam

First advice: Read the manual
Second Advice: read a third party manual
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No audio again and again t61p (installing driver works just until I restart)

Hello
Here's the problem: I have no audio. All devices are ok, and soundmax integrated digital HD audio shows fine in device manager.
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Is all grayed out (and no icon in tray)
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Sounds like you might have audio muted in a bios setting perhaps. I'd look through the settings and if you can't find any place it was disabled try pressing f9 key to load bios defaults, then f10 to save and exit bios. Since it works until you reboot that's the only thing I can think of offhand, but I've worked on over 100 T61 models and never seen this problem.
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Mastering Audio (Again)

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