Studio Monitors and Mastering recommendations?

Johnny_Cradle · Post by **Johnny_Cradle** » Fri Aug 28, 2009 3:14 am

I have the august issue of Music Tech Magazine and it was all about monitoring, mid-high priced and everything else you need to know about it.

Not sure, but you could probably find it still in store (hopefully)_

One thing you're most likely to see in any shop, though will be the KRK rokit & VXT range_

anoteoftruth · Post by **anoteoftruth** » Fri Aug 28, 2009 10:37 am

Yeah, Honestly I'm still getting used to how to make a solid mixdown haha.. I've always just hoarded instruments and equipment and never focused too much on high quality recording or mastering and things untill lately.. but it makes the world of difference so right now thats my goal, to learn it all.

I actually find it kind of overwhelming.. I found its really easy to make a clean master, but.. a lot of the stuff I listen to is more experimental, or, you can tell the mastering is done creatively to sound unique.. I guess my plan is just to learn how to do things clean and well, and then hopefully that will give me a better understanding so I can start experimenting with my own unique sounds. But I'm finding it to be quite a challenge now. My new KRK's are helping though

sixsinisters · Post by **sixsinisters** » Fri Aug 28, 2009 3:22 pm

Hey, glad that you've finally settled with the krks, how do you like em?

Cheers

anoteoftruth · Post by **anoteoftruth** » Sat Aug 29, 2009 2:12 am

sixsinisters wrote:Hey, glad that you've finally settled with the krks, how do you like em?

Cheers

Love them man! They have been really impressing me so far.. I might be tempted to buy the 10S subwoofer as well though, only because a lot of the stuff I do has a lot of bass, I found so far its easy to overdo the bass with these things.. I've mixed things that sound great on the speakers, but when I checked headphones, still sounded great, just too bass heavy.. so I think if I grab the subwoofer I'll be in perfection.. thanks for the suggestion.. can't emphasize enough how stellar these are

PS. I got the 6's.. I tested the 8's and I honestly did'nt feel a big difference.. a tad more bass response but not enough to dish out the extra dough.. if I had the money I woulda got the VXT's.

lovedroid · Post by **lovedroid** » Sat Aug 29, 2009 7:09 am

When it comes to mastering I must say that what plugins you use are far less important than that you learn how to use them!
Read everything you can find about limiters, multiband and regular compressors, EQ, etc. -Ozone has e.g. a well-written manual on their webpage.

And as someone else already has written, it is also very important to learn how to make a good mix. It is much easier to master if the tune sounds great already at mixdown!

anoteoftruth · Post by **anoteoftruth** » Sun Aug 30, 2009 1:32 am

lovedroid wrote:When it comes to mastering I must say that what plugins you use are far less important than that you learn how to use them!
Read everything you can find about limiters, multiband and regular compressors, EQ, etc. -Ozone has e.g. a well-written manual on their webpage.

And as someone else already has written, it is also very important to learn how to make a good mix. It is much easier to master if the tune sounds great already at mixdown!

Totally agree with what you said.. I guess with regards to plugins, I was looking for any recommendations on which ones have easier or better interfaces/ease of use and stand up quality.. Your very right though.. I am reading up on a lot to do with the limiters, compressors and multibands etc, and I guess I just wanted to sort out what kind of software I'd be settling with so I could learn it well inside that.. Ozone seems pretty decent to me so far. I have been reading the manual from the site too.

Mixing is a ongoing struggle for me, and so far I'm finding it a lot harder to find resources to assist with mixing then I am with the mastering stuff.. mostly just because I find that every musical situation is unique, and mixing really involves a lot of preferance and creative decisions as well.. plus the stuff I do nowadays is more experimental.. so there is no standard really to play off of. That and I create most of my sounds myself.. drums and percussion and things usually by field recordings or things I record in my home and cut and sculpt into sounds etc, mixed with some synthetic or traditionally sampled drums.. so a lot of time, I make a track and halfway through I notice the way I EQ'd or did something to the sounds I created, won't work in the mix, or needs to change.. so there is a lot of.. testing, going back and forth.. I guess this is where I really need to spend more time training my ears.. listening to similar stuff, or whatever I can deem to be similar or like the sound I wanna get, and try and mimic it till I get the feel for it.

I guess its hard to get advice on that because everybody has a different preferance.. a buzzing bass might annoy some people where others might love it.. but either way, I find there is a lot of retouching on sounds in tracks, something I get into a rut with.. where it really halts the flow of making some things.. so I wanna work a lot more on tackling that aspect of production so that I can just increase my flow and hopefully decrease the numbers of unfinished tracks congesting my desktop.

darkartois · Post by **darkartois** » Tue Sep 01, 2009 1:44 am

Waves is the way to go for mastering, I run a label and do all the mastering and provided I have a good mix to work with L2 and C4 is all I use and sometimes Maxxbass to give the track more oomph. Waves are designed by pro's and used by pro's and really make your tracks stand out. I would definately recommend the whole bundle, everything in the bundle is top quality and I would never use anything else.

As far as mixing goes LESS IS MORE! It's really irritating that people throw whatever saturator/vintage warmer/limiter on every channel and leave it a muddy mess. No amount of mastering can really fix this. Turn things down before turning them up and never peak/clip. Leave -6db of headroom in your mix with no compression/limiting on the master channel so there's plenty of room to boost what needs boosted.

Sidechain compression is really over rated IMO and nowdays I prefer to run an analyzer over my sub and see where it peaks and cut the kick drum accordingly. Give every element its own space to breathe. I'd also bring another track thats been mixed and mastered to perfection into your session to cross reference and listen to your final cut on as many different mediums as possible.