Spoken Hopes is an independent alternative rock band, orchestrated by Arthur Belhomme (guitar/vocals), and Manon Laterza (vocals/guitar), recently joined by (in order) myself (drums), and Théo Dufils (bass).
Although the 4 tracks I've mastered are only an EP (a very clean one, that said), this article is intended to show how I operate in mastering and to give a concrete example of the difference before/after. It was mixed and arranged by Arthur Belhomme in its entirety, who also plays bass on the recordings, and I make an appearance on drums (or rather electronic MIDI drums + Superior Drummer, as is often the case) on Start Living.
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Here are the Before/After Mastering tracks in WAV 44.1Khz/16b so you don't miss a thing!
Goodbye
I should have waited
Start Living
Tiny piece of Heaven
Approach
As always, the first step is to listen and dissect. Overall, the mixes are fairly homogeneous in terms of sound and color, which is already a good point. However, I note a number of masking effects in the lower midrange, kicks that lack punch, vocals that take a back seat, sometimes a lack of clarity, sometimes aggressiveness, with the added bonus of a sound that's a little too clean, too digital... In short, the whole thing lacks a little punch. It's time to correct this first, and not just try to sound the loudest!
Practice
Overall, I used pretty much the same workflow for all the tracks on the EP:
First of all, I make a project with one track per song + one track from a reference song, to check that I'm on track, and finally, BlueCat's superb and free FreqAnalyst on my master throughout the process to confirm what my ears are hearing. And after each master, I listen again to the previous tracks and the reference to check consistency.
First a light EQ to slightly balance each mix as I feel it.
Then a little lamp-type distortion per frequency band.
Then I worked a lot on multiband and MS compression, i.e. I apply a different compression on 4 frequency bands each time for the mono (center) and stereo (sides) components. At this point, I take the opportunity to adjust the level of each frequency band by working on the compression and output volume, balancing everything out, trying in particular to have finer but not aggressive highs. In this way, I was able to reduce the masking effects while bringing out the voices, and calm the ardor of certain instruments or sounds, and regain clarity.
Then I was able to adjust the width of the stereo image by frequency band, too.
I then sometimes added a multiband just for certain frequencies or sounds that were blowing up the PPM (peak meter) and the ears.
Behind this, I add a small BUS compressor, i.e. a typical analog compressor with a fairly long attack, a fairly short release, and a fairly low ratio, enough to glue the mix a little, and level out the tracks slightly by a few dB.
Then we're almost there, and I add my favorite limiter, playing with the settings to reach the desired RMS level without smashing all the dynamics. Speaking of dynamics, overall we're running at -12dB RMS for the loudest parts, as the music doesn't lend itself to much more, except on Goodbye, where the mix is well "glued" and we sometimes climb to -8dB RMS.
And last but not least, I use Adobe Audition (CC 2015 at present, but historically I've used AA 3) to do the small fades and conversions to the desired formats, which, in addition to being very precise and practical, I trust completely.
And here's the result!
If you have any questions or comments, please don't hesitate to contact me or comment!
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