When it comes to mastering, I feel quite lost. Mixing, I can kinda do, even though I don’t know how good I am at it, but for mastering, it feels like I don’t even know what the basic steps are. Therefore, I thought that I should post a song that I’ve made both without any mastering and with my attempt at mastering and then ask you for feedback. I don’t know if it matters, but I’ve used my A4, AR, and M:C as the basis for this song, and I have individual mixer channels for each individual track.
So, this is what the song sounds like without any mastering. And this is what it sound like with my mastering attempt.
And this is my mastering chain:
First, I have a utility module where I increase the width a bit as well as making the lowest frequencies mono. Then I have an EQ where I boost everything above 1000 Hz (I don’t know if this need arises because of bad mixing, because it’s something that I almost always feel that I have to do). Next, I have a compressor in RMS mode (this just sounded like the right choise even though I don’t really know why).
Next, I’m using the Transient Shaper in the plugin Neutron Elements to make the transients a bit more punchy. I don’t know if this overlaps (or if this could have been achieved) with my compressor.
Finally, I have an Ozone Elements plugin with an imager (I don’t exactly know how/if this differs from what I’m doing in the Utility effect, but it sounded good to me)…
…and a maximizer where I stumbled myself into these settings (again, whether I should use True Peak or something else is a bit confusing to me).
If anyone would like to share your thoughts on my mastering process so far, I would love to hear them. I’m totally open to the fact that I probably don’t have a clue what I’m doing, so don’t hold anything back
I’m trying to focus on the mastering process here rather than the mixing process, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there are steps that I’ve taken that could have been more effectively implemented by placing certain effects on individual mixer channels, so maybe a strict focus on the mastering process isn’t possible.
Finally, I haven’t automated any of the effects on the master bus, and I’m not sure if this is something that usually is done and something that could enhance my final result.