Talk:Audio mastering
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[edit] 16 bit/44.1khz
I think a little bit on the role of mastering in sample rate and bit reduction/dithering to CD quality would be good information in this article now that 24 bit recording is a big deal. Any thoughts? Gamiar 23:37, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
I think it is critical to suggest that bouncing or recording mixes to as high a sample rate as possible and a minimum of 24 bit word size is critical for allowing mastering algorthyms the additional samples and bits for rounding and processing. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Pbr (talk • contribs) .
There's legitimate doubt that high sample rates are as important. Some processing, such as compression or EQ, can benefit from a somewhat higher sample rate like 96K, but 'as high as possible', probably 192K, is very likely unnecessary. I've seen people saying 192K converters sounded worse than lower sample rates. Besides, among professional MEs you are more likely to find them using analog chains and certain popular converters like Lavry or Prism, particularly those who make a practice of driving the D/A converters hard to produce apparent loudness- in other words, distorting them. Also note that fancy methods of wordlength reduction are not invariably chosen by professionals- simple TPDF dither remains popular due to a percieved lack of coloration. -Chris Johnson —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 207.136.232.46 (talk • contribs) .
[edit] Loudness War
Any issues with merging Loudness war into this article? It's not really it's own topic and is really a mastering issue. --Jgritz 22:18, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
- It should be linked (and it is), but it's a big enough topic to have its own article. Merging is normally done when two articles contain the same information, not when one article is a subtopic of the other. Mirror Vax 22:50, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
- I disagree with the above posting. Loudness war should be merged with audio mastering, however, it is not a dire issue. I do urge whoever has power to merge two articles to do so as soon as possible.--68.194.238.91 00:44, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
- Please keep seperate. Loudness war is a bad enough issue that it deserves it's own article. That article needs some work, eg examples and a couple of helpful waveform images, not reducing to part of an article on a much larger issue. --Spod mandel 02:58, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
- I agree with Spod, the loudness war is notable enough to deserve its own article by the same logic that car and car accidents are seperate articles. -- Dept of Alchemy 21:50, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
In theory, were there no loudness war there would still be an Audio Mastering article. The topic can have much more to it than simple loudness, for instance the need to produce audio that translates to many types of playback systems pleasingly, and the practice of sequencing (in some cases) album tracks or producing suitable timing for the pauses between songs, not to mention inserting ISRC codes, which is not a form of watermarking but a method of putting a unique ID on a CD track which can be read by some playback equipment to help in assigning royalties for airplay. -Chris Johnson —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 207.136.232.46 (talk • contribs) .
[edit] Bass punch, kick drum, bass drum, frequencies, waveform
Add pictures. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 80.238.233.138 (talk • contribs) .
[edit] The other loudness war is on FM radio!
The other loudness war is happening in FM broadcasting. There are dedicated FM processors that would be of little use for CD production. See for example http://www.omniaaudio.com .
Therefore, I do not think that merging loudness war into audio mastering would be appropriate. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 80.238.233.138 (talk • contribs) .
Jeffason's comments:
You gotta be kidding. Who created the movement to merge the two. They are totally different. PLEASE REMOVE THIS REQUEST TO MERGE THE TWO. It is blasphemy! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jeffason (talk • contribs) .
[edit] External links
Please refer to Wikipedia:External links before adding external links. I don't doubt that Artmastering and audioplexus are legitimate companies, but I'm sure there are 100s or 1000s of legitimate audio mastering companies and Wikipedia is not the place to list them all. Moreover, the links do not add useful information that cannot be covered in the article. I will give the article on MusicBizAcademy the benefit of the doubt - for now - but I think it is more helpful to use the information in MBA article to improve this Wikipedia article rather than merely linking to it. The MBA link could serve as a legitimate reference to facts in the Wikipedia article rather than just sitting there as a bare link. Han-Kwang 18:31, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
[edit] References
From Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Art_Mastering:
- Additionally, in the entire article about Audio_Mastering, this is the only section that actually has some support in the press as well as publically accessible pictures and references. Everything else has been contributed by various members based on their opinion rather than on notable facts or evidence and is placed there without any supporting evidence or references. If we follow your reasoning, then the entire Audio Mastering section should be deleted as "not notable", which would be a terrible waste! R. Watts
This is a valid point. This article could use some references. Han-Kwang 21:29, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
I suspect it would be considered generally valid to provide some links to Bob Katz's 'Digido' site. Bob is a mastering engineer who has written a largely well-recieved book and has some decent online material which I believe would be generally considered acceptable. The danger here is from the number of MEs who would like to present themselves as innovators. I myself have stuff up on the web, but I don't think my content is anywhere near as mainstream and doesn't belong on Wikipedia as written. It is at airwindows.com and if I see stuff from there up here as if it is authoritative I'll edit it out myself, or at least pull it back to commonly accepted information without any inferences or propagandizing. -Chris Johnson —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 207.136.232.46 (talk • contribs) .
[edit] Is this spam for vestman mastering?
I recently reverted this edit. The editor claims this is spam for the vestman mastering method. I don't have the specialist knowledge to decide, so I raise the issue here. Mr Stephen 12:01, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
It is indeed. The technique is both less important than claimed, and normally known by a different term, 'stems'. There's some contentiousness over whether stems are desirable in mastering at all. The claim that the technique is necessary for extremely loud CD mastering is incorrect, as potential loudness is more a factor of limiting and clipping methods than compressing or limiting partial mixes. With stems you can have a harshly limited 'band' distinct from a vocal track at the expense of having the 'loud' content obviously quieter than digital full scale- arguably a poor trade-off. -Chris Johnson (I need to put some effort into developing this article, as I hang out with a community of mastering engineers on a music website who have criticised this article before but don't fix it) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 207.136.232.46 (talk • contribs) .
This method is sometimes used, it is just not so common. It is mentioned in Bob Katz's book, "Mastering Audio: The Art and the Science". The book recommends it when the vocal levels are critical, so instead of submitting half a dozen mixes with slightly different vocal settings an instrumental stereo mix synced with a separate vocal mix are used. (There's also talk about how instead using a cheap reverb unit in mixing, the mastering engineer can apply a higher quality reverb at a later stage—this is obviously useful when applied only to the separate vocal mix as well.) However, I tend to think that while all this can be done by a mastering engineer, it is in fact not mastering, but mixing, and the mastering only starts when there is a two track stereo mix to work on. I've mastered dozens of records where I've had to add sounds—once I added a snare sample on top of a mix with a too soft snare drum that couldn't be redone! Editing—like cutting parts off a song and such—is a different story. Erkki10000 06:31, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
