Recording - November 2012 - 60

Blue-Collar Mastering: Chris Sonia
Sometimes I get great songs with poor mixes. Sometimes people send me garbage, but it is rare. Certain things (ahem) can only be polished so much. I offer advice on mix/mic technique and walk people through the process, as the course of action and having a professional listen to your stuff can be daunting for a DIY musician, especially if you have never had anyone but family and friends hear your songs. Do you master from just the two-track usually? What makes it harder to do your job? The final two-track mix is what I work with about 3/4 of the time. The top five most difficult problems to fix (in this order) are quiet or lifeless drums, weak bass, masking, low or loud vocals, and phasing. The first thing I do is check mono (if it sounds The most difficult thing about stems is when things were just recorded improperly, and it seems like it can be made better than it was, but not always as great as I would like it. When time allows, I will try to get the person to re-record. I will add reverbs, compression and/or eq to the original tracks, and I like to think that I have good taste as far as that is concerned. I always keep current trends in mind. What about resolution? To a DAW, it’s not music; it is 1s and 0s. A lot of people don’t realize that a mix recorded at 44.1 kHz will sound better when exported at a higher sample rate than the one in which it was recorded. The computer does less averaging, less math, and throws away fewer bits. I recommend exporting (or bouncing to disk) at double the recorded sample rate if the DAW allows. Wavelab will

The top five most difficult problems to fix, in this order, are: quiet or lifeless drums, weak bass, masking, low or loud vocals, and phasing.
weird or really wide) and listen to the mix overall. I try to be as objective as possible, and I endeavor to be like a physician in that I don’t judge by body type, just look at overall health. If everything is up to snuff I begin to get level, eq etc. I do a little of both at a time in different ways. If the drums are nice and hot I usually compress first, it makes the eq less jumpy. If the vocals are loudest, I eq first and bring everything else up with other techniques to seat the vocal. Usually in rock /alternative, the vocals are a bit quiet (depending on the engineer, but this seems to be the case 7 out of 10 times— probably a shy vocalist), and most of the time with rappers who buy industry beats, the vocal is either far out front or the beat is so squashed it has less room for the vocal. Nobody sends me more clipped material than the hip-hop guys because bought-and-sold accept some pretty huge word lengths! Try it for yourself. Export a mix at 44.1/24 and without touching the dials, export (upconvert during bounce) at 88.2/32 bit. The difference is definitely there. High-quality plug-ins respond better to higher-quality files. MP3s that are made from higher sample rates sound better as well. I always send out three forms of finished product: the high sample/bit rate master, a CD audio version, and MP3 singles. I can also add ISRC and make Disk Description Protocol (DDP) files for perfect replication. Let the mastering engineer make your MP3s for you. It may cost a little more, but they will sound better than a ripped CD, plus we can make “single” style MP3s without any crossfades from the other songs, clean starts and stops. You can offer CDs with track order and crossfades at your shows, and digital standalone singles for your social networking.

The objective of every single project is to preserve the intended sound while enhancing what is great and massaging what is less than perfect.. whether the program was recorded in a spare bedroom, or in a mid- to high-level studio.
beats are aggressively mastered, before the vocals are even layered on top. (A word of warning, I will bounce it back to the client if it is clipped. But I digress.) Every project is different, and sometimes it really helps if I have the stems to work from. Do you like working from stems? What is your procedure? As far as mastering from stems is concerned, I absolutely love it. Love it! I enjoy having the control, especially over vocals and bass, as I have digital tools that most are not using or privvy to. I use Cubase 5 or Pro Tools if there are more than five stems in the project, or if the client wants pitch correction on the vocals... and sometimes on violins; this has happened more than once. I like the musicality of Cubase’s compressors and reverbs (but only on individual tracks, I would not use them for mastering) and I like the fact that you don’t lose much stereo image on either DAW like some other programs out there. I bring everything into Wavelab for mastering afterward, and I have some great VST plug-ins to work with there. I like editing certain things in Pro Tools.
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RECORDING November 2012

How do people deliver their pre-masters? Mail? FTP? I have had USB thumb drives, DVDs and CDs hand-delivered as well as sent to me through the mail, but most people send me files for mastering via FTP sites—Dropbox, YouSendIt, Filezilla, etc. I have no problem with any method (just keep ‘em coming!), although the error rate with CD-Rs can be a bit unnerving, and I prefer high-resolution files. I send the masters back to the client either by DVD or FTP, depending on what the client wants. Everything is backed up on external hard drives. I have some very old projects still, and a lot of things where the bands have broken up and gone their own ways! Some engineers work with the clients in person, some don’t. What do you think about attended sessions? I enjoy and invite the bands to come for the session, especially if they have hot girlfriends! [laughs] However, since a lot of my work is sent from miles away (Chile, Malaysia, Hawaii, and sometimes Northern NH) it can be tricky to get the bands to sit in

Recording - November 2012

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