Master effects

[herman]

It's something I used to do but I found it lead to over compression and all kinds of nastyness , best thing to do is to try an leave the master channel as clear as possible and try for as good a mixdown as you can get without it. Will give you more headroom and dynamics to play with at the mastering stage if nothing else.

[dirty_bass]

It's something I used to do but I found it lead to over compression and all kinds of nastyness , best thing to do is to try an leave the master channel as clear as possible and try for as good a mixdown as you can get without it. Will give you more headroom and dynamics to play with at the mastering stage if nothing else.

What he said.
I`m actually against self mastering altogether now.
The mastering stage is much better handled by a 3rd party who can be more objective.
I just don`t know who to send my stuff too, to do mastering swaps with.

[stjohn]

itd have to be the McCormack man me thinks!!

ontopic: no master compression... if i want to cheat a little... i try some compression on submasters, like the main beat...

that way i can still get the dynamics from the other elements...

[massplanck]

That sounds about right.

I can compress a bit with the sends for a bit of dynamics but I'll leave that master completely dry from now on.. no nothing. no eq/comp/spacial widening. Leave it to wavelab & the pros.

I have stupidly done this in the past. Short term gain long term pain I suppose. Thanks guys.

[dirty_bass]

itd have to be the McCormack man me thinks!!

ontopic: no master compression... if i want to cheat a little... i try some compression on submasters, like the main beat...

that way i can still get the dynamics from the other elements...

As much as I dig Chris`s stuff, I`d rather hand over my gear to someone totally not involved in the techno scene really.
I should probably get in touch with the guy who trained me really.

[massplanck]

I`d rather hand over my gear to someone totally not involved in the techno scene really.
.

Interesting.

[dirty_bass]

Interesting.

Not really, it makes more sense to me, rather than having someone master it to preconceptions of techno, I`d like someone who is purely a mastering engineer to handle it. Seeing as dance music is being listened to more and more outside of clubs, and more on ipods etc, I`d like a more universally translatable master.

[RDR]

I ALWAYS write to a compressor on the master from the get go.

And an EQ.

But the settings are slight, unless i want them to be. And my techno sounds a LOT better for it. IT also forces me to think about the dynamics processes more thoroughly.

for house, electro, ambient and any slower and more musically/dynamically complex music i dynamics process in the the post.

As for chris mcormack, when i spoke to him he said he wasnt mastering much techno these days, and preferd mastering other stuff. So you might want to consider him again.