Hey Sup Forums

Hey Sup Forums,
Professional mix/master engineer here, AMA

portfolio includes:
> Italobrothers
> The Vamps
> Cascada
> Chloe Angelides
> Crew Cardinal
among others...

Other urls found in this thread:

soundcloud.com/yam-lynn/ooo
people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

How do we know you're legit?

Apparently no one cares, maybe you should post in /prod/

me too, can i get a job? Ill fukin just coil ur cables or some shit
soundcloud.com/yam-lynn/ooo

thx

what's your favorite song you've mixed?

Shit. Forgot to search the catalog

Most of my shit is ITB. I get to use some nice studios but they're already maintained by someone else.

Might need someone to answer e-mails and calls though. Interesting SC.

I could timestamp and have a screenshot of a session maybe?

Playground by Cascada. Basically got it perfect in two revisions and added some synths to the mix which turned out well in the end. Easiest song I've ever had to mix.

I'm a self-taught producer and mixer. Do you have any advice for me? Do you think it's futile to try to mix one's own work?

I feel like I'm pretty good at mixing concepts and how things should sound and levels and such, but I'm still pretty bad at actually identifying frequencies or what sort of EQ or compression a certain sound needs. I know I need to do a lot more ear training, but I get bored with it way too fast so I haven't done much.

>that pic
kek

Do you have a wikipedia page? I'm trying to figure out who you are based off of production credits

The only way you can practice is if you try to mix your own stuff. There are stems out there for you to also practice with which might be good experience since you can try other genre's using professional musicians as the source.

It will also give you an idea of how easy it is to get a good mix that is recorded and performed well.

I don't have one at the moment. Most of my stuff isn't credited since I don't specifically ask for it, though I do get permission that I can retroactively use the tracks for my portfolio, if ever proof is needed for professional reasons my manager / producer has no problem with that. I'm waiting to get my website on but I don't know anyone at the moment for design.

> """"""professional""""" mastering

If you were involved with Stamp on the Ground, thank you for that piece of anachronistic 90s Italotrash. I fucking love it.

I wasn't unfortunately! I've only started working with the Italobrothers recently. Their newest stuff isn't anywhere near the popularity of their old stuff haha.

Still.
I appreciate you.
Probably because I'm old.

thoughts on digital vs analog in terms of mixing/mastering. Went to some seminar recently and this 50 year old mastering engineer was jerking over tape and 'psycho acoustics' but i thought he was talking out of his ass.

if i'm mastering to get my shit loud and and obnoxious as possible, is there anything more to keep in mind than headroom and already having dynamics balanced?

Consider treating the low end by reducing information on the sides and shelving the center. Bass is the no. 1 eater of headroom. On louder commercial masters, I aim for -6 dB to -4 dB RMS and around -12 to -10 dB RMS a-weighted. As long as I'm keeping that ratio between normal and a-weighted RMS metering, I know that I don't have too much bass or too little. It's going to depend largely on the style of music too for example tech house often has lots of bass and little mid to mid-high frequencies so the a-weighting will be less. If you're not familiar with weighted meters, look into it. It's helpful. I strictly use Brainworx's meter, it's essentially TL meters, there might be a free download out there lurking on the internet.

There's a quality to analog gear but you need to spend a lot of money to get something that can handle everything and sound good. A lot of cheap mastering gear has crappy headroom and uses shitty components so the saturation isn't "musical" yet people still circlejerk over it because their biased. For me, I like to eliminate as many complications as possible by simple working in the box.

The dude might not be talking out of his ass, he just has his own way of explaining things that probably don't seem conventional. Analog saturation is something that can easily be emulated these days in the box but If his work flow is best in a completely analog environment then his masters will sound the best that way. The same is true with digital. You are best when you are comfortable with the tools at your disposal.

How do I become a master mix/master engineer?

Spend years mixing music, including your own if you have the talent. Being a producer also puts you above competing sound engineers who only know how to mix and tune a vocal. Get into mastering, but just dabble at first. Offer mixing services first and foremost- mastering engineers are a dime a dozen these days and most amateur artists will use LANDR or some other automated service.

Then you need to make connections which means you will probably need to sell yourself short for the first few mixes just to attract clients. If it sounds good and your client is please with your service, they will come back for more and possibly recommend you to others. A recommendation is a very important thing to get. I would not be making a living if it weren't for recommendations but don't specifically go out and ask for it- this makes you seem desperate. You earn recommendations.

It's also important to recognise that you probably won't break even for months or possibly years but this is normal. Making any money off music in the industry is an incredibly difficult thing to do unless you're a lawyer or business manager of some sort.

Why is the Loudness War happening?

>I aim for -6 dB to -4 dB RMS

i've been working on this project for a couple weeks... your post just made me realize hitting -2 on average might be a tad much after looking that up. lol

his arguments were that there are frequencies above the human hearing range that we still detect in our brain and it alters how we hear music fundamentally, i understand the arguments of digital vs analog but in this context i'm pretty skeptic, especially because there's basically 0 evidence

dubs and you're lying

What are the first things you set up in a new project to make your life easier down the track

You can read up on it, but basically it's just a competitive edge. Louder will always sound better to our ears (granted distortion doesn't ruin the track.)

Modern day mastering to me is basically the art of getting it loud as possible without having too many limiter artefacts. Sometimes hard limiting can add character to a track but sometimes it can completely destroy it. It is very subjective to a certain extent.

This is why A-weighted metering is important. Also consider the limitations of your monitoring system, whatever it is that you use. Try using more than one system to monitor your music when it comes to the mastering stage- create a healthy middleground between both systems.

> there are frequencies above the human hearing range that we still detect in our brain and it alters how we hear music fundamentally

> Most playback systems can only go up to 18 - 20 kHz (exception is Adam monitors - 30 kHz)
> Most microphones roll off above 20 kHz
> Tape will limit the range even further, even with two-track tape at high IPS
> Not to mention inter-modulation distortion on playback systems that occur when working with ultra high sample rates

Also our ears are limited to something called critical bands- the loudest frequency takes precedent over neighbouring frequencies so much so that we hardly notice them, if at all. Codecs make use of these critical bands to rid extra information that we don't pick up on which is why AAC and MP3 are so successful.

This is a good read: people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

> Folder structure
I have a script that copies a template project and creates a folder structure so that I'm ready to just drag and drop my stems and I don't need to worry about saving a copy or hunt for missing files if I need to bring up the project again in the future- this is super helpful. Probably my number 1. I always get requests from labels for tracks that I mastered years ago and it's no problem for me to export an instrumental or whatever it is they need.

> Preset chains
I have channel presets that I bring up for certain vocalists or masters. Usually, my vocalists are recording in the same studio or with the same recording engineer so I know that when I bring up my "Anna Chain"- for example- I've basically done most of the legwork and all I need to do is tweak the EQ and compression (for the most part).

For masters I simply have all my plugins set to a chain order and configured as if I was to just set them up from default, could be as simple as changing the mode on my EQ to Mid/Side. Saves a lot of time and I don't need to constantly load in each plugin.

thanks for the answer, will read through that link.

Right on, thanks for the answer