JOEY STURGIS: Mastering Philosophy, Fixing Harsh Mixes, The Limiting vs. Clipping Debate

Speaker 1 (00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, brought to you by Creative Live, the world's best online classroom for creative professionals with classes on songwriting, engineering, mixing and mastering. The Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast is also brought to you by Isotope crafting innovative audio products that inspire and enable people to be creative. And now your hosts, Joey Sturgis, Joel Wanasek

Speaker 2 (00:23):

And Eyal Levi. Hey, what's up? Welcome to another episode Tips and Tricks episode actually, and this one's about mastering and I guess out of the three of us, I think I do a little more mastering than everyone, but I know Eyal, you don't do any mastering, is that right?

Speaker 3 (00:42):

I do, but not as much as you. I came up not believing that mixers should master, though I have since changed my opinion on that, but I didn't start off mastering that. It's something I've only started doing recently.

Speaker 2 (00:58):

Yeah, I think that that train of thought kind of comes from maybe the older school method. Yes. Because if you had a mixing studio, you didn't really have a mastering studio. And I think back in the day there was a huge difference between the two because the listening environments were way different.

Speaker 3 (01:14):

Exactly. And also the type of record deal that I got signed to in 2006 and just that whole environment of talking to labels back then, they were all used to having a separate guy mastering. So that's the culture, the recording culture I came up through. But I have since reformed my ways now that I think that most people who are mixing should at least know how to master.

Speaker 2 (01:45):

And I do all of my mastering in the box because I kind of came up on being in the box, but I know Joel, you do some mastering out of the box, right?

Speaker 4 (01:55):

I do both. I'm primarily OTB, but I've definitely due to speed, been doing a lot more ITB mastering lately, just because I'm so far behind that it's more of like let's catch up and worry about how it sounds in terms of quality later. No, I'm kidding. You can get a really great master ITBI feel just as comfortable using each either OTB or ITB, either system independently I'm fine with. So I generally prefer to do OTB just because the analog stuff adds that certain 10% of mojo where you kind of just run it into it and it automatically makes you go, oh man, that sounds more like a record. So that's what I like about the analog where ITB, you actually got to work to get that sound and do stuff,

Speaker 2 (02:38):

But you have the ability to recall, which is kind of something that is very important in mastering as well.

Speaker 4 (02:43):

Yes, correct.

Speaker 2 (02:45):

So that's really cool. That's kind of the reason why I do everything in the box really is for recall ability and also just flexibility in the workflow. Being able to open up something that I've been working on a completely different computer, and as long as all the same things are installed, it's going to sound exactly how I left it versus having to go to a different studio and hook all your stuff up through a bunch of different outboard gear and being like, whoa, what happened to my sound? It's completely screwed.

Speaker 3 (03:15):

And I got to say that even with outboard gear, when you recall outboard gear and set it all the same, that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to still sound like it did. There's definitely some variation from time to time between the same analog gear. So I think it

Speaker 4 (03:35):

Depends if it's stepped or not. Sometimes that makes a major, major difference.

Speaker 2 (03:40):

Absolutely. Yeah. So I guess I'll answer your guys' question about mastering in general because it is kind of a while. It is a narrow path. I do feel like it is kind of just a huge open space. I don't even know where to start, so,

Speaker 3 (03:56):

Well, I've got a bunch of questions so I can just start putting you on blast right now.

Speaker 2 (04:00):

Yeah, that sounds good.

Speaker 3 (04:01):

Yeah, you're in the hot seat buddy. So we'll just start with this question for Mr. Jacob Pan Horst, which is do you use any frequency adding plugins like Max Base or do you only use eq?

Speaker 2 (04:15):

I definitely do. I've used Max base before and I still use that. I also use a variety of different harmonic excitement type plugins. I would say with my mastering I am getting very into the five and 10% stuff. Something that it's like you have to a B it to even tell if it's there, but when someone comes to the song with fresh ears, never hearing it before, I feel like it impacts them greater than it normally would if you didn't have that kind of stuff going on.

Speaker 3 (04:52):

So in your opinion, what is the five to 10% stuff?

Speaker 2 (04:56):

I think it's just saturation, like tasteful saturation, like harmonic excitement processors like max base, which will multiply the base frequencies into upper octaves and all those kind of special little things and maybe even a little bit of spatial treatment. I do like to do those things. I do think it makes it sound more exciting and I also don't really believe that there's any wrong way to do something. So you might go listen to a show and listen to a mastering guy talk and he might say, oh, you should never use spatial widener on mastering, but I do it and I think it sounds great and so do my customers. So it's kind of like whatever you want to do.

Speaker 3 (05:42):

So I guess that begs the question, what is the 90% stuff? If the 10% stuff are enhancers and spatial enhancers and things like that, what would you consider to be the meat and potatoes? 90% don't move on before you get this stuff in the bag.

Speaker 2 (06:01):

For me, it's the mix bus compression and I usually ask the mixer to not have a compressor on the mixing bus so that I can apply my own. That's kind of just round one is going to be doing the compression of the entire mix. The second stage for me is eq, if one is meat, the other one's potatoes.

Speaker 3 (06:27):

So let's talk about EQ for a second. A question right here about it, do you prefer linear phase EQ or normal EQ and why?

Speaker 2 (06:36):

Yeah. So each one is a tool in its own right and one doesn't replace the other linear phase EQ I will use for what I will call the tasteful adjustments or the taste adjustments because if I want to add a little bit of trouble, I'm going to use a high shelf and I'm going to use either a resonant high shelf or maybe just a normal one, just depends on what the mix actually sounds like. And I'll use linear phase because it's going to be higher quality and it's not going to change the phase of the waveform and it's not going to add these complexities that can build up from digital processors. I will use a parametric EQ if there's a really nasty frequency that I want to to get rid of, for example, 4K because you can get super narrow with the qit and it allows you to kind of really suck out single frequencies if you want. You don't want to affect the rest of the frequency spectrum.

Speaker 3 (07:41):

So linear phase EQ for artistic and tasteful corrections or enhancements and then normal EQ for surgical strikes.

Speaker 4 (07:51):

Yep. I'm going to make you a t-shirt that says fuck 4K. Yeah, I will wear it every day. Oh my god. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (08:00):

Man, you guys just hate 4K. It's amazing that

Speaker 4 (08:03):

Frequency sucks. I mean I'm like a 3, 2, 3 8, but Joey's four, but I hate 4K, I think like 90% as much as he does, he's just the next level of hatred.

Speaker 2 (08:15):

I'll check it on every single mix, especially when I'm mastering. And a lot of times I'll compare it to something else that I feel like has a pleasant amount of 4K, maybe a mutt laying production because a lot of his stuff, I'm a big fan of Chris Lord algae as well, and I'll listen to those masters and then I'll put it up against mine and boom, 4K kicks in too much of it. And I think that's just a common thing that's happening right now. Maybe it has something to do with the ad converters that are readily available to the common public. Maybe it has something to do with digital processors. I don't know what it is, but it seems to crop up in a lot of mixes. And when I listen to the pro stuff that I'm a huge fan of, it's not really there. And it is, I mean the 4K frequency is there, but it's in a pleasant amount and then you listen to something else that has been amateurly done and it's an unpleasant amount of that frequency.

Speaker 3 (09:13):

So on that tangent of talking about things that are done by amateurs, Jonathan Doles has a question, which is when mastering mixes that you didn't mix, how do you keep it as solid as possible even though the mix isn't great?

Speaker 2 (09:30):

I'm often using linear phase multi-band compressors. There's different ones, like a fab filter has one. I think ozone might have one Waves as well. Those are really good for tightening up where things get loose in the frequency spectrum because you get four bands of it, so you might have the low end, it's super loose, you've got the bass going all over the place and the kick drum is getting really loud and really quiet and all this. You can kind of lock that in with the lower band and compress it differently than the upper bands, which is really what you need in a mastering situation because the goal is to kind of flatten it out and even make all of your frequency dynamics a little more even across the board. And you're going to need to do that in different ways. Another thing that I find myself doing is sometimes I'll try and expand the mid range if I feel like it's too tight. If you mid range is really tight, it kind of sounds like it'll sound like it's just overbearing. And so if you put a little bit more play in those dynamics, it does open up the mix a little bit.

Speaker 3 (10:38):

So that same person was wondering what about limiting clipping? When do you use one or the other or both?

Speaker 2 (10:48):

I don't find myself really clipping my masters. I'm using a really advanced limiter that is tracking the transient and tracking the sustain, and it's using a very complex algorithm to kind of balance it all out. So almost it's limiting, but it's not soft, if that makes any sense. So you've got a fast, sorry, short release and it sounds like a hard limiter, but it's not quite to the clipping level, which I prefer because I don't really think that you should be clipping at the mastering stage unless it kind of depends on how your mix has come about. Maybe you have your snare drum really, really loud on purpose so that you can clip it in the mastering stage. I'm not saying you should do that every time. Maybe that works on one band, maybe it doesn't work on another, but I don't find myself, as far as the finalization stage, the very end of the mastering chain, I'm not doing any clipping. I'm doing limiting. And then I'm also doing the final step after that would be dithering, but the limiter is kind of like the last stop.

Speaker 4 (12:01):

That's interesting because I'm thinking about how you mix and thinking about sessions of yours that I've seen and you do kind of prelip everything where traditionally you would mix and then clip the master to get volume. I mean we're talking like 2005, 2006, mastering super loud style.

Speaker 2 (12:20):

Exactly. Well, that's the thing is you can't really say should you clip or not on the master bus because it depends on what did you do in the production. Now I'm clipping my drums at so many different stages that by the time it gets to the drum bus, it's just a solid, almost like an audio stem that can be imported in any mix and the drums will poke through almost any situation you could ever think of. And that's because I've taken care of the clipping in stages. So by the time you get to the mixing bus or the master bus, there's no need for clipping. I mean everything is just already there. But if you do it the other way where everything's kind of spiky and pokey and you've got a lot of dynamics, then maybe it does make sense to clip. Definitely.

Speaker 3 (13:07):

I see. And actually trailing back to the previous question about when you're mastering other people's mixes back on that whole topic, here's a question from the peanut gallery. From a mastering standpoint when mastering mixes you had no or little input on what are the main or common complaints or problems you find that drive you nuts?

Speaker 2 (13:37):

I'll answer the main problems. I'll find that drive me crazy. One thing that will happen is you'll have people forget to do desing or any kind of automation on those frequencies in the vocals, but those live in the same area as the symbols. So for a mastering engineer, there's nothing you can do about it. I mean, you're going to destroy either the symbols or the S's. And then I'm often finding myself hearing these symbols that come through where someone has gone in and used a ton of EQ to restructure the frequency spectrum of the high end of the symbols or something, and you get these weird, nasty peaky frequencies that just aren't smooth and it sounds too bright, but sometimes it's too loud. Other times it's too bright and there's really nothing that you can do about it. So those things drive me nuts. And then also just not having any kind of sense of base management kick maybe prioritized over the base, but it's just overbearing.

(14:42):

Luckily, a lot of the low end problems that I come across are pretty easy to fix just using various forms of multi-band compressors and stuff. But the high end stuff is very, very hard to fix. It's very crucial to be careful with what kind of adjustments you're doing up there, because if you're doing something that's too drastic or too, I want to say too permanent, there's nothing that can be done afterwards without having to go back into the mix and reconfigure some things. And I've had to do that before. For example, you'll get a song that comes in, everything's perfect, but the hi hat is so loud. And you would have to sit there and go through every song and automate the hi-hat frequencies using some kind of filtering setup. And it takes a lot of time. And the way I do mastering is kind of per song, so not any one song gets more priorities than the other, and it kind of balances out, but it's really annoying if you're charging by the song and then someone gives you a project where you have to automate thousands of hiat hits,

Speaker 4 (15:55):

Tell them to remix it.

Speaker 2 (15:56):

That's what I do. I tend to, if there's too much ss going on, I'll hit up the producer or the mixer and say, Hey, could you throw a DSR on here? It would just make my life a lot easier. And most of the time people are down to do it, but I just think more people should pay attention to those things. It seems like that's what gets lost.

Speaker 3 (16:16):

I have a funny story real quick about that. Back when I was first starting and I was mixing my own band's record, this was in 2003, and I really didn't understand how a lot of this worked. Somebody got it in my head that I needed to go to Capital Records in LA to get my record mastered because it's capital records in la, and so I just booked it with somebody there. I didn't even know really what he did and flew out there. I didn't know that most mastering sessions are unattended. And so I'm there with the dude. I started my bandwidth after flying all the way to California from Atlanta with this record that we worked so hard on, and he listens to it and he turns around and the only thing he says is This could really stand to remix. It's like, fuck, terrible. Oh shit.

Speaker 2 (17:06):

So who had mixed it?

Speaker 3 (17:09):

Me? This was 2003.

Speaker 2 (17:12):

Oh, okay, I got you. So yeah, the first response,

Speaker 3 (17:16):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (17:17):

Man, that's brutal. But I mean, I tend to think that mastering engineers should be brutal because I agree they're the last in the food chain that they really decide what we accept as good sound as a general public.

Speaker 4 (17:31):

So if it sounds like shit, it's their fault.

Speaker 2 (17:33):

So yeah, it's kind of the quality control they need to step in and be like, Hey, this is not going to work for 2015, bro.

Speaker 3 (17:42):

And I agreed with him. It was just like, oh man, I wish I knew this before we flew out. So here's another question for Mr. Phil. Do you do any MS mastering?

Speaker 2 (17:54):

I think it really, for me, it does depend on what's going on. I have seen many situations where I'll get the song in, I'll hit play, and I'm like, you know what? The snare kick and vocals are a little bit too quiet and I don't want to, because a tool for this, so you don't necessarily have to reach out to the mixer and have it changed. But I will use some kind of imager tool to bring the center channel up and leave the sides. But I don't find myself really compressing the sides different than the center or adding EQ to the center channel only or anything like that. I'm not really doing anything super advanced, but I will use an imager or some kind of mid side process to just change the balance of those levels.

Speaker 3 (18:43):

That makes sense. Here's a question from Seth Munson, and with most, this is more philosophical in nature, but still with most major media sites now normalizing their audio content and more following their footsteps. Are we still needing to push records as loud as we have been for the last 15 years?

Speaker 2 (19:04):

I think there is a common misconception that everyone believes records are getting louder and louder, but I think that in probably the last two or three years we've kind of leveled off because if you do push something to a certain point, it does start to distort. And obviously we're not trying to hear Miley Cyrus record going through a distortion pedal, so there is a stopping point where we say, whoa, that's a little bit too far. And I think the question is kind of aimed at saying, well, when is, how far is too far? And I think we've reached it right now. I think we're at a point where records are loud, and I don't think they're going to get any louder unless people start accepting more and more distortion, which fair enough, we have been, we made it this far in the last 15 years and we're accepting of some levels of distortion in our masters, especially compared to the eighties. But I do think it is kind of at a stopping point. I don't know if it's going to get worse.

Speaker 4 (20:09):

Here's a question based off that. Do you think that it's going backwards at all? Because I feel like just as a general trend in my experience, a lot of the a and r guys and et cetera managers and whatever that I work with, they're always telling me, yeah, just a little bit quieter. I mean, it's still loud as hell.

Speaker 2 (20:26):

No, that's a great thing. I think more people should listen to Chris Lord algae because his masters are generally between negative 10 and negative nine RMS, which is fairly conservative. If you compare it to my stuff, mine's like negative seven or negative eight. But the crazy thing is if you play his negative 10 back to to my negative seven, they will compete with each other because he's using a combination of automation and dynamic play that is making his master or his mix jump out at you and seem like it's louder than it actually is. And I think more people should pay attention to that and get interested in that because that is the right way to do it. He's doing everything perfectly. It still sounds competitive, it still sounds loud, but it's not overbearing. It's not over distorted, it's not over limited, and it's really beautiful. I really love his work and I wish I could go into a studio and play around for a day because the gear that he has kind of enables him to do all that stuff.

Speaker 3 (21:36):

His gear selection is unbelievable unmatched, basically. And here's a question from Omics Way, which I figure we should get to at some point, but it's really simple. Why do I need mastering?

Speaker 2 (21:50):

That is a great question, and I think the reason is still the same. You take a mix and you play it in two different listening environments or two different devices, and it's going to sound two different ways. And of course you're going to have your various levels of base and trouble being a little different on a car versus a headphones versus a home stereo, blah, blah, blah. That's normal. But the amount of fluctuation, the amount of variety that happens within the frequency response is going to be greater in something that's unmastered. So the whole point of mastering it is making it more consumable for a wider variety of devices and for a wider variety of listening environments. And it really was originally designed, I guess, to make music more of a product that could be put on a shelf that could be consumed. Having your mix.

(22:57):

Unmastered was kind of having maybe a product that's on the shelf that box art isn't quite, doesn't look like it was put together by a designer. It's like you look at it and you're like, I don't know if I should have that. But with mastering it kind of seals the deal on the song and packages is up, polishes everything together and makes it a little bit more enjoyable. Get those base levels, get the trouble levels, make it easier to consume. I think that really is the major point of it. And to also make your music competitive with other people's music as well.

Speaker 3 (23:34):

I guess some people wonder why the mix alone can't just handle that. I've gotten that question quite a bit.

Speaker 2 (23:43):

Well, yeah, because the lines are a little blurry now that everything is, all these tools are readily available Back in the day when a mixing guy mixed and a mastering guy mastered, it was simply a gear separation. I mean, obviously knowledge and skills were different, but you would go to the mastering engineering, you'd say, well, here's our mix. Can you make it sound better? And he runs it through all this special gear that the mixing engineer wouldn't even have at all. And it does improve the sound of it, and that is the ultimate goal. Let's improve the sound of our song, make it sound as best as we possibly can, and also make it sound that great on every device and every environment. That was the goal. And it was separated by gear and knowledge, and it still is. But when you get into cubase or Pro Tools, all the same tools that you would master with the same plugins and stuff are right on the same area as the mixing tools. So it is kind of a blurry line now, I think, for example, I think Death Magnetic, I think is the name of the album where the mastering engineer has gone public and said, Hey, when I got this record, it was already like Rick Wald. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (24:56):

That was Ted Jensen.

Speaker 2 (24:58):

So there was nothing he could do because the mixing engineer kind of already mastered it a little bit before he gave it to the guy. So I think it is possible now to be a mixer and master your own work. That's what I do. And the labels love it. And they're not really coming back and saying, Hey, we think we should get a different mastering engineer. That is where the lines get blurred. And I think that is where that person's talking about, well, why can't you just take care of it in the mix you, it does take a little bit more understanding of what you can do with your tools and how to do it properly. But yeah.

Speaker 4 (25:35):

Here's a question for you. So what do you do? This is always something I run into when somebody gives you a mix and it is fucking slammed. I'm talking already clipped limited, whatever, it's just a square wave and they're like, here, mastermind master. How do you normally approach that in your chain? I mean, there's different strategies but have edit.

Speaker 2 (25:56):

The very first thing I will do is as soon as I see that, I will email them first and I'll say, Hey, this is already limited. It's beyond my, I'm not going to be able to do it. You're not going to get what you paid for if this is the only file that I have to work from. So can you see if there's another file that's not limited, that's not compressed, that hasn't been pre mastered or anything like that? And if they come back with a new file, that's great, then I can get going. And if they come back and they say, oh, the guy won't give us any more files and we're stuck and this is our only option, I will do a couple of things. Like I'll do some linear phase eq, which you can still do at that stage, but you are just stuck and you're not going to be able to do a lot, and they're going to be paying you all this money for you to basically just EQ it and then put a slap a limiter at the end just so it doesn't go over zero and that's it.

(26:59):

So I would say more people need to be aware of what they're getting when they're taking something from a mixing engineer and they need to be aware of what their game plan is. If they're going to go to a mastering engineer, I would be talking to that mastering engineer before your mix is done so that you can make sure everything that you're mixing engineer is doing is going to be compatible with the workflow of the mastering engineer.

Speaker 3 (27:22):

Yeah, that is great advice right there. And I can tell you as a mixing engineer who often submits his mixes to mastering guys that level of communication, it's just,

Speaker 2 (27:36):

Yeah, I would say it should. You have to do several phone calls over a period of a week or two just to kind of, yeah, keep it rolling, keep it flowing. Because a lot of things get lost in translation in email, especially when you're starting to talk about the sound like, and the master engineer might ask you, what do you want it to sound like? And you start using all these words, it's better to just convey it on the phone. So that's what I recommend. And I think maybe even getting your mixing engineer and your masking engineer to talk to each other and just not even be a middle man. Totally.

Speaker 4 (28:11):

You got to give the mastering guy some work. I mean, not work, but sorry, what's the word? You have to give him some space to do what he needs to do as a mixer. It's very, very important. And I think that's the bottom line.

Speaker 3 (28:23):

Let the pros do their job. And I guess we have time for one more question, and this one comes from Chris Darnell, which is what's up with this mastered for iTunes things a load of crap, or are there things to do differently for an all digital release?

Speaker 2 (28:38):

So yeah, mastered for iTunes is a new program basically because Apple has built in some additional functionality into their file format that's a little bit different from an MP three or a Wave file. It can hold additional data, which can allow different devices to do different things. Unfortunately, I am not trained in it. I don't really understand it a hundred percent. There's a guide about it, and a lot more labels are requesting to have albums mastered for iTunes, and I've never done one yet, but I have had a situation where I sent 44.1 kilohertz wave files that were at 24 bit and untethered to somebody, and they used that to create the mastered for iTunes version. So I'm not a hundred percent sure on how it works, but it's not like a crock of shit or anything like that. It is something that Apple has created for their customers and for their devices, and it does have a little bit of an extra bonus. Not only is there a marketing point of it, you can sell your album, it can appear on the top position of newest music says Mastered for iTunes, I think only mastered for iTunes albums are eligible for that spot.

(30:12):

Interesting. So there's that. And then the other part of it is that I think you do, the listener gets something out of it. I'm not a hundred percent sure what it is, but it might be something to where those songs play louder or maybe they have more EQ options or something that gives an incentive to own it that way. But yeah, I mean people out there that are mastering you should look it up and start reading about it because you're going to get requests to have it all the time now. It's a big marketing thing for one attached to some kind of additional functionality.

Speaker 3 (30:46):

Okay. So it definitely worth looking into.

Speaker 2 (30:48):

Yeah.

Speaker 3 (30:48):

Cool. Well, I think that that about wraps it up, unless if you had any other questions, Joel,

Speaker 4 (30:54):

The last thing I'll say is I was going to echo what Joey was just saying about having to turn in a normal than higher Red Book standard stuff. When I turned in the stuff for Vinyl theater to Atlantic, I mastered the record, but they had a guy do all the encoding and I turned it in like 48, 24 or something like that. And I had to do different versions of it for every single mix. And there were several versions, but they wanted it in the native recording format and they didn't want it dithered down at all. So it was interesting.

Speaker 2 (31:23):

Yeah, I think you're going to find bigger labels doing things like that because they want to have the ability to, I would say, to future proof their releases. So 20 years from now, there's some other media format that we don't even know is being invented yet comes out and it requires 48 kilohertz and 24 bit like they're going to be able to put vinyl theater on that medium format. The other thing too to consider is vinyl still works on an analog basis. So the more true to reality that you can become with your sampling, the better it is for the people that are pressing the vinyl. And also, there's new devices coming out all the time that play music in 48 and DVDs. Maybe they use the songs as background music for a documentary and the DVD formats in 48 kilohertz. So it makes sense that they would ask for that. And I would say people who are coming up and doing mastering, you got to be prepared to work with the label on their requested specs, because every label's going to have different needs because at the end of the day, it's their product and the product has to meet certain requirements. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 4 (32:50):

Right on.

Speaker 3 (32:51):

Well, thank you very much for doing this tips and tricks, Mr. Sturgis. Thanks for having me. Anytime. Yeah, it's kind of weird. How do we end this episode since you're not really a guest? It's kind of interesting.

Speaker 4 (33:08):

We say, okay, we're done. Thanks, bye.

Speaker 3 (33:11):

Okay, we're done. Thanks. Bye.

Speaker 1 (33:13):

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