Mastering session: this song needs some help!
Mastering time! Going through a song that I found tonally really challenging. I could really hear where it could use some help to be nicer
Mastering time!
Going through a song that I found tonally really challenging.
I could really hear where it could use some help to be nicer to listen to – and that's what mastering is about.
I didn't have a ton of time for this, so did what I could and I'm fairly OK with how it sounds, considering.
Going thru some of my philosophy and tools, and definitely making this one nicer to listen to!
Song is Recluse Crew feat. Finsta Bundy: "Life" feat. Fraction & Mike C.O.X.
Note: the non-mastered version (which I was honing here) is already out, and the one I'm treating is out in August on an album on a label called Mood Monarch, so if you check it on out music services, you'll hear the untreated version for now.
Comments (5)
I especially notice how much fatter the snare is. Good stuff!
Your observations on mode 1 vs mode 2 correlate with what Big Z found. He managed to reverse engineer the modes somewhat. Mode 1 duplicates the input with a 10ms delay on both L&R but with one of them phase inverted. On the transient, this sounds a bit like a pre-delay on a reverb or something so causes that smearing sound between the two ticks of the transient. He deals with it using a transient shaper too, where you use spiff in the sides. Mode 2 behaves like a very short IR that smears everything across the sides without the delay https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BPI1TTJx5c
Interesting! Thanks for this. So I guess they do some HAAS stuff for transients only; I’m glad it never hurts the mono like HAAS always does👌🏻
I suppose the biggest problem is that the sample for the last note of the bass is like 40 cents flat. That might be an artistic choice, but if not, the only way I can think to fix that without going back to the mix is stem separation and doing some autotune on the bass.
When doing stereo mastering, I might not dare do stem separation, as it might hurt the overall integrity of the signal. These types of low enhancers can be tricky, and a few times I’ve even automated different settings for different notes to have every note ideally…however then I end up asking myself, should stereo mastering be this tricky or should I just get stems (often a budget matter) or just a better mix. Usually if there’s more time, I’ll ask for stems.