Online Mastering: How does Online Mastering Work?

Online Mastering: How does online mastering work?

Online mastering works just as the sentence sounds, your tracks get mastered via the internet therefore deeming it ‘Online Mastering’. It’s a great way for mastering engineers and artists to broaden whom they are able to work with. The great thing with online mastering is the fact that you don’t have to really do anything except send your tracks over to the mastering engineer, sit back and wait for the re-appear in your inbox. This is perfect for some people who have tight time-schedules and can’t/don’t want to attend the sessions, and usually if your working with an Indian client or Australian client and your studio is in Wales, they most definitely wont be attending. But, with the advances in technology of the 21^st century, mastering studios can now allow clients to virtually attend their mastering session, pretty cool, eh? So, really, the line is no longer drawn between online mastering engineer and un-attended sessions, it is now possible to attend even an online mastering session.

Which brings me to the question, “How does online mastering work?”.

Well the answer is quite simple really; you simply upload your tracks to the chosen studio, pay for the mastering session and then sit tight until the mastering engineer contacts you with your final mixes.

The whole process really begins with you, the client. You trawl through countless sites, different forums and social networks looking for the best place to get your work mastered. Each different online company will work in a slightly different way, but they will all require you to upload your tracks, whether that is through dropbox, hightail or something like that.

(Before you go getting your tracks mastered though, check out this previous post on getting your tracks ready for mastering http://blog.masteringworld.com/2010/06/how-to-prepare-your-mixes-for-mastering/)

First rule for Online Mastering…Don’t talk about Online Mastering…

General rules for starting your online mastering quest:

Find your Studio – Online these days there are hundreds of genuine mastering studios and mastering engineers, so put time and effort into finding the right engineer and studio for you.

 

Don’t get a rough deal – Mastering is an art, an art that is sometimes overlooked. Be careful that you get someone who is more than capable of mastering your work, and not just making it louder, anyone can do that. Check out mastering studios and their engineers where you’ll more than likely find a list of their clients and reference pieces.

 

Drop them an email – If you’re anything like me, you want to know that where your going to spend your money is the best place for the service you want. Even though mastering engineers are usually rushing round like idiots trying to do a thousand and one things, they always want to keep their clients happy, and getting in touch before you commit to something is always a good way of judging where you go. There’s nothing a mastering engineer enjoys more than hearing from a prospective client so don’t hesitate in calling or dropping an email before you dive right in and get stuff mastered.

 

Mixes – Make sure your mix is where you want it to be, and a great thing with mastering engineers is the majority of them will give you a mix evaluation before they jump into mastering. This is good for the mastering engineer and for you, the client. This means that any issues with the mix are dealt with before mastering has begun; this saves time and money in the long run.

 

Don’t send MP3’s – Although to many music tech heads this will seem obvious, this still happens quite a lot. I know most tracks these days are .mp3 formats or .m4a formats, but for the mastering process they need to be 24 bit .wav files/aif files. Sending over the correct file formats in the first instance obviously saves time for yourself and the mastering engineers. If your not sure on what the mastering engineer needs, just give them a call, although it may be ‘Online Mastering’ they are still human and would love to chat to you.

 

Beginning the process:

Once you’ve established whom your going to send your hard work to, you’ll have to send them over your tracks, this can be done in a few ways. Masteringworld.com have a built in system which allows you to not only chose your mastering engineer and send tracks, but to send a whole host of other relevant info such as reference tracks etc.

Others will have a more simple approach, such as yousendit or dropbox, but it’s all in the same vein.

Usually, if you have sent your mastering to a well-known and well-regarded studio you will receive emails from the company, engineers and sometimes admin letting you know what is happening with your mastering and when it will be done. At masteringworld.com the turnaround is usually pretty quick and you’re informed throughout the process, this is usually via email or skype, we pride ourselves on keeping in touch with clients, there is nothing worse than not knowing what is going on when you’ve parted with your hard-earned-cash.  So as a general rule if you don’t hear anything after a few days, drop them an email or give them a call, musicians are famously late and far too relaxed, so don’t get too worried, but make sure you remind them you’re there.

 

Virtually Attending Mastering: 

When you know when your going to get your tracks mastered you may be able to attend the mastering session virtually. This is cool, and puts you more in touch with the mastering engineer, so if you can virtually attend a session, then I suggest you do. Whether you attend the mastering session or not, you’re still the engineers main priority.

 

When you receive your masters back will depend on how many tracks you are having mastered (once again, obvious), and it also depends on your mixes in the first place. (As I mentioned earlier make sure the mix is good to go when it’s sent to the mastering studio or mastering engineer). Generally studios usually run at around a seven-day turnaround. It is usually much quicker than this, but this gives you a rough estimate on time. As an online mastering company we offer at masteringworld.com a 48-hour turnaround option, this is great if you’re in a rush to have your tracks back. Anyway, enough shameless plugs about masteringworld.com. Have you been to masteringworld.com recently? You should.

So, you’ve had your tracks mastered, they sound good, but not exactly how you want, that’s cool. Most engineers and most mastering studios will quite happily take a second look at your tracks and make some tweaks and adjustments to your masters for free.

Don’t feel like you can’t ask your mastering engineer to make edits. Just like if you bought a teapot from Woolworths and it had a chip in it. You’d take it back right? It’s the same principle, and you’re the one paying for their time, you want it to be right. (Also a key point to make here is ‘you can’t polish a turd’, someone said to me the other day, ‘yeah, but you can roll it in glitter’, and yeah this is true, but don’t expect some life-changing dramatic results from mastering. If your mix isn’t up to scratch then mastering will help, but imagine if your mix was polished, imagine how good your master would sound then? So bear this in mind)

Once you’re happy with how your tracks are sounding there are a few ways you can continue the process. The mastering engineer will have sent you the final masters, topped and tailed and ready for production, this is the end of the online mastering process. If you are sending the masters to a C.D. production house, it may be worth getting the mastering engineer to send you out the C.D. Production master. The great thing about the C.D. production master is that the ISRC codes can be embedded in the C.D. file. (Check out the ISRC codes blog for more info on this).

Overview:

Mastering this way is quick and convenient, and if you know what you are after, and you do your research it can pay dividends. Mastering is one of the key aspects of music production that is overlooked; music production doesn’t end at the recording studio, so keep in mind mastering when making your record.

 

 

Implementation of ISRC codes into Broadcast WAV Files (BWF)

Last Wednesday night was the Music Producers Guild seminar on the new standard of the Broadcast WAV file. The Broadcast WAV file (BWF) is an extension of the standard WAV file.

The key difference between a WAV and a BWF file is the BWF file contains ‘chunks’. These chunks are information segmented into different sections within the file, the addition of ISRC into the BWF is just a new ‘Chunk’ being added into the file itself. Makes sense right?

ISRC Codes –

Here is how a BWF is built up. The main purpose obviously for a BWF file is the audio file (WAV), the rest of the file is made up of these extra chunks surrounding it.The great thing about inserting the ISRC’s into BWF files is that these files can then be sent straight to online outlets, and distributed in that manner. Obviously at present it is only the beginning of this whole process and project, at present online outlets require you to manually input the ISRC information into sections, but once this new format is a recognised standard, the end result will hopefully be the automated pulling of this information from the BWF’s themselves.

So, the BWF exists, the WAV exists and so do ISRC codes, what will happen next?

Wednesdays conference saw companies such as Magix and PrizmSound (SADiE) discussing the ways in which they are optimising their products for the BWF format, and it is great to see how the companies have already created and implemented the programming into their software. It was also interesting to see how already the cross compatibility was working among the different companies that were speaking at the event, this, to me, is a strong start toward the final outcome, whenever in the future that may be.

The conference looked at all different scenarios, and as with all things that are in development, there are a few hurdles to jump, but the ISRC embed into the BWF file is something that is happening, and it will at first possibly benefit certain people more than others. Mastering engineers will have the ability now to input the ISRC codes into tracks without having to run them off as a production master C.D. and the artists will have work that has these codes embedded, so therefore more money in theory should return to the artist. But, as they stated last night, there is a specific order in which things will need to be done, and that this is in stage 1 of development and is no-where near the finished project.

Pyramix, Magix and PrismSound, what did they have to say?

Well, they all said a pretty similar thing, and all the embedding of ISRC codes work in a similar way, the one main difference was with Pyramix (Merging Technologies). The Pyramix addition to their software didn’t allow for easy editing of the ISRC, which some could see as a hindrance. Magix and PrismSound allowed for editing of the ISRC code, which is great for mastering engineers who are awaiting ISRC codes from artists, or if they are mastering extended versions, or shorter versions which require different ISRC codes, or if the code is quite simply wrong. But this easy editing facility to could also compromise artists work and integrity. On the plus side though, this gives the mastering engineer more control, which is a huge benefit. I’m almost positive that Merging Technologies will probably re-look at its editing of ISRC codes after the seminars discussions, and vice-versa with the other two companies.

Will my workstation be able to save files in this way?

In the long term, yes, but as it stands the above mentioned companies are, to my knowledge, the only companies who have implemented it into their software. As time goes on and as this becomes a standard in the mastering industry/music industry, then other workstation companies will begin implementing this.

As an overview, this is a brilliant idea, and will work effectively once the final product and methods of working are ironed out. Thank you to Barry Grint and MPG for taking this idea and running with it. It was only last week i received an email from a band wanting ISRC codes inserted into WAV files, soon this is something we can finally do.

Check out this PDF which discusses the whole BWF file format to get more information.

Catch the whole event here – MPG ISRC Broadcast WAV

 

Get Your Tracks Mastered: A guide through the Mastering Process

          www.masteringworld.com | Online Mastering, MFiT Mastering, C.D. Mastering

Get your tracks mastered: A guide through the Mastering Process

So yesterday I was having a look through some old magazines and stuff lying around the studio and came across this little article in the mag Sound Nation (I don’t think it exists anymore) from 2005. Now, this article is almost ten years old, but it’s all still relevant and is a pretty interesting read for mastering engineers and anyone interested in mastering. It’s a  good read if your thinking of mastering your next record and not totally sure on how to go about it or who to speak to.

Mastering is the final creative stage in the music production process. It’s the process where your final mixes are compiled, polished and prepared for duplication. There are a range of approaches to mastering, from compiling the album yourself with the aid of a few plug-ins, to going to London or New York and spending thousands of pounds in one of the legendary mastering facilities. In the below article it explores some of the options, explode some of the myths, and help you coax the best out of your recordings before they go off to the factory.

So, now that we know that mastering is the final stage before your record is completely finished it’s time to ask the question……………….What does Mastering actually do?

Up until the time I was in university I had never had any of my tracks mastered in a purpose built mastering suite, they had all been mastered by the producer/engineer of the record, and it had never crossed my mind to go somewhere else, I wish I had though. Which brings me to the next question.

Can your recording engineer master it for you?

Yes they can,  and they probably have equipment that they can use to do it. However, the engineer is intimately familiar with the music and he will probably master in the same room as he mixed your project, so you will be missing out on two important aspects of mastering – a different (and often better) listening environment, and a fresh pair of ears with an impartial opinion. Most professional recording and mixing engineer prefer to pass on their work to an experienced mastering engineer for the final stage.

Professional Mastering has its benefits, there are hundreds of people around who will do it cheaply using a few plugins and maybe some inexpensive hardware, but they probably will be running it from a bedroom, or at least not a room that has been acoustically treated for music purposes. Mastering engineers will probably spend more on monitoring and the room they are using to master than any other aspect of their studio, this includes the thousands they spend on equipment.

Check back to this blog next week for some updates and the next section of the article.

We’ll be discussing the technical side of the mastering process, including the equipment, signal flow, A/D converters and D/A converters, and a bunch of other cool stuff.

The Technical Process – 

So we know the process, what happens where and how and why it happens. What does this kind of service cost an artist or label?

 

Mastering is an important part of the music production process, as long as your mixes are good, then mastering will make your tracks even more incredible so it’s worth keeping in mind a budget for mastering.

Mastering at home:

Mastering at home is a possibility, in fact a complete home recording is a good idea if your trying to save money. But, your sound will benefit much more from being mastered by a mastering engineer, as it would from being recorded by a recording engineer. It’s all about what sound you are after, and what sort of budget you have to put into the recordings and masters.

 

There is, however, another alternative, Online Mastering. Online mastering is usually cheaper than attending a mastering session at a mastering studio, you are still getting the high quality gear used with your tracks and an experienced mastering engineer, so this is a brilliant option.