The dubstep tips super thread

[mikeyp]

5. Gain structure matters very little when working with digital vst's in a modern DAW. It's more important when tracking recorded signals.

what?


also you're directing mastering info at beginners? i'm confused

[spectralbeats]

When working with VST's in a modern DAW as long as your master doesn't clip it doesn't really matter if it clips along the way. THERE IS HOWEVER AN EXCEPTION WITH SOME VST EFFECTS. I forgot to add that part. But even then, it's probably too little for a beginner to hear.

What's wrong with teaching beginners how to master? Everybody has to learn somewhere.

[BlackMath]

Mixing into a limiter is bad form imo
If you mix to -6 or -8 as your unity instead of 0 and save the limiting and enhancements for the final stages you'll get much better results than mixing into a limiter

[BlackMath]

Mixing into a limiter is bad form imo
If you mix to -6 or -8 as your unity instead of 0 and save the limiting and enhancements for the final stages you'll get much better results than mixing into a limiter

[mikeyp]

When working with VST's in a modern DAW as long as your master doesn't clip it doesn't really matter if it clips along the way. THERE IS HOWEVER AN EXCEPTION WITH SOME VST EFFECTS. I forgot to add that part. But even then, it's probably too little for a beginner to hear.

What's wrong with teaching beginners how to master? Everybody has to learn somewhere.

i feel like you're saying you should just let all your vsts and sounds play as loud as they want while you're working on a project? is that right? i may have misunderstood but why not just bring it down to around the place it's going to be when you do your mixdown? you create a whole project with everything blasting and then worry about it later? i hope that's not what you're saying

& yeah everyone should learn at one point but let's not encourage anyone to run before they can walk. beginners worrying about complex shit is a common thing on these boards

[Electric_Head]

When working with VST's in a modern DAW as long as your master doesn't clip it doesn't really matter if it clips along the way. THERE IS HOWEVER AN EXCEPTION WITH SOME VST EFFECTS. I forgot to add that part. But even then, it's probably too little for a beginner to hear.

What's wrong with teaching beginners how to master? Everybody has to learn somewhere.

When you learn to Gain structure correctly you`ll retract your statements.
Maybe you know how to but then you should have noticed the improvement in your overall sound.
I`ve been producing separate styles for many years and until I tried gain structuring I just battled with headroom all the time.

[mitchAUS]

noooo never normalize! It's an unnecessary evil. Get your mix right and bounce at a higher level if thats what you want. And as for L1 on the output. Not a good idea. If you really want to master it yourself, bounce it and do the mastering offline using a chain of plugins, in something like Wavelab.

Theres nothing wrong with normalization. All it does is raise your highest peak to 0 and everything else proportionately. Aside from the effect of amplifying dither noise proprtionate to the rest of your mix, it doesnt effect the sound at all. I saw a few people say this in this thread, dont give advice if you dont have any to give.

He made the point about normalisation when daw's were running at 24-bit. So I get what was said about losing resolution if the you wern't mixing to hot levels in the first place. But I don't get how he thought (5 and a half years ago haha) that mastering in wavelab, which he mentioned he used multi band compression, wouldn't raise the noise floor in the same fashion the noise floor would be raised by normalisation.

[serox]

wow there's some really bad advice in here.

My super tip is to stop reading 'dubstep tip' threads.

[Electric_Head]

and don`t forget that vsts don`t clip

[serox]

and don`t forget that vsts don`t clip

[CE9958]

A lot of bad advice I'm seeing just on the first page alone:

1. Normalization is just moving your master fader up or down. It is useless

2. For the people saying not to use a limiter on your master, that's absolute garbage. Just about every top-40 song in the past 20 years has been mastered with some limiting. If you don't know what you're doing you'll screw up the transients. But it is absolutely necessary to get a loud master in any form of electronic music these days.

3. There is no reason to bounce your track to .wav before mastering except for saving CPU (this is of course assuming you're doing the mastering on your own). You shouldn't have to stare at the waveform, your ears and a peak meter are enough info. Generally speaking, an eq and a limiter (l1, l2, etc) can be enough to master your track.

4. When EQ'ing, your sounds should NOT sound 'strange' when solo'd. It is very possible to get a clean mix WITHOUT completely destroying your original sounds with EQ.

5. Gain structure matters very little when working with digital vst's in a modern DAW. It's more important when tracking recorded signals.

1. I agree that Normalizing is useless. Now don't get me wrong I am no way saying its WRONG! All it does is increase volume and at times it has been not to my liking. It is however in now way wrong. There is no wrong in producing.

2. I definitely do not ever limit my master track when in the creative process. I find that making sure my mix is really quiet allows for a lot of headroom and makes everything sound better with really clear parts as opposed to volume "mush" as I call it. The limiters don't come into play until I am completely done and start the mastering process. (I go to school for this and assure you that this is the way to go). Again I'm not saying you DON'T use limiters and if you want to limit your master while in the creative stage so be it as I said there is no wrong way to go in producing.

3. What is required to effectively master a track is impossible to generalize. It all depends on how the track was mixed in the first place. I personally never require EQ in the mastering stage but I know that plenty of people use it. This just means that I spend more time EQing my tracks in the creative process so that I don't need to spend time doing it later. I don't really like having to EQ multiple sounds at once personally. Again thats just my style.

4. This is where you speak absolute garbage. With all due respect. Anyone with any solid knowledge at all on the principles of EQing knows that you cant just BLAST sounds in and expect them to all sound good together. I'm sorry my friend but it just doesn't work that way. Not ever ever ever. If you just flop in a huge reese without the proper EQing your snare and kick are goners. If you don't EQ your kick right you will eat up your sub bass every time it hits. Subtractive EQing is CRITICAL. And by cutting these frequencies it causes your sounds to sound a bit empty on their own. This is OK because the point is that everything sounds good together. No one cares how badass or awesome your basses sound if they sound shit in the mix.

5. I can't even believe this was said so I'm just going to ignore it. Gain structure doesn't matter? Oy Vey

[CE9958]

Sorry it posted it a bunch of times so I'm clearing this

[CE9958]

And this

[kion]

noooo never normalize! It's an unnecessary evil. Get your mix right and bounce at a higher level if thats what you want. And as for L1 on the output. Not a good idea. If you really want to master it yourself, bounce it and do the mastering offline using a chain of plugins, in something like Wavelab.

Theres nothing wrong with normalization. All it does is raise your highest peak to 0 and everything else proportionately. Aside from the effect of amplifying dither noise proprtionate to the rest of your mix, it doesnt effect the sound at all. I saw a few people say this in this thread, dont give advice if you dont have any to give.

f***k, this was nearly 7 years ago I said this... well, a lot has changed in that time. I still stand my ground in saying normalisation is bad practice, and will only add more quantization distortion to your audio, which is one more degrading process than is required, especially when there are far better ways of achieving a louder signal when mastering. For corrective purposes, of course it needs to be used sometimes, but that's a whole different use.