Mastering for the wonderful, transgressive, experimental, industrial group Hyenaz today for their forthcoming album and single. Challenging experimental music to mix and master, but challenging and unique music is my happy place here at BMStudio. Long live the fighters. ✊
Friday is always techno mastering day. And last tune of the day is some nosebleed gabba/hardcore. Mostly opening up the stereo image here, giving more air to th tips, more sub to the lows, and picking out transient detail in the mids. Still taken up to nosebleed final level but with a bigger, wider and more punchy final sound.
For some reason Friday is always techno day. Good mixes here today, but a little loose and need pulling in and gluing together.
It's not all experimental difficult to master noise and chestplate rattling bass music here. Some nice balladic pop from the Phillipines today. Lots of focus on the vocal, which was a little dense in the lows, thinned and gently balanced by pulling harmonics down with the HE1 and adding a little density to the breathy end of the vocals. Some sparkle in the sides, a little taming of the lows and we are good. Ear kisses.
Mastering for vinyl today, really enjoying the combination of the HE2 and Pultec working together in mid/side. Creating harmonics with the Pultec and then enhancing them with the HE2. Bine rattling subs without mud - tick... More width without clutter - tick. Silky smooth tops with some lovely fizz - tick. Yeah this machine is staying. The esoteric EQ side of the rack now gives me everything I could possibly need.
And she's in. The HE2 and Stereo Pultec are now linked together as one, via the inserts on the mid/side encoder/decoder in the HE2. So now I have a stereo Pultec that works in mid/side mode, making it way more useful for mastering purposes, and the symbiotic combination of the two makes a wonderful device where we can apply butter smooth tube EQ to material whilst at the same time controlling the harmonic density. Next level shit. Should probably read the manual now.
Finally got the time to get this new wonderbox integrated.
Finally got the time to get this new wonderbox integrated.
A quick single electro track for the end of the day and week. A little bit of demasking to open the mids, tube and transformers pushed for some nice vintage colour to fit the old skool electro vibes, multiband Comp on the low end to maintain kick punch in a dense mix, a little lift in the middle range on the sides to give the synths more width. Nice and easy, super warm and lively end result. Lovely way to end a crazy busy week.
In the studio today, some 90's style hardgroove techno. Production was well balanced but the dynamic range was a little high to get to modern loudness levels. So I had to pull every trick out to get the dynamic range down without killing the track. So, some dynamic unmasking via the mastering exciters to get the mid range opened up and out of the way of itself to allow it to take some dynamic range reduction. Then pushing the sound through the pultec with the Redd47 preamp, a little soft clipping from that moved things to the rs124 for some more push, the mu compression when inputs are driven gives a very forgiving type of analog clipping that's very pleasing, then into the multi core for some very fast compression, shaving off some level on each band, slightly overcooking it and then dialing some life back in via the wet dry. Into the Vastaso 2, some nifty dual detector compression pushed into the clipping stage, set to transformer, for some more gentle analog clipping. A little cleanup of the thickened sides with the TKlizer2 and back into the box for final tweaking and limiting. And we got there! -7LUFS (yeah, I know, but that's what clients demand), track sounds like a Nilz master, pumping and banging, but still alive. Worth noting, if you want your track to meet modern loudness, you need to produce it to be capable of getting there. If you leave your mastering engineer with 8, 9, 10db of dynamic needing to be cut off, then you have to accept it will be noticeable in some way. Get your dynamics down, at the track/channel level, to be ready for the engineer to take it up to psycho modern levels clean.
A little electro mastering today. Adding sparkle and snap to the top end, tightening up the lows, pushing up the sides a touch. Lovely.
Mastering for the wonderful, transgressive, experimental, industrial group Hyenaz today for their forthcoming album and single. Challenging experimental music to mix and master, but challenging and unique music is my happy place here at BMStudio. Lo
Friday is always techno mastering day. And last tune of the day is some nosebleed gabba/hardcore. Mostly opening up the stereo image here, giving more air to th tips, more sub to the lows, and picking out transient detail in the mids. Still taken
For some reason Friday is always techno day. Good mixes here today, but a little loose and need pulling in and gluing together.
It's not all experimental difficult to master noise and chestplate rattling bass music here. Some nice balladic pop from the Phillipines today. Lots of focus on the vocal, which was a little dense in the lows, thinned and gently balanced by pulling
Mastering for vinyl today, really enjoying the combination of the HE2 and Pultec working together in mid/side. Creating harmonics with the Pultec and then enhancing them with the HE2. Bine rattling subs without mud - tick... More width without clut
And she's in. The HE2 and Stereo Pultec are now linked together as one, via the inserts on the mid/side encoder/decoder in the HE2. So now I have a stereo Pultec that works in mid/side mode, making it way more useful for mastering purposes, and the
Finally got the time to get this new wonderbox integrated.
A quick single electro track for the end of the day and week. A little bit of demasking to open the mids, tube and transformers pushed for some nice vintage colour to fit the old skool electro vibes, multiband Comp on the low end to maintain kick pu
In the studio today, some 90's style hardgroove techno. Production was well balanced but the dynamic range was a little high to get to modern loudness levels. So I had to pull every trick out to get the dynamic range down without killing the track.
A little electro mastering today. Adding sparkle and snap to the top end, tightening up the lows, pushing up the sides a touch. Lovely.