Techno Production

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Lost to the Void
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Re: Techno Production

Post by Lost to the Void »

wayfinder wrote:As an aside, is there a pattern for when you guys write "bus" and when you write "buss"?
haha, no pattern, just lazy fingers.
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Lost to the Void
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Re: Techno Production

Post by Lost to the Void »

Senko wrote:
Lost to the Void wrote: There is nothing wrong with using dynamic effects on your master channel, or indeed any effect, providing you know what you are doing and what potential problems you are causing.
Yep, seems like that's the answer I needed even if it was a logical one that didn't need to be provided. Knowledge is power in that case. Good music with good intentions and done 'properly'.

New alias you say? Have you released before with it?
No first release is coming on vinyl in september on Zhark Recordings, mentioned it somewhere else on the forum.
I have actually played some of the stuff in live PA`s to test it out though.
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Re: Techno Production

Post by intrusav »

Mad scientist. Yeehaw! It's cool, you got questions, you got answers.
Now settle the fuck.down!!! :D

I'll be keeping an eye out for that...

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Re: Techno Production

Post by Aurongroove »

Ugh. I had time away and looking back I'm just sick of arguing.
I though if I took it back somewhere technical I'd be able to try get off on a better foot with LttV, maybe ease him into the areas of mastering I'm familiar with and go through the difference between speaking in the vernacular, and being unfamiliar with an area.

But all the extra bits he posted outside of my question, basic stuff like matching the spectral profile of an Album, about DPPi Master Discs or Red Book standards, Lacquer plates (if he mentioned them, I forget if he did or not) and loudness normalization in digital media as if it were some kind of dazzling list of secret mastering jargon that no one except the mighty avengers knows the meaning of.

It just made my eyes almost roll out of my head.

I will never respect LttV's (and Matteus') method of argument or respect their PoV or body of knowledge, and I can safely bet they will probably never see my PoV as valid in even the slightest way.

So there is nowhere left to go, only to repeat ourselves or for me to answer into their game of ad hominem and start attacking their body of work.
Which in general, I find morally abhorrent.
so I won't be doing that.
so there's nothing left to post.
I'm Hilarious


Some professional mastering engineers use multi-band compressors.

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Lost to the Void
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Re: Techno Production

Post by Lost to the Void »

No one wants your respect cowboy, just stop talking uttershite about shit you quite clearly don't understand and we are good for the mantrain.

Meanwhile I'm just reverbing all my masta'z innit.
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Re: Techno Production

Post by Aurongroove »

I'm Hilarious


Some professional mastering engineers use multi-band compressors.

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Re: Techno Production

Post by Planar »

Aurongroove, you've been given a perfectly valid way to deal with the situation you've asked about by someone who does this for a living. There's nowhere else for you to go, so I'm not surprised you're suddenly, "sick of arguing", the actual point. Writing about someone in the 3rd person and your comments about respect (or lack of) are coming across as cringe-worthy and if you take the time out to read back through this thread in a level-headed way you'd probably agree with me.

It seems logical to everyone else reading this (who aren't mastering engineers and don't care about MB-comp either way) that mix issues are better dealt with in the mix itself and that a good mastering engineer will advise that before they do their work. MB-comp, or any potentially destructive process over a whole mix, should be a last resort if that's not possible.

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Mattias
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Re: Techno Production

Post by Mattias »

Lost to the Void wrote:No one wants your respect cowboy, just stop talking uttershite about shit you quite clearly don't understand and we are good for the mantrain.

Meanwhile I'm just reverbing all my masta'z innit.
Image
Aurongroove wrote:
I will never respect LttV's (and Matteus') method of argument or respect their PoV or body of knowledge, and I can safely bet they will probably never see my PoV as valid in even the slightest way.

Did it ever occur to you that you did set the tone and points for the "arguments" and fueled the fire with your utter stupidity? No? I guess I knew that already.
If it hurts you that bad to be flat out wrong then you shouldn't be in arguments to begin with.
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Re: Techno Production

Post by TheBinaryMind »

Image

I'm afraid this makes me an inefficient asshole.

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Mattias
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Re: Techno Production

Post by Mattias »

I love that one

Hahaha
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Re: Techno Production

Post by Monreal »

Suicide

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Mattias
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Re: Techno Production

Post by Mattias »

wayfinder wrote:what do mastering engineers do when they don't have the option to get things fixed in the mix
Use the tools available. For things that EQ and compression can't fix with a satisfying result I personally love to use DMG Essence, it's the best plugin ever.
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Re: Techno Production

Post by Lost to the Void »

wayfinder wrote:what do mastering engineers do when they don't have the option to get things fixed in the mix
Talk to the client, explain that transparency will be effected due to x reasons, explain the methods and compromises you will have to make, and then make them.
This really is the issue, as down the line the client might complain that the mix sounds different, and so it is best to let them know beforehand that such and such is going to have to happen.
In some cases turn down the work because you don`t think you can do anything to help at all, in cases where, let`s say, a client wants a ridiculous loud final level, but due to the mix being in no way capable of taking the treatment required to get it to that ridiculous level, the engineer might want to preserve their own integrity of "do no harm" by turning down the work.
I know I have done this.

I have recently had a client ask if I can master from mp3 as everything else has been lost.
I`ve already explained the problems we might face in this scenario, and that it might not be possible to reach a satisfactory conclusion.
I have yet to hear the audio.
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Lost to the Void
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Re: Techno Production

Post by Lost to the Void »

TheBinaryMind wrote:Image

I'm afraid this makes me an inefficient asshole.

That man has damn sexy lips.
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Re: Techno Production

Post by over9000 »

that was a nice thread to read as afternoon entertainment, thx you cunts

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Re: Techno Production

Post by Aurongroove »

Planar wrote:It seems logical to everyone else reading this (who aren't mastering engineers and don't care about MB-comp either way) that mix issues are better dealt with in the mix itself and that a good mastering engineer will advise that before they do their work. MB-comp, or any potentially destructive process over a whole mix, should be a last resort if that's not possible.
Yet I still disagree with that viewpoint.
As I said, there is nothing left to argue.
I could make one final crack at being eloquent, in fact, it's the least I can do considering I've not been keeping a level head in this thread, and to be honest, I agree I must surely have come across like the world's biggest moron (cue people quoting this and skimming/ignoring the rest of the post).

I've been in this argument before you see, except I was on the "Sorry but no, you just do not do this in mastering" side. It's strange and frustrating years later finding myself on the other side of it.
It's probably also the main reason I've ever been so much as tempted to look at Ozone or consider it a serious tool.

So here is, a slightly less scattered, less spiteful, more academic response.
No stubbornness, just honesty and clarity as best I can muster.

3 points I see as important (they each have a description in brackets too)



First, (dealing with mastering philosophy)
We recently got Mandy Parnell for an album, mainly becasue she uses the finest most direct analogue shit and is damn good with it; her line is almost as abrupt as; Prism Converter out, through an EMI TG Console, convert back in, Waves L2 to clip the fingernails.
Her code of ethics is almost identical to LttV's "if the mix isn't right, send it back to them" and she's especially send-back-ish about bass and sub frequency levels.
She's an engineer I worship, probably THE engineer I worship, yet I've said several times I could never respect an engineer like LttV or Mattias after their engagements with me in this thread, so am I a big hypocrite or what?
The difference is her passion and wisdom comes across as passion and wisdom. Not accusations of stupidity toward those who do not subscribe to her methods. In my experience of her, she 'convinces' rather then 'belittles', and while she's phenomenally good with her analogue system anyways, she also claims "nothing's set in stone with what tools you use" (which is a quote about using digital tools or analogue tools or both when mastering. I'm not trying to suggest this is her justify 'cowboy' practices).

My point being "nothing's set in stone with what tools you use" is one of the best testaments to good attitude I've ever heard, and so much better and important then "do this or you're not doing it right" sentiments.
Or worse, accusing someone of being an idiot, or putting their music down.




Second "The end result is the end result" (dealing with my answer to the OP's question and the words 'must surely be' despite MB comp being typically an offence to proper mastering practice)
Every process either does or does not leave noticable 'artifacts' or undesired fidelity loss on a Soundwave.
Obviously a professional mastering engineer will seek to leaving none/or the fewest fidelity artifacts/mistakes possible, when mastering a mix.
These artifacts themselves from different generations of music technology good and bad, get put up with, overcome, dipped out or become fashionable or stay hated. Be it hiss, wobble, distortion, or even, messy band crossover gunk in "superlifeless zombie masters" with kick drums that sound like splatted moths with their dry corpses skidded half a centimeter out of alignment from their liquidy bits from the force of the whack.

Logically, and despite the fact that LttV probably said it for a different reason "if super loud, superlifeless zombie masters are your thing, MB Comp is your man" his words state that there are things this effect does that other tools do not, and also that it has been used to commit terrible offenses and he is an experienced engineer so he would know.
Now add that to the question; Were some of those "superlifeless zombie" records, or were they not "professional techno" at the time? well they were, weren't they? lots of them in fact; It was a sickness.
If we are literally just over the worse decade (or two IMO) of this offence against decent professional mastering (caused mainly by engineers having their hands forced) then, if I were the OP and I were listening to the professional techno of this era 'just now' (complete with this 'offence'). I would have meant precisely the end result sound of the record including the 'ugly'. Not what an engineer's view (experienced and professional as it is) on how to achieve the sound without the ugly is.
It was in this spirit that I gave my own advice to the OP (telling him what I would have wanted someone to tell me, if I had asked that question). He had at this stage already got advice from LttV what else were we gonna do, declare the thread finished?

The reason I tend to cover 'the sound plus the ugly' and advise accordingly is becasue in my experience, other people don't yet history has shown plenty of times that when people seek to emulate these sounds they tend to seek out the 'plus the offence' rather then not, often even going so far as to artificially put it in when technology no longer has the issue!
Example, tape emulators. How ridiculous a concept is that if you think about it!? are we going to have "fucked up loudness war emulators" in 10 years time? hopefully not, but what do we know? what did those in the 60's know?





Third,(Speaking about saturators, reverbs, stressors and other cowboy effect I use ad lib, which no decent engineer would put at a mastering stage)
Post modernism being the cultural-artistic era we're currently living through, it is an established practice in our time that no stage of the production of a piece of work is exempt from the possibility of dryly administered intentional wrongdoing (well this sounds like a convenient way to say "so obviously, anything goes" but please, let me explain and give an example)
Creators of installations, sculptures, painting, film and music can and will directly use wrongdoings dryly, whilst also keeping one eye on insuring these wrongdoing are able to be taken at face value.
Go to the Tate modern if you want proof of this, or watch some 'terribly drawn' internet comics., or (deep sigh) look at the 'furniture' decorating your nearest hipster cafe.
In other stages of music production, intentional wrongdoings have become so much so a part of the established fabric you hardly even notice it any more; obvious auto tune, obvious distortion, obvious time stretching, obvious dodgy FFTing, obvious bit crushing, obvious over saturation, obvious-shitty-midi-sample-use. Extending this to the mastering stage, as uncomfortable as the thought is, is no different to people hanging canvasses in galleries with a slit cut out of them (and so forth).

A decent musical example,
Jack White put two short piece of music in the label of his Lazaretto album (like on the fucking paper!) It's a complete travesty against music production, but it's a legitimate artistic statement that society in general has seemed to have completely put up with it. Why was it OK to do this?
Becasue it's the time and culture we live in.
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Some professional mastering engineers use multi-band compressors.

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Re: Techno Production

Post by Prophän »

You guys have turned this thread into a totally desolated warzone :lol:

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Re: Techno Production

Post by Mattias »

Aurongroove wrote: Lots of random crap
I'm amazed how you STILL are missing the points of all this. Now you're trying to crawl out of it by saying all that random crap that doesn't bring anything to the table and point out how you never could respect me or Steve because of what we said here? You're a joke. You simply need to deal with your major perception issue.

It was you who said MB compression was required and that YOU couldn't see any other tool doing a better job at solving issues. It was YOU who pointed out that me and Steve were flat out wrong because we said it's RARE that mastering engineers are using MB compression and that it's a destructive tool that you need to be careful with. All we did was telling you how it actually works in MOST cases.

Further more if you've spend just a little time reading things through this forum in general then you would come across that you're precious "nothing's set in stone with what tools you use" is something that both me and Steve been pushing a lot.

How can you be so naive?

You're coming across as an asshole who wants to have the last say, even if you're wrong in everything to be honest man.

I'm not even gonna bother with you anymore, you can live in your happy bubble where you're the knowledgeable fella that pretends that knows your shit. Sad dude, very sad.
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Re: Techno Production

Post by Aurongroove »

Well Matt, I'm sorry that that's your perception of me.
I'm not trying to "crawl out" of anything, I'm just trying to be honest with you.
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Re: Techno Production

Post by Planar »

Aurongroove wrote:I agree I must surely have come across like the world's biggest moron
You're still not looking great after that last, slightly bizarre, post (which I have read and won't be getting the time back for). It's difficult to take your sudden engineering wisdom seriously when you were in a thread a day or so ago saying you were ignorant about using reverb correctly and wanted some tips.

I almost admire how stubborn you're being, but to the neutral you now look like a bit of a balloon.


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