"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

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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

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.
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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.
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Hello, can I borrow a peck of wisdom please?
I'm experienced in mixing audio for UK broadcast standards, but I now find myself in need of producing DVCAM masters which will go on to be encoded to DVD.
Can anyone give me any tips / point out any obvious pitfalls?
So far the main issue seems to be that DVD authors expect a much smaller headroom for their audio e.g. 0.5-3 dB as opposed to 10dB for broadcast. Should I try to accomplish this on tape or should I ask them to normalise the material before they encode?
Do I generally need to compress more?
Is DVD more or less forgiving of peakiness and short sharp spikes in level.
Any recommendations for good texts / faqs etc for audio on DVD?
Thanks in advance for your thinking time.
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I once made a DVD with levels at a bit below 0dB and I heard some distortion.
where did you hear the distortion?
AFAIK there's no technical reason why you shouldn't go to 0dB. But keep in mind that when using AC3 the audio has to be compressed. And depending on the material and AC3-settings the distortion might have occured in that step.
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I opened iPhoto '09. It showed an event for Dec 14, 2008 with a dashed-line round rectangle where it would have normally shown the first frame of the video clip. I closed iPhoto '09 and opened iMovie '09. It alerted me that it needed to generate a thumbnail for some video, and after about a minute the clip was in my event library and playing audio. Not only that... ALL clips in my event library now are playing audio. I quit iMovie '09 and went back into the "iPhoto Library". A new "Dec 14, 2008" folder was there with a new "SANY0001" QuickTime file (I wonder where it got this file from... hidden cache or backup somewhere?). I expanded the .zip on the desktop and dragged the original JPEG file from it to the new "Dec 14, 2008" folder.
I opened iPhoto '09 again. Now the thumbnail (obviously the JPEG file) displays fine.
Double checked iMovie '09... Yep, still playing the audio in ALL the clips in the event library.
I'm not really sure why this worked the way it did. The time it took to generate the new thumbnail was ONLY for the one clip... so it seems rather odd that all the subsequent clips in the event library started to work. Perhaps I just got lucky and it is only that first clip that was throwing everything else off in the thumbnails... or maybe iMovie just looks at the first clip in the event library to determine if it is playing sound or not for all of them?
Another oddity? The original SANY0001 file is "17.2 MB". The new one, which appears to be exactly the same in quality, is "10.8 MB". The "More Info" section reveals a bit more that might be of interest. The original is Codecs: Photo - JPEG, Integer (Big Endian). The new one is Codecs: Photo - JPEG, Integer (Little Endian). Total bit rate in the original is 2,570. In the new one it is 1,605.
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Ails and texted

This also happens to me. I believe that since notification audio is now pushed to any A2DP-enabled bluetooth headset, and because of the fact that notification sounds are very short, most of the time the sounds fail to transfer to the headset, since the connection initialization takes a couple of seconds, way more than the duration of the sounds themselves.
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as far as I know there seems to be two versions of that Moshi adapter.
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Winston Churchill wrote:
I missed the third one, thanks for posting.
Quite a few have asked for that recently - they do listen....
iTunes LP and iTunes Extras next....pretty pretty please......
AC

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Newbe requests help with audio for slide-show on Premiere Elements 4.

I recently wrote you regarding a problem I was having with a slide show I was making on Premiere Elements 4 importing photo clips and music from PhotoShop Elements 9. Thank you for your help.
This very large slide show, some 200 clips that I have not resized is completed. I am now having many problems with the music audio I am adding to various sequences of the slide show. Specifically:the audio will not stay fixed on the places where I put it and end it. Working on the Timeline Usually the length of the audio is shorter than the ending of the photo clips where it must go. I click on the audio and stretch it and end it at the place I designate. However, the other end has moved also so now I am left with a gap where there is no audio at the beginning of the segment. Now in addition, the "Delete and Close Gap" does not work most of the time causing me to manually move the photo tiles which sometimes move when this happens. I have to move each one or two individually to the left to close the gap and many times this causes loss of one or two photo tiles or they are out of order or have increase in number (of the one I am moving).
The program has also shut down for the past 10 days causing me to lose a good deal of work and sometimes photo clips and sometimes I get many duplicates of the photo clips. All I do is edit mostly the same two segments doing this over and over because I can't proceed to importing any more music because I can't get the first segments correct. I have chatted with you people, Sony techs, Microsoft Techs and Canon Techs. The Sony techs suggested the program was at fault and I used the original installation disk and repaired the program. It has still shut down on me but not as much.
I got error messages on the photo-cap instructions page you suggessted otherwise I would show pictures of the above problems.
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I am at a stand-still now and I am quite despondent because I have been working on this slide-show for 3 months and it was a surprise for my daughter's 25th anniversary that was last Tuesday.
I do hope you have some good suggestions that will lelt me complete this Project and get it on a disk. I am not that technical so please be specific.
Thanks in advance.
Kathy

Here's the basic advice I'd give, based on my experience. Much depends, though, on your goals and the specifics of your computer system:
1) Resize all of your photos to no larger than 1000x750 pixels in size. This is VITAL if you want the program to maintain stability as you work. Also render often (by pressing the Enter key). When the render, the red lines above the clips on your timeline will turn green and the program will run much more efficiently.
2) Work on your large slideshow project in shorter segments. You've got over 15 minutes worth of slides. Try working on this slideshow in 5 minute segments, output each segment and then combined the finished videos.
3) Use only WAV audio as your music and audio for your slideshow.
4) When you add video, audio or stills to a parallel track on your timeline, hold down the Ctrl key to override the ripple function and your current clips will remain in place.
5) Maintain your computer by using a tool like the excellent, free, one-click Advanced System Care available at http://www.iobit.com/advancedsystemcareper.html
As for Delete and Close Gap, how it performs depends on whether you've selected Clear or Delete, whether you've pressed the Backspace key or the Delete key and if there is video or audio on a parallel track. (This is all covered in my books, by the way, if you're interested.)
Without knowing the specifics of your project and your situation, it's hard to give out more specific information -- but this advice should get you a long way toward completing your project!

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http://www.speechrecsolutions.com/assets/iPad_and_microphones.pdf

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"Mastering Audio".... for mixers?

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