Re: [LAU] Linux mastering services?

On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 02:38:29PM -0400, Paul Davis wrote :
> On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 2:31 PM, Ken Restivo <ken@email-addr-hidden> wrote:
> > It seems to me, again from the reading I've done, that if the mix sounds good on shitty iPod earbuds and 1cm-diameter laptop speakers, then it's mission accomplished, since thet's what everyone is going to listen to it on anyway. Unless of course you're mixing for clubs, in which case mix it on a bangin loud club system with a subwoofer to make sure it works there, or for film or theatre, in which case it's best to mix it on those systems, etc etc..
>
> just this morning, i was driving in the car and listening to The
> Pineapple Thief (track: Shoot First, from "Tightly Unwound"). I was
> *amazed* at how terrible some sections of its sound in the car,
> whereas in the studio or via ipod earphones, its pretty awesome. when
> i say terrible, i mean "hurts my ears terrible".
>
> you simply can't be making this kind of assumption, i claim. a good
> mastering job makes sure that it sounds OK on *all* likely listening
> systems.

I deepy unagree with that, just because (at least) it's totally
impossible to get such a thing. What would sound *really* OK on an iPOD
will probably sound like an iPOD on most of the system.
Universality is a "sans-issue" goal.

Last but not least, I've been working with several mastering ingeneers,
some of them using waves plugins (in Wavelab or this T* thing under
Mac), some others (more expensive) using Sadie systems, and so on.
And some others working with JAMIN, too (including me).

What I finally found is that the money you spent in a "*good* mastering
engineer, you lose it in the time he will spent on your music. So if you
play (or record) a very standard music (like very classic punk rock, or
whatever), he probably will give you something you might be happy with.
However, I doubt you won't have reached such a point with more time and
less money. And it assumed, anyway, that your bounces were already
really well-mixed (I mean, equilibrium OK, "montage" OK, and on so on)

If you play something a bit more special (including
different kind of masters all over the CD), it's just inept to give 500$
to a engineer which will pass 3-4 hours on it (so listening, in the best
prevision, two times your whole piece, one to discover, one for master
settings).

I repeat it, mastering is not such a magical thing, exactly like mix.
The fact is that there are so much legends, habits, uses, and so on,
that everybody is scared of doing anything, fearing what people may
think of it. Just let you ears work, and when you find it cool, it looks
like you reach something quite fine.
Actually, you HAVE to listen to your master on several systems, so that
you might see if there are some "acceptable" devices on which it just
sounds crappy (considering all the causes of this crappy sound, your
engine noise in a car, Loudspeaker fat low-mid resonance, ...).

To end up, all experiences mentionned above lead to CD publication,
distributed worldwidely, and also in digital. Not a review, not a
purchaser, not a fan just told us anything about sound when we changed
our way of mastering. (Actually, I should precise that some people
complained when we mastered by this very skilled Sadie user -which
works for Universal/Virgin/Naive...- that the CD was too loud and get
their Hi-Fi system to distord... Nice, thanks.....).

DIY is the way, I'm sure of it!

By the way, the proposal I made to you to work a bit on your songs is
unlikely to happen, as it's not going to be free art, if I understood
all.

See you.

PS : some words in French that I couldn't translate.

-- 
Aurélien
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