We are the music makers - producers?

noted. will have a read. cheers!

if i'm just sticking stuff up on soundcloud i should just concentrate on a balanced sounding mix on the setup i have?

Balanced, and making sure that the volume hits the same as your peers. Nothing stops people listening than a track that's too hot or too quiet. Start out ensuring you're peaking at -0.1 0.3 db at the loudest points, and you're above -10db most of the rest of the time, and see how it lands for you.

There is zero point mastering for soundcloud.

-0.3db is a better target for absolute peaks. -0.1 can still clip the MP3 codec.

Soundcloud is kinda tough because it doesn’t really have loudness compensation/limiting, whereas Youtube and Spotify do. YT uses LUFS as a measure of average loudness and will turn stuff down that’s above its threshold. I think -14 is the target.

https://www.masteringthemix.com/blogs/learn/76296773-mastering-audio-for-soundcloud-itunes-spotify-and-youtube

There’s a lot of insanely loud brickwalled stuff on soundcloud.

http://curvepusher.co.uk/ maybe?

From a brief look at their website they seem like the best option. I've had a few good presses of their mastering too.

Do you happen to know who they prefer for pressing?

They have a very good reputation, I know Keith Tenniswood in particular is highly regarded.

I've been using waves abbey road TG master for a couple of years. Very happy with it, just does the few things you want at the final stage.

As most have already said, good mastering is a light touch to a decent track to help it work for the end user. Although it's also a fantastic way to distract from actually recording music.

In myths that probably never happened... My uni lecturer told the tale of the scrote from The Libertines sending the master back to be re-done because it sounded bad on his laptop speakers.

Lots of good ones like this though. I'm sure a few must be true.

I work with a few bands and when we're hanging out before gigs some of the stories that can be corroborated are eye-watering.

Grande Finale by Klevgrand is brilliant as a one stop Mastering plugin, I use it a lot. Also use it on mixbuss

I tend to use Izotope Ozone. It’s expensive but the Maximiser, Imager and the Tonal Balance Control are such brilliant tools. TBC especially. You feed it a reference track and it shows exactly how yours compares (and it can automatically EQ match, if you want).

Worth checking out Sugar as well for overall mix enhancement, it feels like a bit of a cheat but it does a lot of really nice “sparkle” stuff soooooo easily.

https://process.audio/en/products/sugar

Don’t want to give the impression that plug-ins are the answer, mind. It’s mostly about practice, learning how to use EQ, and using reference tracks. Still got a long way to go myself.

Yeah Ozone and Neutron are very good. Tonal Balance Control too

I have them and used them for a while but just forgot about them as I started getting into the waves stuff.

Unfortunately the waves plugins are basically ransom ware as you need to pay to upgrade them after a couple for years. I will give Ozone a go again.

Not sure, they seem to act as a broker for pressing plants and mention MPO a few times online so I would guess them, my friend uses them for jah fingers records I could ask him, looked like they were running a 100 records special during corona, usually 300 minimum.

I had thought 300 was a minimum usually. Would you be interested in getting a track on a shared release?

Absolutely dude. On the dub side :)

This afternoon's jam, hastily recorded, the very beginnings of a track, maybe.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/q7otrbdzx7uqfsu/OF_Project_005_v01.mp3?dl=0

I was ready for more when it ended.

Cheers! I “finished” that other track yesterday and I think this might be a candidate to go together with it on an EP. Early days though. That bass patch needs work, I’m not using the stereo nature of the Ikarie filter that it’s running through yet.

Like it. Has good form to it. 👍

https://www.dropbox.com/s/esizojv50gajb0n/Saturday.afternoon.mp4?dl=0

Saturday afternoon jamming, trying to figure out a bass @ 140bpm.

Very nice, what's doing the gnarly lead?

Nice breaks. Did you slice them in Blackbox?

Bit of 130bpm Techno this afternoon

https://youtu.be/QPzKuCh3A1E

Cheers 👍🏻

Liking your breakbeat workout. Related - I just picked up a copy of the Amen, Brother 7” reissue for posterity:

https://soundsoftheuniverse.com/product/amen-brother-color-him-father

It’s a eurorack patch I’m working on. It’s the System80 810 synth voice (modelled after classic Roland circuits) running into the Bastl Ikarie autofilter with some LFOs and so on. It’s then going into the Digitone for effects (chorus, reverb, delay). Next session I am going to repatch the filter in stereo (the Ikarie is a dual filter so it can do stereo and panning effects) and see how it works.

@EB beats are loops that I've resampled with the effects to give them a bit of life, guitar + keys are recorded thru the mixer straight to the box, still getting used to some of the quirks with the BB like the onboard effects being fixed to out1, need to get some more controllers I think.

@Regal Great record and 6 seconds of genius, you can spend hours slicing it, much fun.