![]() ![]() Interestingly, that acoustical noise floor is not white, like electrical noise, but instead steeply biased toward low frequencies, so we can expect the acoustical noise floor level to be 30 dB louder at 30 Hz than it will be at 3000 Hz. Low-level noise floors hover around 50 dB SPL (I’m not going to discuss the meaning of A-weighting here) in our noisy modern world. Sound becomes really unpleasant for humans above 120 dB SPL, and air begins to distort above about 130 dB SPL. Orchestral music in a concert hall ranges from about 50 dB SPL to 120 dB SPL, rock ‘n roll in a club from 80 to 125 dB SPL. Conversational voice level is approximately 65 dB Sound Pressure Level (SPL). The acoustic realm is where sound actually occurs. Third, we need to concern ourselves with three realms of sound, all of which have their own weirdnesses and pitfalls. Second, we use the term “decibel,” which by itself is truly confusing and maddening. For this to happen, we need to know something about levels. ![]() Probably the most critical element of mastering is taking care of the levels of the recording. Level Management: The Three Realms Of Sound Sometimes we just gotta do what we gotta do. I’ve always found great comfort in knowing that somebody else is gonna edit or master my work, catch my mistakes, clean up my various crazy misguided ideas.Įnough said. That first task is plenty hard concentrate on it. It’s a tricky, creative and quite subtle process-they will hear and be sensitive to things that you and I, in our creative turmoil, don’t even begin to sense.Īt the same time, it is not reasonable to assume that-just because you can create a really cool recording-you also have the chops to master it. Think of it this way: the mastering engineer functions as “the ears of last resort.” It is the masterer’s job to translate your efforts into something really palatable (and hopefully delicious!) to the public, a.k.a. You aren’t going to be very rational about it, and some rationality is called for. As Mark Twain pointed out, “A man who represents himself in court has a fool for a client.” It is tough to put on the mastering hat for a recording that (a) you know really well, and (b) you have a strong emotional investment in. With that all said, there really are some good reasons for having somebody else master your work. How tough can it be? Buy one of the special mastering plug-ins, jack those levels right up, and master a kick-ass disc! Why, we can do it for about a tenth of the cost of takin’ it to some guy/gal that’s simply gonna tell us how hopeless our tracks really are, and how before he/she will even consider listening to them a second time we need to remix them yet again. So, in spite of everything, we know, in our heart of hearts, that we really have to try our hand at mastering. The answer is that because, at the same time that all this elitist advice spells out once again our all-too-obvious inadequacies, we are still trying to make our own recordings one of the traditional verities behind our efforts is that we simply haven’t got the friggin’ green we need to go out and hire all the really best folks that we know we’re supposed to need in order to do anything worth doing! So if we’re not going to be champion drivers in world-class cars, why in the world would we have the temerity to even think about venturing out onto the parking lot of audio life? Two, we ain’t even got a custom racer (don’t we wish!). Well, I guess we’ve been told! First, we ain’t Dale Earnhardt (which we probably already knew). He or she has very special compressors that will do a much better job than you can do.” “Don’t do any fancy compression,” we’re told. ![]() Meanwhile, we hear sage advice telling us to leave it alone. Mastering continues to be one of those tantalizing pursuits where we’d all like to do it, but aren’t sure quite what is needed. Here’s how to give your music the final polish
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