# What cost mastering?



## madbulk (Jul 21, 2005)

I don't understand mastering, and I don't really wanna understand it.
Or rather, I do wanna, but I don't wanna enough to work at it.

Anybody send out for mastering? What's the accepted rate for a guy NOT to put it through a finalizer and hand it back to me?

Or am I being silly, and it's not that complicated, and I should buy a powercore and shut up, and so forth?


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## José Herring (Jul 21, 2005)

Here ya go. Decide for yourself.

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/aug04/a ... tering.htm

Jose


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## hv (Jul 21, 2005)

If you're looking to send it out, here's a link to a guy in Texas named Billy Stull who I've heard wonderful things about. 

http://www.masterpiecemastering.com/about.htm

I understand he only charges $80/hr and doesn't own a finalizer.

Howard


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## TARI (Jul 21, 2005)

josejherring said:


> Here ya go. Decide for yourself.
> 
> http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/aug04/a ... tering.htm
> 
> Jose



Very interesting Jose, thanks. 
I have been playing in an important group in Spain, and the company always sent the cd to master to London or wherever, and the result was not as good as i suposed. The last Cd we recorded last year (with a much less money) was mastered in Madrid in the same place where we recorded the cd. The "engineer" had a lot of gadgets to do the master, but the result was for killing him, so the company had to send the cd to master to...I don't remember. Always the same with mastering.

As i read in the link of Jose, master is 95% ears. it is very difficult to find a guy who knows how to do and not just use a finalizer :wink: and earn a lot of money for nothing, but I think it is very important in the final result.


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## José Herring (Jul 24, 2005)

Here's another from some highschool kids. Using their techniques I was able to get great results mastering an orchestra track.

http://www.sbomagazine.com/sbomag/apr05/Recording.html

And, here's another that's great for vocals. Havn't used it yet but looks promising.

http://www.digitalproducer.com/articles ... p?id=26201

Between these two I think anybody can get professional results and it's relatively easy. Using the highschool kids technique I was able to master "Creation" in the demo section in about :30. Sound is still a bit noisy but you should hear the original recording :shock: :roll: 

Jose


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## Bruce Richardson (Jul 24, 2005)

I've done a lot of mastering. It is not an impossible skill to learn. Mostly, its difficulty (in self-mastering your own projects) is divorcing your ear from the prejudices of having worked on the material.

I observe this mainly in that I don't have nearly the same mindset when mastering my own material as I do when I'm working on a mastering project for someone else. 

The best way I can describe the mindset of mastering is this: Your job is to remove obstacles that prevent the best possible flow of musical energy...not to add anything, or change anything about what you are hearing.

Oftentimes, this is highly subjective. In a pop production, for instance, I have isolated instrumental hooks and have given them a different compression/loudness treatment than the rest of the tune. Or, in many cases, have drawn a very complex volume envelope--most times extremely subtle--which makes the energy flow differently through a song. Again, with the final goal of causing musical energy to flow in the way that was intended, or that I feel (as an artist in my own right) was intended.

And that latter part is why people, with all the gear and right speakers, still send out for mastering projects. At times, what you want is just another artistic filter, to either say, "Yes, this is working," or "maybe if you took another stab at mixing and did 'this'."

One definite function of a mastering engineer is to suggest remixes if there is a problem which he feels cannot be overcome in the mastering process. Of course, this is highly dependent upon the source material. Obviously, a live two-track of a concert performance is not going to be remixed.

In fact, the most difficult, but some of the most rewarding, mastering jobs I have done have been for some university clients. I mastered several albums for a very good university wind ensemble, which were compiled from tour recordings. The engineer at the school was very good, and used exactly the same microphone array at every venue. The recordings, despite different halls, came out so close as to be interchangeable--so we would assemble the best "performance" out of different sections of the same piece that were sometimes recorded either in rehearsal at the same venue, or even different venues.

I don't know if any of that helps, but those are some ideas of what can fall under the broad category of mastering. To me, the most important factor is that you want a mastering engineer to be a very musical person, even though the process is ultimately technical. Sculpting the finished work is delicate business, and you want someone involved whose musical taste you trust.

As far as costs, I have charged a range as low as $80 per hour, up to $150 per hour. It depends upon how much work is in the material, and how much time I'll have to spend...but I've done enough of it that I generally just propose a flat-fee for the project once I have heard the material. That way, there are no surprises for the client. I'll generally allow for reasonable revisions, a couple of rounds of notes. After that, more changes - more cash.


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## TheoKrueger (Jul 24, 2005)

Hey Bruce, just saw you here for the fipg  < @öú¶3…,  +  zI46518ece 325418772480350fe8a259.jpg [email protected]öú·3†,   G  ?zI45e3401d 207


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## José Herring (Jul 24, 2005)

While all the above of what Bruce and Frederick said is true, most of the time on projects these days, unless you're doing decently funded CD projects, the time and money isn't there for the mastering stage to be done by somebody else.

As we're coming up we first need to learn how to do all the stages of a production reasonalbe well ourselves.

The links above that I provided are a good quick and simple way to get professional results. Now of course you can always get better and you can always find somebody who is better at certain things than you are to help out in the production but all that cost, and until I for one get to a level where I can expand my business to include more people besides myself, self mastering(hehe) is the only real solution for the majority.

It's not going to hurt anybody to increase their production chops to a point where the recordings they make sound reasonable professional. And, with the technology today you can just sit around and fittle about until you get some chops going and the tools are getting better and easier to use.

Jose


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## Frederick Russ (Jul 24, 2005)

There are some excellent two track editing/mastering programs and some superb higher end mastering plugs available as vst/au plug-ins within the two track environment. It's actually staggering that the quality has gotten this good outside of a Pro Tools environment or ported from a rack of vintage gear.

But I do know of mastering engineers who have pristine A/D/A convertors who port the music to very high end gear such as what can be found at Manley for very critical work (and for a nice hefty mastering fee) and reconvert that completed work back to digital - which might be overkill for a simple project, so I guess it depends on the application.


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## evaclear (Jul 26, 2005)

I think mastering with a dedicated mastering engineer is really important, and i'll try and go down that path as much as i can- and it always compromises my producer budget, but i think the results are worth it.

We haven't mentioned the "loudness" word yet. Most Do It Yourself mastering is too quiet to put back to back with other commercial releases, and attempts to get it "appropriately" loud can often kill the track. Obviously this relates to pop/rock music moreso than other genres. Secondly, I consider "tone". I think stuff takes on a charater and sound when it's run through Manley and Crane compressors/limiters/eqs etc. A sound i can't pull with the Waves C4 and or L3.

I probably master half my stuff, and outsource the other half for the above reasons when i can afford it.

They're my thoughts anyhow.


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## hv (Jul 28, 2005)

Here's some commentary surrounding use of the latest analog mastering toy to get unvieled at AES from Rupert Neve who apparently custom designed it for Billy Stull:

http://www.legendaryaudio.com/usernotes.html

Far as budgeting for mastering services goes, they say they tend to devote 6 to 8 hours of time at their hourly rate to the typical hour-long CD project.

Howard


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## thesoundsmith (Oct 16, 2005)

Jose, thanks for the links, especially the one for SOS. Any major work I send out, but I do a lot of local level stuff where it's not worth professional rates, but if I can get it closer than it was, the clients always love it...


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