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Topic: Good mastering/bad mastering? (Read 5485 times) previous topic - next topic
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Good mastering/bad mastering?

I have seen many people in here state that most CDs nowadays are poorly mastered.

Well, knowing a group of friends producing & masteing their own CDs, I was wondering what makes for "good" vs. "bad" mastering?

I know this is a vague question, but I'm curious as to what you all think.  If anyone here actually masters CDs, I'd especially appreciate comments.

Good mastering/bad mastering?

Reply #1 –
>>>'Well, knowing a group of friends producing & masteing their own CDs, I was wondering what makes for "good" vs. "bad" mastering?'<<<

it's a huge topic. there's no point of me going into detail here because there's a lot of information about mastering and what you can do to improve things online prepared by people who are experts at this. i would say having top quality equipment (and not just relying on software plugins), very good listening skills, and the right acoustics in their studio is what will ultimately determine how your recording sounds
Be healthy, be kind, grow rich and prosper

Good mastering/bad mastering?

Reply #2 –
It's not so much that CD's are mastered poorly or good, but rather the whole mix-down of music gets screwed up.  CD's are just the target media that's popular today.  It's the digitizing and cleaning of older albums that gets screwed up.  Remember not too long ago, there wasn't any such thing as recording straight to hard disk.  Music was still recorded to multi-track analog tape, processing applied, mixed down to stereo and then sent to the target media.  That last sentence was greatly simplified, but it illustrates the fact that things only went digital at the end of the process.

Fast forward to today.  You've got folks that, I'd guess, buy the rights to an artists work.  They digitize it, try and clean it up, maybe add some processing and mix it down.  Some of these same folks do their job well and the music comes out sounding like it was meant to.  Other folks get a bit crazy with adding their own touch and lose what the artist was trying to convey.  That would be a poorly done mastering/re-mastering.

It's just like the original Star Wars movies.  They were shot in an analog format, on a media susceptible to degradation over time.  If Lucas hadn't digitized it, the original footage could have been lost forever.  Music is the same way.  Analog format on a magnetic media and time is the enemy along with humidity and temperature.

I'm not a recording engineer, but I did take 4yrs of audio engineering in college.  That's where my perspective comes from. 

Good mastering/bad mastering?

Reply #3 –
I think that nowadays CDs are "poorly mastered" in the sense that they are "*VERY LOUD*, dynamic compressed, treble boosted and pre-clipped CD titles which are optimized for Ghettoblaster sound and Advertising financed private radio stations"
\"The R.I.A.A. is out there\"

Good mastering/bad mastering?

Reply #4 –
Mr. Mulder has it right. When people are always speaking of the bad mastering practices of late, they mean that all the dynamics of music are compressed out of existence. A compressor is a machine that pushes down the peaks in an electrical signal (i.e. the electrified sound signal) that it does not clip (become louder than the loudest possible signal). As a consequence the music sounds "lifeless," and "boring."

You can test this yourself if you have any software that show peak meters while playing music. First try an old album such as from 20 years ago and see the peaks jump around. Then put in a recent album and see how the peak stays nearly stationary at the top. THAT is over-compression.

Destron

Good mastering/bad mastering?

Reply #5 –
Rip Rowan of Prorec.com wrote an article that is very informative, and with revealing illustrations. It focuses on level and dynamics only, but is a good place to start.

uosdwis

Good mastering/bad mastering?

Reply #6 –
I thought I'd attach an illustration of my own, since the Prorec examples are not the worst, by far. This is how "Knives Out" look, taken from Radiohead's album Amnesiac:


uosdwis

Good mastering/bad mastering?

Reply #7 –
Just to add...

Firstly, the above picture is so typical! Buy a CD from the charts, rip it, look at it, that's the picture!


Dynamic Range Compression isn't always bad. Sometimes it works really well. Sometimes, even when it's obvious, it's kind of cool. There was a program on BBC radio where George Martin was talking about the subject, playing some examples from the Beatles and other material he's recorded, and also from other producers. He was demonstrating the cool effects, and significant improvement in "musicality" you could get from applying DRC. Unfortunately, the show was broadcast via typical FM processing, and if you didn't know the originals, you just couldn't understand what he was talking about - it was all overcompressed!


There are three problems with DRC on CDs.
1. It's often applied to the entire mix, rather than just individual parts or instruments.
2. It's used too much. This removes the dynamics from the music - almost all music needs loud and soft, light and shade etc to "breathe". It's boring without.
3. It's used with a hard digital limit, and inferior digital processing. 0dB FS - a number which is aimed at, but cannot be breached. This means that the compressors do all kinds of strange things that don't make any sense from a psychoacoustic (or even a DRC) view point. In addition, DRC breaks the nyquist limit - the processing you aim to do creates harmonics that are way out of band. If you don't oversample (sometimes dramatically) then these harmonics alias back down into the audible band. It makes the result sound really harsh and unatural.

If you're very clever, you can avoid 2. But you can't avoid 3 if you're aiming at 0dB FS. OTOH you can implement 2 intentionally, but avoid 3 (usually using analogue compressors, or even digital ones backed off so peak limiting isn't an issue). You still get a dynamically boring track, but it won't sound half as harsh.


Without wishing to bring the debate up again, I believe that a lot of the advantage that vinyl sometimes has over CD is down to 3. I've heard comprarisons of CD vs vinyl (usually recently remastered CD vs original vinyl), and I just know that the vinyl advantage isn't distortion, and isn't even better (newer) master tapes. It's the harshness added when the CD was (re)mastered. You could make a CD-R of the vinyl, and it would sound ten times beter than the commercial CD issue. Even using very modest equipment (i.e. cheap sound card or cheap CD recorder), the difference between the CD-R and the vinyl would be very small compared to the difference between the vinyl and the (inferior) CD. There are other issues which cause this, but a big one on relatively recent releases is item 3 above, and more DRC in general.

Cheers,
David.

Good mastering/bad mastering?

Reply #8 –
I've become more used to dynamics compression. I realize now that when a recording has too much compression, it looses rhythm. The percussive sounds, instead of giving the rhythm of the song, are melted into nothingness.

David, how can dynamics compression produce aliases ? It certainly produce unwanted harmonics because of clipping, but why is there aliasing ?

Good mastering/bad mastering?

Reply #9 –
Quote
... You could make a CD-R of the vinyl, and it would sound ten times beter than the commercial CD issue.

Confirmed! I've made approx. 500 CDRs from my vinyls so far in the last years and all I have to do is to remove some most annoying clicks, pops and crackles... and during playback just to add a little bit volume. The result? Sounds great, literally.

Good mastering/bad mastering?

Reply #10 –
Like Pio2001, I find that over-comp ruins the sound in the sense it looses rythm...but the worst of all is the loss of life of the music: where are the quiet parts that make the sound breathe ?

Just compare a live concert in DVD and the CD version...
and don't talk me about compressors that give louder sounds that the 16/44 standard can offer...
If compressors are good,this is just only for some part but not for the entire track...

    remember T2 soundtrack (CD released in 1991) and the way it was masterised,great dynamic,AC3 comp-like and compare the Shakira Laundry Service... I feel pain...

Good mastering/bad mastering?

Reply #11 –
Quote
I think that nowadays CDs are "poorly mastered" in the sense that they are "*VERY LOUD*, dynamic compressed, treble boosted and pre-clipped CD titles which are optimized for Ghettoblaster sound and Advertising financed private radio stations"

Hey, that's Frank Klemm's quote!

http://www.personal.uni-jena.de/~pfk/mpp/#replaygain