My worst mastering experience you said? First proper CD recording with a band back in 1997/8 and the studio owner was a good engineer, but a total stoner. His assistant did the final mix, and when we got the CDs pressed, it sounded like 350Hz had been boosted during mastering. It turned out that the owner had come back into the studio late one night and remixed the session, stoned. Despite being "Primed At Porky's" it still sounded like we'd recorded it in a wet Umzugskarton I'd love to see you publish more vids on mastering. It's amazing how much difference even marginal gains can make with a well mastered track/LP.
BRILLIANT video. When I master, I very often request changes to the mix. Last resort I will request stems and mix myself again. Mastering: SHIT IN, SHIT OUT
I had a master where it sounded worst than the mix. The actual mix sounded nice and clean while the mastered version sounded like there was a blanket put over the mix and sounded muffled. I thought it would sound great because it's coming from a high-end studio that's in my area, but I was wrong. Now, I have a different go-to mastering engineer that does a lot better job for a bit more money but has yet to disappoint me. I don't like mastering my own material, so my band would rather send it to somebody else for another set of ears. For my own clients, I recommend them to get somebody else to master their tracks.
The best information out there! I remember sitting in one of the best mastering studios in the world with one of the best mastering engineers in the world listening to one of Mark Endert’s mixes of an album I worked on, the mastering engineer turned to me and said the mix was perfect and they weren’t going to do anything to it! Except turn it down because the other mixer on the album’s mixes couldn’t get as loud and still sound as open as Mark’s mixes! So agreed, the perfect mix really doesn’t need to be mastered, also agreed, it’s rare there is such a thing! Unless it’s someone like Mark Endert or Spike Stent!
I first saw you on the URM channel, and thought you WERE the URM channel until I ran out of your URM videos to watch and was crushed by disappointment. So glad you're doing this! Cheers from Canada.
Wow I knew about stem mastering for years but never did it or researched it properly and seeing this video was seriously kind of mind blowing for me, you took a good mix and turned it into a pro level sounding production.
Great video ! Finally someone talking real. I'm sick of guys randomly saying "If you want I can do a little Mastering for [A certain amount of money]" completely ignoring the Mixing factor. And Always always bands or singers talk about Mastering... Sehr gut !
Awesome information, thanks for sharing this. It's really insightful to hear about what you heard and to see the differences and just how much better you were able to make the result with a few slight changes. Thanks man! \m/
Tracking = Car build - Mixing = Paint job - Mastering = Clear coat. Clear coat ain't going to do anything if the paint job is shit, and a paint job can't fix a bad car build.
Song writing is more important than anything else and I’d put demoing above tracking because it informs songwriting from a different perspective you don’t get in the practice space.
I'm super thankful to Warren Huart and Produce Like A Pro channel for introducing you to me, what a great channel you've got! So much of useful info! Thank you so much Kristian! And Scott Elliott's "Mixing Extreme Metal" super duper rocks going through it now ;)
Kristian Kohle is gold!!! He knows exactly what he is doing!...definitely the most right person to express exactly what i think about production stuff!
FINALLY!!! someone else who thinks like me.... a BETTER mix = NO need for or very little mastering (eq). In my home studio, we always focus on getting the BEST track by track recordings, we then work with each track, for hours sometimes, play with mixes and eq's, etc. until we can be happy with the FINAL mix being a product of the entire projects work. No mastering..to us, its tedious bs. We're straight up rock/hard rock/classic rock/alternative rock, bluesy rock...all mixed into whatever song or songs we're working on. Whatever works for a particular songs style is what we go for in each track until the end result reaches that goal. If not, we'll go back and find out what track/tracks need either re recording or if its a good track/take, it may need additional eq, comp, reverb, etc. in order to make it 'fit' in the final mix. Its hours and often days of fader and control dancing, but its always a fun in the ass love affair and always a learning experience as no 2 songs are alike. Thanks for this great video.. glad i found it!
Amen Kohle, It's really cool to see someone with so much experience in the field being so blunt and honest. I master my own mixes as I'm a fairly new player and work with local bands, and your workflow resonates a lot with me --> as my master channel is very simple, since I fix most of the issues within the mix. Cheers and looking forward to more content!
Great video, as always. Interesting thing here is to notice, how much abuse digital recording can really take. I know Scott does a lot of aggressive guitar EQ, up to the point that he will almost completely remove "harsh" highs brought by the amps sims and then compensate it using some "warm" pultec-style replica. And then you came and smashed some 4db reductions on top. Takeaway here: do not be afraid to get brutal with EQ, I guess
Something that I had to understand (and stop doing) was being overly concerned what my EQ moves "looked like" and focus only on the audio result. I do remember clearly years ago doing a 5-6dB cut or boost and going, "No, that looks like too much, that can't possibly be right." Well... what is "right"? I only held myself up because I didn't have the self confidence to accept that the sound I was getting happened after a 5-6dB boost or cut. Sometimes that's just how it goes... not to mention, I'm sure you've seen some of the big guns like CLA and such literally just turn their knob on their SSL channel to a +15dB boost. It's all about how it sounds, not how it looks.. took me a long time to accept that myself!
@@ChernobylAudio666 Great to be noticed by such a dedicated metal musician and mix engineer. Speaking of EQ'ing with your ears and not your eyes. I completely agree with that. I've been conservative with my EQ moves for a long time, I think, mainly for two reasons. First, I read some "oldschool" books and guides on mixing, which were irrelevant for "extreme" genres (snd, possibly, badly translated as well). Second, the amount of sensible boosts/cuts, kinda depends on EQ unit implementation. And I remember, software equalizers of CubaseSX era (circa 2006-2008, when I got into whole thing), were sounding really harsh and unmusical at extreme-ish settings. That was my first encounter with equalisation and it left me traumatised for years.
That "MaYhEm" sound really kicked in when you added the spacial verbs. Sweet. If there are issues found by the mastering engineer I totally agree with going back to the mix to fix it first. This is my number one choice for mastering. Number two would beat this technique. Stems make things so much easier. Trying to balance a muddy low-end when things are moving along quickly with the tempo is impossible on a single stereo track many times. Excellent information. Thanks for all of the kick ass videos.
Mastering used to be needed because of the limitations of vinyl. The lows got rolled off, the highs were boosted, and the whole thing was run through a limiter to reduce the dynamic range. Or it was used to get all the tracks on an album to be the same volume. Nowadays they always maximize the output levels. There’s little point to it these days if you finished mixes sound good.
Yes. All of this. I date back to the days of the "limitations of vinyl" and it was (and is) very real. These days it's really about volume uniformity across the album
A nice mastering tip I got was using YouLean or similar loudness meter and using limiter to check that your track is in the desired LUFS range for the platform you're planning to release on. And of course all the jazz you went through here, like using a compressor and/or reverb in the master track to glue the mix together and adding the desired "size" with the reverb. A little bit of eq to fit say a shitty mobile phone, car stereo, earbuds, the expectations of average listener or whatever you like. And the beauty of it being like you said, it preserves the beautiful and dynamic mix while tweaking it for the audience and medium of choice. At least I noticed that I much prefer all the dynamics, more middle focused guitars, everything beautiful about more raw track. Yet in a track you plan to release, you want the guitar to sit a bit back and vocals to pop up, have a less intense listening experience than fully blasted mid focused guitars (the original sound is there but less in your face). A little bit of master eq and compressor makes the great sounds sit better in their reserved spot. I still try to avoid too much bass, I personally just hate too much bass and especially when it's very slow and messy sub frequencies that remove tightness from the music. Bass guitar is awesome but I kinda try to leave more room for it to shine by cutting the guitars a bit higher, then work out a nice balance of tightness and bottom. I think one of the most significant skills of a professional producer/audio engineer is getting the bass just right.
So glad I came across your channel after I participated in the Turning Point Mix contest which I had lots of fun. I just learned a new way of mastering now. Vielen Dank!
I have to admit i preferred the guitars without the eq. I felt some upper mids (and the grind that comes with them) were missing. But it's really a matter od personal preference rather than correcting some error / problem in the original mix. The reverb on the drums really improved and helped them "breath". A question for you Kristian: with the streaming services dominating the scene, don't you think we all need less limiting and compression on our masters? By looking at he mastered track, it seems it was pushed pretty hard. Thanks for sharing this video, very useful as always!
Hey man! In Wavelab things always look more compressed than they are. But yeah, I always try to make a version with around 3dB less limiting for streaming. Sometimes that sounds a little more open sometimes it really makes no difference.
I personally dislike hard limiting general. It's a lazy way to make the frequencies in a mix sound even and clearer and the cost of dynamics. No hate to mastering engineers that have a high output that do it though. For one they're usually getting badly mixed material that wouldn't sound that clear if not for limiting and two it takes alot more time to make a master pretty dynamic but controlled at the same time. Heck even old classics are pretty rough around the edges in that regard but honestly I'd rather hear that then something that is super flat. It's more exciting.
There is another reason to master these days as well. If you release an album or some kind of collection of songs and you want them to have a coherent soundscape you can take the boom out a little of one song, add mid range to another or add a treble sheen to all of them or whatever. Last chance to marinate the songs together so they sound like they are recorded by the same band before they' hit the grills of the speakers at the release party! :D
I believe, a lot of mixing engineers learned this the hard way. In the beginning of my voyage as a mixer, my mixes sucked and I was expecting a lot from the mastering guy....like...to send me back a sound for the Grammys, which never happened :)))). Poor me, I didn't know the mastering process doesn't fix bad mixes. Over time, when the mixes started to sound better and better, I started to expect less from mastering
I think a lot of mastering engineers earned their cash burning DDP masters on their SADiE systems. They made even more cash when DVD authoring kicked in. They still play a useful role in the mastering of albums. Singles though, that’s debatable. It’d be nice to have an Ozone chain stuck right at the end of the chain for realtime mixing and mastering. That takes a lot of DSP though. Thanks! Have a good weekend :)
To make a serious comment though: Stem mastering is giving a lot more power to your mastering engineer. It's good if you trust him, but if you want him to use his high-quality listening space to fix the final details of your overall mix and prevent him from completely reinterpreting everything you've done, then giving him the good old stereotrack is better, I think.
They said: "Mastering is where they sprinkle that fairy dust - we're metal. We don't apply fairy dust to our mixes" ;-) Oh, I have a dream: I was lately fumbling around with amp sims (naughty, I know...). I realised, when panning one channel hard left, the other hard right while having both inputs set to the same source, my gonio meter would also drop to nearly out of phase, while creating a ball shaped figure (kvr gonio meter). So I thought: hey, these must be phase issues due to the fact that both sims are triggered at the exact same time". But setting both channels to center, everything was perfectly fine. I realised also that when using the same sim with the same settings on hard L/R there is no wild bat shit at all - but my signal is always mono. So what did I learn? That I know fuck shit about phase, polarity, and don't know how to use my tools. I would so much love to see a Kohlekeller vid where this kinda shit is explained.
I would have to agree with you there.... A good mastering engineer can take a good mix and inject it with life to make it more exciting but will be limited to how they can improve a bad mix or a badly recorded mix!
Lol that’s why it’s called “stem mastering” to differentiate it from regular mastering and from regular mixing as well because if you look at it objectively and not like an insufferable prick you’ll realize it’s almost a combination of the two processes we know as mixing and mastering, but it’s not quite either of them. You think saying stem mastering is mixing makes you some kind of audio genius or what? Go seek validation elsewhere.
Your hate for celestion g-t12-75’s makes me laugh Everytime! I gave up on trying to mic my marshall cab. They are really difficult to record with, but playing with a band live is really the best place for them.
honestly i watched your video "did mixing suck in the 90s " i think it was. and seeing all those nests of wires and analog equipment makes me wish i was doing it then. its crazy that all that wizardry just happens behind this screen now.
I think nowadays, with so many home/bedroom studios out there, many people send their mixes to mastering more like a mix coaching thing, and/or some corrective balance on the tone or dynamics, coming from a better monitoring situation or a more experienced engineer. In some cases there's just a lack of self-confidence in the mix engineer and they need to spend in somebody telling them "the mix was good, bud" 😁 Lately, I'm always delivering a Mastered reference track to my clients, if they are sending to a mastering studio or to another engineer to do the mastering, It must come back better than my reference. That's my deadline.
4:12 This is the thing I never understood as a producer. Why would you want mastering on a stereo track? For loudness you could simply use Ozone and the included assistant. It doesn't help with a crappy mixing job however. That's where stem mastering is so much better and I appreciate you telling people about this. It's literally 5 minutes more work getting the stems ready for the mastering engineer but he can do so much more. Levels between tracks, making room for each instrument and even using automation for different parts (I feel like vocals need automation more than any other instrument)
Hi Kohle, I have a drawmer dl441 and bss dpr 402 compressor, firstly im pretty sure i’m doing something wrong because the plugin version of the bss sounds more pronounced than the hardware, can you perhaps do a small bit on how to use inexpensive compressors throughout
Off topic. Have you done a review of the hughes and kettner grandmaster 40? Youve mentioned cab 1st. Thoughts on the 4x12 240 of the same name. This thing is heavy as hell.
I actually looked at it last week. Maybe I should get in touch with my fellow Germans! But tell HK about me! I'm just on a small channel now. That helps.
Most people mixing: throw on a multiband compressor around 200hz range to control palm muting. Kohle: “see you in hell motherfucker!” Boosts range with EQ Also, love Scott’s work, been following his channel for years. Speaking of, how the fuck am I not subbed to this channel?!?. Ding dong!!! 🔔
I deserve Scott's tutorial due to my previous contract with satan needs to be renegotiated and I can play him the final song (satan of course) after I finish the tutorials. cheers and thanks!!!! PS That song crushes!
Tausendster like, krieg ich jetzt n Keks? Ich höre mir meine tracks immer später nochmal an, vor allem leise und laut, korrigiere hier und da, und gehe dann erst mit einem "Lautmacher" ran, vorher eher nicht.
Hey Garrett, this is a composition of mine that I got some help with from session musicians, so it's not a group per-se, just one of my personal songs. I'll be making it available soon :)
Yes, mine suck! :D Thank you for your great videos, man! They help and inspire a lot! Besides, what's the name of the great Band the mixes of you stem mastered?
Would be amazing to see how to get that extra loudness without killing the dynamic feeling.... how you do that??? multiband limiting?? clipper??? BTW, thanks a lot for this kind of videos Kohle... this information is gold for every producer :D
A lot of it is done in the mix as well, with good bus compressor settings and volume control (automation) of the song itself while but maintaining headroom. I sent Kohle a mix down that I believe had 6-9dB of headroom, so there was space for things to be cranked without killing the dynamics of the song.
@@ChernobylAudio666 That has a lot of sense to me!!!!... a louder mix will no need so much dynkiller processing .... I will try it.... thank you very much!!!!!.... and very nice mix man and what a killer song!!!! lml.. too bad is not on spotify :S... just subscribed to your channel lml
Great video, thank you, Kristian. What would you suggest if you've mixed a song into a chain (compressors, EQ, etc.) on the mix bus and then want to get a track mastered using stem mastering? Would you print a reference track and export the song with master bus effects bypassed and tell the mastering engineer what you've used or would you use a sub mix with everything except the instruments in the stem you'd like to print to feed it into the sidechain of let say the compressors you've used on the master bus and repeat this procedure for every stem you want to export? Or would you do something completely different?
You can just run the stems through the EQ if you wanna keep it. For compression it's a little more tricky. you need to send the whole mix into the sidechain of the compressor while just sending the audio of each stem through it. But maybe you mastering engineer has a similar plugin and you just tell him the settings! ;)
Hi Kohle, I have a question about guitar tracks I have a band with one guitar, but we recorded 2 guitars. Do you think it’s better to have a slightly different sound between the two or the same? Better reamping through different cabs and/or amps mics etc?
A slight difference can help to make them sound a little wider. Check out the latest Cytotoxin album (very extreme music) where we used the same cab and mics, but a Savage on one side and a Recto on the other. Something drastic (like using another cab) is only recomendable if there are two guitarists with a distinct tone and they want people to hear the difference.
Stem Mastering is mis named and should be called remix finishing or remix mastering. Another mastering function you forgot to mention probably because it is getting rarer is volume matching several songs for a CD release
That's what I'm doing more or less. Then I bypass the plugins and print the track and revisit it a week later. Reload the plugins, and do some small changes with fresh ears. Done!
I agree that stem mastering is where it’s at and probably more of the future in mastering. On a side note, that master is so limited. The song didn’t have a lot of dynamics but I hate seeing metal mastered like pop music. Pushing for maximum loudness is rarely the best sounding way to do things...let the songs breathe.
But did you have the impression the limited master sounded worse? Limiting is fine as long as things just look and don't sound compressed. These days I sometimes make less limited versions for streaming, but only if it actually sounds better. Very often it just sounds great with the limiting.
@@KohleAudioKult No, it didn’t sound worse but mainly because it wasn’t a terribly dynamic track aside from the intro but there were a few spots where it backed off subtly that the mastered version lost a bit of. I was listening to a lot of Steve Albini’s band Shellac recently and noticing how the master’s are very dynamic with little to no hard limiting. It makes me turn it up a bit and when the loud parts hit, they actually have somewhere to go and hit louder (at least feels louder) than something brick-walled for the whole album. I’m sure we’ve all had the experience of listening to death metal and after multiple songs at -6LUFS it just stops grabbing our attention and fades from our attention even when the songs are good...same thing when everything is played at full speed, it stops sounding fast but some of that is a song-writing issue.
@@KohleAudioKult If I listen at 70 dB the loud master is fine. But if I really want to crank it up and listen at 90+ dBs a loud master is way harder on my ears. With a more dynamic master I get about double the time of loud music listening compared to a loud master until my ears are shot. "These days I sometimes make less limited versions for streaming, but only if it actually sounds better."If the less limited version sounds better, then why limit it 'til it gets worse at all?
08:07 Isn't the low cut on the guitar stem a little bit too heavy? Seems like Scott Elliot did a very steep filter there which of course depends on the recording. I'm curious what's your opinion on that! Great video!
i've been noticing that Stem Mastering becomes more and more prevalent with the rise of bedroom producers/musicians who mix their own stuff, which might not have the best monitoring environment when compared to dedicated project (particularly, well, mastering) studios.
Dude, so your videos are awesome. Curious: I'm sure you are familiar with the 'loudness wars' of the previous decade, so I'm curious as to why you mix has such a brick-walled appearance here?
I looks a lot more brick-walled in Wavelab than it actually is. It's actually less loud and compressed than your every day metal master. I'm always making sure I'm not killing things in mastering. Don't worry!
Awesome video, Kohle! Using stems in mastering is really cool :). How do you approach mastering for different platforms? Do you master quieter for digital streaming and louder for CDs?
Mixing quiet is good to hear what's out front in the mix, but yeah, if it's so quiet you can't hear the low end, you might need to turn it up a little ;)
If mastering engineer's main purpose is to be as second pair of ears was it better if mastering engineer also have access to whole mix project with separate files?
Not anymore. I love using my hardware Pultec. But these days it's more important to recall you mastering setups. Since I'm constantly working on around 10 productions, this is crucial.
Have 1 percent hope you see and respond to this, but I'm a musician looking to learn all about this kind of stuff, both to engineer my own music without it sounding like noobcake and to work other people's music as both a service (local guys are just as lost and less computery and have less time to learn) and as supplemental income so I can eat twice a day. Where the heck do I go to learn in depth stuff like this?
hey Kristian. i just subscribed to your e mail list because i belief in your work and you had being such an influence for me and my modest home mixes for so long… and looking to this video and the song you mastered, i start to get really worried about nowadays drum sound... please don't get me wrong, that drum sound.. it doesn't sound like a real drum anymore... i mean.. like... superior drummer does that and it sounds like that ... i'm kind of concerned about the industries sound standards nowadays ... regarding drum production... i do rather to hear the real drum sound ... rather than that consistent machine gun sound... what is happening to de sound nowadays? i was very curious about the curse... i really do, but... i don't want the comercial standards! i want the old school standards! where the sound was so mush more alive... especially the drum sound... please don't get me wrong Kristian about this text. but i want to know how to mix real metal... with real feel... vibe... not over processed stuff... but in the end of the day , you are still the best out there . thanks for all the precious information and keep the good work... and i'm very sorry about my English ... S.W.666
Hey man! It's all a matter of taste. I did not record or mix this song so the drum sound was not a part of this video. But when I mix stuff I do everything from natural to very modern. Whatever makes the song shine!
@@KohleAudioKult i now that you don´t recorded the song. that's why the drums sounds like that... ! dont get me wrong... my point is on the drum sound only! many thanks for your answer .
@@manuelalvito7584 Those are real drums... Scott just does a great job with editing and mixing... I've seen the course.. he doesn't overly edit them, but enough so they sound good. The drums were also well played.
Adding reverb to drums or changing the voicing of the distortion comes down to a creative decision. As the mastering engineer, you should not be making creative decisions - leave that to the producer/mixer. Your job is to make the stereo mix provided by the client sound as consistent as possible on the widest variety of playback devices. There is also no longer any point in brickwalling, if there ever was one to begin with. Streaming services such as Spotify will do a form of volume matching upon playback, so every song of every band sounds more or less the same, volume-wise. Why not keep those transients intact for a change?
My job is always and everywhere to make things sound better and to make the client happy. You're right about the streaming services and the loudness. I always try another master with less limiting, but I only use it when it actually sounds better which is not always the case. We still need CD masters though where loudness is still an issue.
@@KohleAudioKult I agree - the client should be happy. Whoever pays for the master gets to decide what the mastering engineer may, or may not do. But with regards to your job being to always and everywhere make things sound better, not necessarily. It depends on your role in the process, and whether, in the capacity of that role, you have explicit permission to make creative decisions.
"recording is the most vital part of a production, because you can choose the equipment", he says, well aware, that 99% of his audience own a Scarlett 2i2 to record a GIO into a free amp VST :D
@@KohleAudioKult The greater portion of them are garbage, though, therefore there are like 3 or 4 good ones everyone keeps using (speaking of amp sims). Not implying you are wrong, just reveling in memories of where today's online producer scene is coming from.
What's your MASTERING experience?
Wouldn't you advise inserting plugins on the Master Bus? If there's no intention to send the mix to the masterer.
My worst mastering experience you said?
First proper CD recording with a band back in 1997/8 and the studio owner was a good engineer, but a total stoner. His assistant did the final mix, and when we got the CDs pressed, it sounded like 350Hz had been boosted during mastering. It turned out that the owner had come back into the studio late one night and remixed the session, stoned.
Despite being "Primed At Porky's" it still sounded like we'd recorded it in a wet Umzugskarton
I'd love to see you publish more vids on mastering. It's amazing how much difference even marginal gains can make with a well mastered track/LP.
None... Great vid tho. As a noob in mixing and mastering I learn a lot from ur vids, that's really cool. Hope ull keep doin that /,,/
BRILLIANT video. When I master, I very often request changes to the mix. Last resort I will request stems and mix myself again. Mastering: SHIT IN, SHIT OUT
I had a master where it sounded worst than the mix. The actual mix sounded nice and clean while the mastered version sounded like there was a blanket put over the mix and sounded muffled. I thought it would sound great because it's coming from a high-end studio that's in my area, but I was wrong. Now, I have a different go-to mastering engineer that does a lot better job for a bit more money but has yet to disappoint me. I don't like mastering my own material, so my band would rather send it to somebody else for another set of ears. For my own clients, I recommend them to get somebody else to master their tracks.
The best information out there! I remember sitting in one of the best mastering studios in the world with one of the best mastering engineers in the world listening to one of Mark Endert’s mixes of an album I worked on, the mastering engineer turned to me and said the mix was perfect and they weren’t going to do anything to it! Except turn it down because the other mixer on the album’s mixes couldn’t get as loud and still sound as open as Mark’s mixes! So agreed, the perfect mix really doesn’t need to be mastered, also agreed, it’s rare there is such a thing! Unless it’s someone like Mark Endert or Spike Stent!
Each stage of the process is more important than the one that follows it.
Performance > Recording > Mixing > Mastering.
Just like in any recording chain.
I agree :)
How does the equation go? Shit in = Shit out
I first saw you on the URM channel, and thought you WERE the URM channel until I ran out of your URM videos to watch and was crushed by disappointment. So glad you're doing this! Cheers from Canada.
Glad you found my channel! ❤️🍺
lol same experience hahaha
I studied at Full Sail University and I can tell you that you are absolutely right about EVERYTHING that you just said!
Wow I knew about stem mastering for years but never did it or researched it properly and seeing this video was seriously kind of mind blowing for me, you took a good mix and turned it into a pro level sounding production.
Great video ! Finally someone talking real. I'm sick of guys randomly saying "If you want I can do a little Mastering for [A certain amount of money]" completely ignoring the Mixing factor. And Always always bands or singers talk about Mastering...
Sehr gut !
Awesome information, thanks for sharing this. It's really insightful to hear about what you heard and to see the differences and just how much better you were able to make the result with a few slight changes. Thanks man! \m/
Tracking = Car build - Mixing = Paint job - Mastering = Clear coat.
Clear coat ain't going to do anything if the paint job is shit, and a paint job can't fix a bad car build.
Song writing is more important than anything else and I’d put demoing above tracking because it informs songwriting from a different perspective you don’t get in the practice space.
@@louderthangod Song Writing could be the car design?
@@hectorluna6584 Sure and the demo the road tests I guess.
Original comment was good, but probably cool it with the car analogies
You are the best Kohle, thank you for everything!
This is really stem mixing :). Definitely agree on the benefit of having different ears on your mixes.
I'm super thankful to Warren Huart and Produce Like A Pro channel for introducing you to me, what a great channel you've got! So much of useful info! Thank you so much Kristian! And Scott Elliott's "Mixing Extreme Metal" super duper rocks going through it now ;)
Welcome! Glad you found me!
Kristian Kohle is gold!!! He knows exactly what he is doing!...definitely the most right person to express exactly what i think about production stuff!
Very happy to hear that!
I buyed the course and I'm looking it right now... good stuff. Good video explaining mastering!!!
Wie immer super hilfreiche Information kompakt und nachvollziehbar erklärt. Danke
FINALLY!!! someone else who thinks like me.... a BETTER mix = NO need for or very little mastering (eq). In my home studio, we always focus on getting the BEST track by track recordings, we then work with each track, for hours sometimes, play with mixes and eq's, etc. until we can be happy with the FINAL mix being a product of the entire projects work. No mastering..to us, its tedious bs. We're straight up rock/hard rock/classic rock/alternative rock, bluesy rock...all mixed into whatever song or songs we're working on. Whatever works for a particular songs style is what we go for in each track until the end result reaches that goal. If not, we'll go back and find out what track/tracks need either re recording or if its a good track/take, it may need additional eq, comp, reverb, etc. in order to make it 'fit' in the final mix. Its hours and often days of fader and control dancing, but its always a fun in the ass love affair and always a learning experience as no 2 songs are alike. Thanks for this great video.. glad i found it!
This is super useful to a mastering noob like me! This is the collab I want: Kohle + Scott, the two coolest guys in metal audio youtube!
Your mastering here sounds great! Great and useful tips.
it all starts at the source, you are correct my good man! great advice thank you!
Amen Kohle, It's really cool to see someone with so much experience in the field being so blunt and honest. I master my own mixes as I'm a fairly new player and work with local bands, and your workflow resonates a lot with me --> as my master channel is very simple, since I fix most of the issues within the mix. Cheers and looking forward to more content!
Me too. Tweaking the mix into the master bus processing is usually the final stage of my workflow. Unless I just nail it first try ;)
Really informative, learned a lot of things Ii wouldn't have thought of. Thank you!
Very instructive, thanks
Great video, as always. Interesting thing here is to notice, how much abuse digital recording can really take. I know Scott does a lot of aggressive guitar EQ, up to the point that he will almost completely remove "harsh" highs brought by the amps sims and then compensate it using some "warm" pultec-style replica. And then you came and smashed some 4db reductions on top. Takeaway here: do not be afraid to get brutal with EQ, I guess
Something that I had to understand (and stop doing) was being overly concerned what my EQ moves "looked like" and focus only on the audio result. I do remember clearly years ago doing a 5-6dB cut or boost and going, "No, that looks like too much, that can't possibly be right." Well... what is "right"? I only held myself up because I didn't have the self confidence to accept that the sound I was getting happened after a 5-6dB boost or cut. Sometimes that's just how it goes... not to mention, I'm sure you've seen some of the big guns like CLA and such literally just turn their knob on their SSL channel to a +15dB boost. It's all about how it sounds, not how it looks.. took me a long time to accept that myself!
@@ChernobylAudio666 Great to be noticed by such a dedicated metal musician and mix engineer. Speaking of EQ'ing with your ears and not your eyes. I completely agree with that. I've been conservative with my EQ moves for a long time, I think, mainly for two reasons.
First, I read some "oldschool" books and guides on mixing, which were irrelevant for "extreme" genres (snd, possibly, badly translated as well).
Second, the amount of sensible boosts/cuts, kinda depends on EQ unit implementation. And I remember, software equalizers of CubaseSX era (circa 2006-2008, when I got into whole thing), were sounding really harsh and unmusical at extreme-ish settings. That was my first encounter with equalisation and it left me traumatised for years.
That "MaYhEm" sound really kicked in when you added the spacial verbs. Sweet. If there are issues found by the mastering engineer I totally agree with going back to the mix to fix it first. This is my number one choice for mastering. Number two would beat this technique. Stems make things so much easier. Trying to balance a muddy low-end when things are moving along quickly with the tempo is impossible on a single stereo track many times. Excellent information. Thanks for all of the kick ass videos.
Mastering used to be needed because of the limitations of vinyl. The lows got rolled off, the highs were boosted, and the whole thing was run through a limiter to reduce the dynamic range.
Or it was used to get all the tracks on an album to be the same volume. Nowadays they always maximize the output levels.
There’s little point to it these days if you finished mixes sound good.
Yes. All of this. I date back to the days of the "limitations of vinyl" and it was (and is) very real. These days it's really about volume uniformity across the album
This is an extremely helpful video! Thank you so much! \m/ Cheers!
As always amazing content from Kohle
A nice mastering tip I got was using YouLean or similar loudness meter and using limiter to check that your track is in the desired LUFS range for the platform you're planning to release on. And of course all the jazz you went through here, like using a compressor and/or reverb in the master track to glue the mix together and adding the desired "size" with the reverb. A little bit of eq to fit say a shitty mobile phone, car stereo, earbuds, the expectations of average listener or whatever you like. And the beauty of it being like you said, it preserves the beautiful and dynamic mix while tweaking it for the audience and medium of choice.
At least I noticed that I much prefer all the dynamics, more middle focused guitars, everything beautiful about more raw track. Yet in a track you plan to release, you want the guitar to sit a bit back and vocals to pop up, have a less intense listening experience than fully blasted mid focused guitars (the original sound is there but less in your face). A little bit of master eq and compressor makes the great sounds sit better in their reserved spot. I still try to avoid too much bass, I personally just hate too much bass and especially when it's very slow and messy sub frequencies that remove tightness from the music. Bass guitar is awesome but I kinda try to leave more room for it to shine by cutting the guitars a bit higher, then work out a nice balance of tightness and bottom. I think one of the most significant skills of a professional producer/audio engineer is getting the bass just right.
like your vision a lot man! thx for the awesome content! a lot of usefull infos
Thanks mate!
I’ve mastered hundreds of titles for Clear Channel and others. You make many valid points. Unless you’re mastering vinyl it’s a dead art.
So glad I came across your channel after I participated in the Turning Point Mix contest which I had lots of fun. I just learned a new way of mastering now. Vielen Dank!
Glad to have you! Welcome! ❤️🍺
Mastering today just means making it loud as f*ck. Thanks for this reminder that I need to pay more attention to my mic placements and dials
I have to admit i preferred the guitars without the eq. I felt some upper mids (and the grind that comes with them) were missing. But it's really a matter od personal preference rather than correcting some error / problem in the original mix. The reverb on the drums really improved and helped them "breath". A question for you Kristian: with the streaming services dominating the scene, don't you think we all need less limiting and compression on our masters? By looking at he mastered track, it seems it was pushed pretty hard. Thanks for sharing this video, very useful as always!
Hey man! In Wavelab things always look more compressed than they are.
But yeah, I always try to make a version with around 3dB less limiting for streaming.
Sometimes that sounds a little more open sometimes it really makes no difference.
I personally dislike hard limiting general. It's a lazy way to make the frequencies in a mix sound even and clearer and the cost of dynamics. No hate to mastering engineers that have a high output that do it though. For one they're usually getting badly mixed material that wouldn't sound that clear if not for limiting and two it takes alot more time to make a master pretty dynamic but controlled at the same time. Heck even old classics are pretty rough around the edges in that regard but honestly I'd rather hear that then something that is super flat. It's more exciting.
This was awesome , thanks dude !
There is another reason to master these days as well. If you release an album or some kind of collection of songs and you want them to have a coherent soundscape you can take the boom out a little of one song, add mid range to another or add a treble sheen to all of them or whatever. Last chance to marinate the songs together so they sound like they are recorded by the same band before they' hit the grills of the speakers at the release party! :D
Thanks a lot!!!! I've never Ever understood mastering prior to this- didn't seem to be merited w/ the solo work I do. And I was right!!! Cheers
It always seemed so logical to me. cheers from chile!!
I believe, a lot of mixing engineers learned this the hard way.
In the beginning of my voyage as a mixer, my mixes sucked and I was expecting a lot from the mastering guy....like...to send me back a sound for the Grammys, which never happened :)))). Poor me, I didn't know the mastering process doesn't fix bad mixes. Over time, when the mixes started to sound better and better, I started to expect less from mastering
damn that sounds cool (the song, the mix and the mastering!!)
I think a lot of mastering engineers earned their cash burning DDP masters on their SADiE systems. They made even more cash when DVD authoring kicked in. They still play a useful role in the mastering of albums. Singles though, that’s debatable. It’d be nice to have an Ozone chain stuck right at the end of the chain for realtime mixing and mastering. That takes a lot of DSP though. Thanks! Have a good weekend :)
Oh yeah, I remember paying 50 bucks just for a CD copy back in the days! Same with those digital tapes they used back in the days to save DDPs.
@@KohleAudioKult , I don’t miss those days 😂
To make a serious comment though:
Stem mastering is giving a lot more power to your mastering engineer.
It's good if you trust him, but if you want him to use his high-quality listening space to fix the final details of your overall mix and prevent him from completely reinterpreting everything you've done, then giving him the good old stereotrack is better, I think.
They said: "Mastering is where they sprinkle that fairy dust - we're metal. We don't apply fairy dust to our mixes" ;-)
Oh, I have a dream: I was lately fumbling around with amp sims (naughty, I know...). I realised, when panning one channel hard left, the other hard right while having both inputs set to the same source, my gonio meter would also drop to nearly out of phase, while creating a ball shaped figure (kvr gonio meter). So I thought: hey, these must be phase issues due to the fact that both sims are triggered at the exact same time". But setting both channels to center, everything was perfectly fine. I realised also that when using the same sim with the same settings on hard L/R there is no wild bat shit at all - but my signal is always mono. So what did I learn? That I know fuck shit about phase, polarity, and don't know how to use my tools. I would so much love to see a Kohlekeller vid where this kinda shit is explained.
Oh - brother I hear ya; that would be dope! Kristian, please?
I would have to agree with you there.... A good mastering engineer can take a good mix and inject it with life to make it more exciting but will be limited to how they can improve a bad mix or a badly recorded mix!
"Stem Mastering" = Mixing
That's my thought as well.. lots of moves going on there... looked more like second stage mixing + mastering
Lol that’s why it’s called “stem mastering” to differentiate it from regular mastering and from regular mixing as well because if you look at it objectively and not like an insufferable prick you’ll realize it’s almost a combination of the two processes we know as mixing and mastering, but it’s not quite either of them. You think saying stem mastering is mixing makes you some kind of audio genius or what? Go seek validation elsewhere.
Your hate for celestion g-t12-75’s makes me laugh Everytime! I gave up on trying to mic my marshall cab. They are really difficult to record with, but playing with a band live is really the best place for them.
I agree!
i think G12T-75s are great to be used in a "cranked amp" and "c*ck/klassik rock" scenario more than anything.
I'm leaving a like and coming back later to watch
BACK IN MY DAY!!
honestly i watched your video "did mixing suck in the 90s " i think it was. and seeing all those nests of wires and analog equipment makes me wish i was doing it then. its crazy that all that wizardry just happens behind this screen now.
It was a nightmare back then.
That was when I started producing so it were the most exciting times too.
Super cool tnx man!
100% agreed.
When scotts mixes suck..... send in mixmaster kohle!
Maybe it's because I don't usually listen to the genre, but I was thinking the same thing.
Nice video, thank you :)
Agreed.
I think nowadays, with so many home/bedroom studios out there, many people send their mixes to mastering more like a mix coaching thing, and/or some corrective balance on the tone or dynamics, coming from a better monitoring situation or a more experienced engineer.
In some cases there's just a lack of self-confidence in the mix engineer and they need to spend in somebody telling them "the mix was good, bud" 😁
Lately, I'm always delivering a Mastered reference track to my clients, if they are sending to a mastering studio or to another engineer to do the mastering, It must come back better than my reference. That's my deadline.
I've seen you compare pedals that are closer than your current mix and master like they were night and day.
4:12 This is the thing I never understood as a producer. Why would you want mastering on a stereo track? For loudness you could simply use Ozone and the included assistant. It doesn't help with a crappy mixing job however. That's where stem mastering is so much better and I appreciate you telling people about this. It's literally 5 minutes more work getting the stems ready for the mastering engineer but he can do so much more. Levels between tracks, making room for each instrument and even using automation for different parts (I feel like vocals need automation more than any other instrument)
Exactly my point! Thank you!
SO TRUE!!
Cool! Nice Mastering. See you in Pro Mix Academy maybe?! Master Keller.
Meet me there in a few weeks! ❤️🤪
Hi Kohle, I have a drawmer dl441 and bss dpr 402 compressor, firstly im pretty sure i’m doing something wrong because the plugin version of the bss sounds more pronounced than the hardware, can you perhaps do a small bit on how to use inexpensive compressors throughout
Noted!
Off topic. Have you done a review of the hughes and kettner grandmaster 40? Youve mentioned cab 1st. Thoughts on the 4x12 240 of the same name. This thing is heavy as hell.
I actually looked at it last week. Maybe I should get in touch with my fellow Germans!
But tell HK about me! I'm just on a small channel now. That helps.
Most people mixing: throw on a multiband compressor around 200hz range to control palm muting.
Kohle: “see you in hell motherfucker!”
Boosts range with EQ
Also, love Scott’s work, been following his channel for years. Speaking of, how the fuck am I not subbed to this channel?!?.
Ding dong!!! 🔔
Ding Dong!
A good mastering engineer will listen to the MIX, advise on the MIX, we are hiring an extra set of TRAINED ears, not a magician.
What if i am already subscribed to you email list? Do I need to resubscribe to enter?
Nope! Don't worry. You're already a part of the family!
@@KohleAudioKult thanks!
I deserve Scott's tutorial due to my previous contract with satan needs to be renegotiated and I can play him
the final song (satan of course) after I finish the tutorials.
cheers and thanks!!!!
PS That song crushes!
Tausendster like, krieg ich jetzt n Keks?
Ich höre mir meine tracks immer später nochmal an, vor allem leise und laut, korrigiere hier und da, und gehe dann erst mit einem "Lautmacher" ran, vorher eher nicht.
That mix with the vocals sounds like atmospheric Deicide
Just a great video!!
Did I miss the name of the band? Sounds great
Sorry.I think it's: BESERKIR
Hey Garrett, this is a composition of mine that I got some help with from session musicians, so it's not a group per-se, just one of my personal songs. I'll be making it available soon :)
@@ChernobylAudio666 oh nice, thank you!
I wish you could "turn shit into gold" 🤣! Anyway thanks again for the info! Gr8 vid 🔥🔥🤘🏼
Yes, mine suck! :D Thank you for your great videos, man! They help and inspire a lot!
Besides, what's the name of the great Band the mixes of you stem mastered?
Sorry! From what I know they are called BERSERKIR!
@@KohleAudioKult thank you!
Isn't STEM MASTERING can be the final stage of MIXING?
Great info! Greetings from the Philippines!
Yes indeed.
Would be amazing to see how to get that extra loudness without killing the dynamic feeling.... how you do that??? multiband limiting?? clipper???
BTW, thanks a lot for this kind of videos Kohle... this information is gold for every producer :D
A lot of it is done in the mix as well, with good bus compressor settings and volume control (automation) of the song itself while but maintaining headroom. I sent Kohle a mix down that I believe had 6-9dB of headroom, so there was space for things to be cranked without killing the dynamics of the song.
I agree that loudness is also a mix thing. I usually mix into a limiter so there are no surprises later.
@@ChernobylAudio666 That has a lot of sense to me!!!!... a louder mix will no need so much dynkiller processing .... I will try it.... thank you very much!!!!!.... and very nice mix man and what a killer song!!!! lml.. too bad is not on spotify :S... just subscribed to your channel lml
@@KohleAudioKult the limiter savior :D never go wrong with it and less troubles to the mastering engineer.... mixers has a lot responsibilities :)
Cool !!!
Great video, thank you, Kristian.
What would you suggest if you've mixed a song into a chain (compressors, EQ, etc.) on the mix bus and then want to get a track mastered using stem mastering?
Would you print a reference track and export the song with master bus effects bypassed and tell the mastering engineer what you've used or would you use a sub mix with everything except the instruments in the stem you'd like to print to feed it into the sidechain of let say the compressors you've used on the master bus and repeat this procedure for every stem you want to export?
Or would you do something completely different?
You can just run the stems through the EQ if you wanna keep it.
For compression it's a little more tricky. you need to send the whole mix into the sidechain of the compressor while just sending the audio of each stem through it.
But maybe you mastering engineer has a similar plugin and you just tell him the settings! ;)
@@KohleAudioKult thank you.
Hi Kohle, I have a question about guitar tracks
I have a band with one guitar, but we recorded 2 guitars. Do you think it’s better to have a slightly different sound between the two or the same? Better reamping through different cabs and/or amps mics etc?
A slight difference can help to make them sound a little wider.
Check out the latest Cytotoxin album (very extreme music) where we used the same cab and mics, but a Savage on one side and a Recto on the other.
Something drastic (like using another cab) is only recomendable if there are two guitarists with a distinct tone and they want people to hear the difference.
@@KohleAudioKult thank you so much!
Stem Mastering is mis named and should be called remix finishing or remix mastering. Another mastering function you forgot to mention probably because it is getting rarer is volume matching several songs for a CD release
with a good mix what about doing a master direct with a ssl comp an eq and miximizer limit on the master mix bus ?
That's what I'm doing more or less. Then I bypass the plugins and print the track and revisit it a week later. Reload the plugins, and do some small changes with fresh ears. Done!
Now I'm really wondering would master sound better or worse without limiter?
Is stem mastering different from making the same moves on individual busses in the mixing stage?
Not really. The only difference being that the efx are already baked introverted tracks and can’t be changed.
I agree that stem mastering is where it’s at and probably more of the future in mastering. On a side note, that master is so limited. The song didn’t have a lot of dynamics but I hate seeing metal mastered like pop music. Pushing for maximum loudness is rarely the best sounding way to do things...let the songs breathe.
But did you have the impression the limited master sounded worse?
Limiting is fine as long as things just look and don't sound compressed.
These days I sometimes make less limited versions for streaming, but only if it actually sounds better. Very often it just sounds great with the limiting.
@@KohleAudioKult No, it didn’t sound worse but mainly because it wasn’t a terribly dynamic track aside from the intro but there were a few spots where it backed off subtly that the mastered version lost a bit of. I was listening to a lot of Steve Albini’s band Shellac recently and noticing how the master’s are very dynamic with little to no hard limiting. It makes me turn it up a bit and when the loud parts hit, they actually have somewhere to go and hit louder (at least feels louder) than something brick-walled for the whole album. I’m sure we’ve all had the experience of listening to death metal and after multiple songs at -6LUFS it just stops grabbing our attention and fades from our attention even when the songs are good...same thing when everything is played at full speed, it stops sounding fast but some of that is a song-writing issue.
@@KohleAudioKult If I listen at 70 dB the loud master is fine. But if I really want to crank it up and listen at 90+ dBs a loud master is way harder on my ears. With a more dynamic master I get about double the time of loud music listening compared to a loud master until my ears are shot.
"These days I sometimes make less limited versions for streaming, but only if it actually sounds better."If the less limited version sounds better, then why limit it 'til it gets worse at all?
Mastering is the jizz of audio production. Everything else takes more work to get to the happy ending.
08:07 Isn't the low cut on the guitar stem a little bit too heavy? Seems like Scott Elliot did a very steep filter there which of course depends on the recording. I'm curious what's your opinion on that! Great video!
Ok for me. I usually do it a little less steep, but it sounded ok to my ears.
Your stem mastering was awesome, next time it will be easier
i've been noticing that Stem Mastering becomes more and more prevalent with the rise of bedroom producers/musicians who mix their own stuff, which might not have the best monitoring environment when compared to dedicated project (particularly, well, mastering) studios.
Dude, so your videos are awesome. Curious: I'm sure you are familiar with the 'loudness wars' of the previous decade, so I'm curious as to why you mix has such a brick-walled appearance here?
I looks a lot more brick-walled in Wavelab than it actually is.
It's actually less loud and compressed than your every day metal master.
I'm always making sure I'm not killing things in mastering. Don't worry!
@@KohleAudioKult Whew, I was worried for a minute.
What verb did you use on the drum stem? Did you high pass it or treat the reverb in any way?
It’s Little Plate from what I remember.
Awesome video, Kohle! Using stems in mastering is really cool :).
How do you approach mastering for different platforms?
Do you master quieter for digital streaming and louder for CDs?
Yes, I do. At least if things sound a little more relaxed with less limiting.
@@KohleAudioKult Thanks!
I like your vids , one silly question , how loud do you mix?
I find that when mixing quietly I can'thear low end really well
I don’t Mix loud at all.
Mixing quiet is good to hear what's out front in the mix, but yeah, if it's so quiet you can't hear the low end, you might need to turn it up a little ;)
If mastering engineer's main purpose is to be as second pair of ears was it better if mastering engineer also have access to whole mix project with separate files?
Check out my latest video please!
I think that will answer your question (and much more)
I do cut the front and back silences out during mastering phase, does that count ;)
Hey the link to Scott's course didn't work for me
I think the course is no longer at Promix Academy. Sorry!
Why you remind me Benny Greb? 🙂 Great channel !
Who's that?
@@KohleAudioKult one of the top freestyle drummer 🙂
Do you ever use analog gear when mastering. I hear lot of opinions on this and was curious of yours.
Not anymore. I love using my hardware Pultec. But these days it's more important to recall you mastering setups.
Since I'm constantly working on around 10 productions, this is crucial.
Dat midi bass. Sounds good though.
Just so happens my mixes do suck.
Haha! Best comment so far! I'll also be coming up with courses. I just need more time.
@@KohleAudioKult Cant wait man.. keep up the good work!
Mine too haha.
Have 1 percent hope you see and respond to this, but I'm a musician looking to learn all about this kind of stuff, both to engineer my own music without it sounding like noobcake and to work other people's music as both a service (local guys are just as lost and less computery and have less time to learn) and as supplemental income so I can eat twice a day. Where the heck do I go to learn in depth stuff like this?
1.) Get some gear and get going.
2.) check out some online courses. I'll be putting out some courses soon too.
@@KohleAudioKult whoa thanks for replying! Any courses in particular stand out? And ima def check out your stuff, its sober and very helpful
I think your goal should be to eat 3 times a day! :)
hey Kristian.
i just subscribed to your e mail list because i belief in your work and you had being such an influence for me and my modest home mixes for so long… and looking to this video and the song you mastered, i start to get really worried about nowadays drum sound... please don't get me wrong, that drum sound.. it doesn't sound like a real drum anymore... i mean.. like... superior drummer does that and it sounds like that ... i'm kind of concerned about the industries sound standards nowadays ... regarding drum production... i do rather to hear the real drum sound ... rather than that consistent machine gun sound... what is happening to de sound nowadays?
i was very curious about the curse... i really do, but... i don't want the comercial standards! i want the old school standards! where the sound was so mush more alive... especially the drum sound... please don't get me wrong Kristian about this text. but i want to know how to mix real metal... with real feel... vibe... not over processed stuff...
but in the end of the day , you are still the best out there . thanks for all the precious information and keep the good work... and i'm very sorry about my English ...
S.W.666
Hey man! It's all a matter of taste. I did not record or mix this song so the drum sound was not a part of this video.
But when I mix stuff I do everything from natural to very modern. Whatever makes the song shine!
@@KohleAudioKult i now that you don´t recorded the song. that's why the drums sounds like that... ! dont get me wrong... my point is on the drum sound only! many thanks for your answer .
@@manuelalvito7584 Those are real drums... Scott just does a great job with editing and mixing... I've seen the course.. he doesn't overly edit them, but enough so they sound good. The drums were also well played.
I thought mastering was exactly what it says it is : making a master copy ready for reproduction across different formats.
Adding reverb to drums or changing the voicing of the distortion comes down to a creative decision. As the mastering engineer, you should not be making creative decisions - leave that to the producer/mixer.
Your job is to make the stereo mix provided by the client sound as consistent as possible on the widest variety of playback devices.
There is also no longer any point in brickwalling, if there ever was one to begin with. Streaming services such as Spotify will do a form of volume matching upon playback, so every song of every band sounds more or less the same, volume-wise. Why not keep those transients intact for a change?
My job is always and everywhere to make things sound better and to make the client happy.
You're right about the streaming services and the loudness. I always try another master with less limiting, but I only use it when it actually sounds better which is not always the case.
We still need CD masters though where loudness is still an issue.
@@KohleAudioKult I agree - the client should be happy. Whoever pays for the master gets to decide what the mastering engineer may, or may not do. But with regards to your job being to always and everywhere make things sound better, not necessarily. It depends on your role in the process, and whether, in the capacity of that role, you have explicit permission to make creative decisions.
@@rinderpes3588 Totally! But i was talking about me. And never take jobs where I can't have a creative influence.
"recording is the most vital part of a production, because you can choose the equipment", he says, well aware, that 99% of his audience own a Scarlett 2i2 to record a GIO into a free amp VST :D
You guys have more free plugins than anyone in this world has hardware. Being creative (for free) has never been easier!
@@KohleAudioKult The greater portion of them are garbage, though, therefore there are like 3 or 4 good ones everyone keeps using (speaking of amp sims).
Not implying you are wrong, just reveling in memories of where today's online producer scene is coming from.
Are you secretly Paul Gilbert??
Yes! How did you find out?