HOW TO MASTER METAL

hey hey what's up guys mendel here so uh on the youtube post um i created a poll and asked you guys like hey what do you want to see on this channel like what do you want to see basically and a lot of you guys said like yeah mixing and mastering kind of stuff so here we go how to master metal let's do it dig right in [Music] all right so here we are so before we continue if it's your first time here welcome my name is man the bite life i live in the netherlands i love mixing and mastering metal bands and i compose and uh i hope you enjoy the video and if you do then don't hesitate to like subscribe and hit the thumbs up and leave a comment because i read through every single comment and i answer them so we can like hang out in the comment section so again welcome enjoy the video so here we are in the in my project for my song visions now the song visions is from my 2015 solo album called oblivion and last year in 2020 i remix remastered reamped the whole album and this is the new version and that album is called neo-oblivion get it neo greek word neo means new neo oblivion get it anyway so so we're gonna master that track um the only thing i have on the master bus at the moment is the pro l2 limiter to make sure everything's up to level so you don't have to like turn your volume knob all the way down and stuff like that for the for like the bill for the entire video okay so the only thing we have on the master bus is the limiter and let's take a listen to the intro hey [Music] all right so that's the mix without the master bus processing to be honest when i start mixing i always have like a bus compressor on the master bus mainly because i like the sound of mixing into a bus compressor and a limiter just to keep everything on level so i know what i'm getting myself into in the end or how it's going to sound when i'm going to master closely closely mostly right okay so i have some notes what i did on this album and if you want i can show you the exact project in another video of the mastering session but i thought it would be cool to like how i would master it now because i recalibrated my speakers with sonarworks so the original master would sound kind of different here in my studio so i thought would be cool too how it would sound if we're going to master it from scratch and i could explain my whole thought process through it so but i do have some notes over here on what i did on the master so the first thing i had on here and i haven't used this plugin in a while to be honest is the slate digital virtual tape machine this baby right here but as i was saying i haven't used this in a while to be honest a lot of mastering without it but for this song i liked how it sounded on this setting so let's compare it so let's just loop the intro so this is the thing without it i'll turn it on halfway that's i really like what it does with the mid-range so years ago i used like this but for this mix it was too bright but when i started using this like it's almost boost like some lower mids and mids like let's compare these two but this is what i used on the album especially when you focus on the cymbals you can hear like a big difference right so that was the first thing what i sometimes use is the slate digital uh like mix bust like the gray thingy but i didn't use on this album like sometimes i use this one instead of the shape machine to be honest like it's a virtual mix bust and it has like different like you could put it on a channel i used to do that now most of the time i only use this on the master bus or sometimes on the drum bus or the guitar bus like just this one without the channels uh on every channel of the mix really subtle at least to myers is really subtle has something in mind i think a fly in my eye i like it unlike the the ssl one with the drive around six and nine again some more about the metals more subtle than the virgo tape machine but it's a versatile machine now here comes my favorite thing the slate digital fg fg gray which is a ssl bus compressor these are the settings i used and this is basically the settings i use on a lot of albums i mix and master um ratio for release like around .04 some sometimes i want to say some some set the game of automatics dutch anyway uh something um i'm on something the t scratch sometimes on auto but most of the time on o4 and fast is like on three or ten milliseconds and this one is 10 milliseconds and this has a big influence on the whole mix especially the snare like focus on the snare when i turn up the threshold wow i hate to say because such a cliche but it's true it glues the mix together whatever that means but it makes makes everything go into the pocket like how i say how i like to say it i like to have the like how i like how it sounds like around three decibels of gain reduction i just to be honest i compared i think about six or seven different ssl um bus compressor plug-ins from uad and from ssl themselves what's called ssl native i think because it's on the on the cpu i can't remember trek comp i believe a lot of them and to my ears the uad and the ft gray sounded the best at least to my ears that's my opinion but i like how it sounds on this mix so then what i do is some multi-band compression now it depends on the project what i do most of the time i just put this band here put it on dynamic face and just keep low and tiny bit in check and i also do this in ozone or ozone doesn't does it automatically but we'll get into that into a bit but what i like to do is to keep the low end like tiny bit compressed what i also like to do is have a setting called full range linear so it's in linear phase and it basically goes to all the bands so if i would overdo it but normally i juice it like you can see over here when the snare is peeking out it like compressed it a bit around that area also be careful with the solo function because it can really ruin your perspective on the mix but just showcases what it makes all right and then we have let's see oh yeah the pro q3 it's a really cool plugin so what i do most of the time with this and like it this can change on every master but that's how i did it on mastering this album the oblivion so i use a filter around 30 hertz for that excessive low end if there is any but awesome good speakers you can probably hear this [Music] because the kick build up and the bass build up and perhaps some like sound effects build up all on the master bus just filter off like everything below 30 hertz or sometimes 20 hertz depends on the project and most of the time and i can hear definitely right now there are some like um upper mid frequencies or high frequencies building up and be careful doing this again because with this you can easily like destroy your whole perspective but because it's a demonstration video i like to show it like this that one and i hear something just like that's what i'm hearing like i can hear this frequency through the after the mix and be careful with notching down because if you like notch across the hole make sure mix will be ruined easily but these two clean up the mix in my opinion i'll filter off everything so we can just focus like on this higher mids just for demonstration purposes i'm going to filter everything off now focus on these frequencies like turning like pushing a button that like turns some nastiness on and off [Music] big difference but be careful with that kind of stuff all right so then what i have oh yeah i had shoes too so i know i knocked some of those frequencies those were the most excessive ones this is like to tiny like subtly adjust them i to be honest i could probably use the su-2 and then ditch pro-q 3 except for the filter but like those two tiny notches could probably be this and be just done with this if you download this plug-in if i'm correct it's based on human hearing and it knocks down the nasty frequencies so this is not like a boost of eq rather this is like how much of that frequency area is going to be ducked so i'm going to press play and take a focus on this i want to turn this down it's going to do less work around that area this is the overall depth now also be careful with this because this can really ruin your perspective because if i would do this listen to it for a while and then pull it back then when i put it back because my ears are used are used to this position now this could sound too harsh while in reality this could be even um like like okay it makes any sense so you can hear the edge coming in but that adds is actually pleasant like that's the bite of the mix that you want to keep there and then i put it on off sampling times four oversample so when it exports it uses a times 4 on the oversampling so then we're going to go to ozone so um sometimes i master just using ozone if you want if you want like a video on me just using ozone let me know in the comments or give us a thumbs up i'll definitely do it but on this mix what i like to do is i use or what i like to do is use the master assistant now beware so i'm going to put the limiter off or turn the limiter off because during the math master system it's gonna put a limiter on it so it's gonna make the mix really loud so attention turn down your volume knobs when i say so not yet but when i say so so it won't destroy your ears but i like to use master assistant because on this mix i was referencing to chimera's resurrection i can't play the track itself but because of youtube stuff but that's the reference thing and basically master assistant is comparing that like your reference track which is in this case camera resurrection to your track and then try to get the overall balance in check like get them together that makes them say you know what i mean right [Music] i'm going to turn off this maximizer now i'm going to turn back on my own limiter and we're going to check what it did so the thing i really love about the master assistant is basically then the is basically the dynamic eq so it it looks for like where where the build is compared to the other mix and then it fixes them so when i solo it [Music] like those frequencies i can definitely see around here that's like mostly focusing on the snare here's probably some high build up so when we turn that uh off and on again to my ears of at least here in this room it's creating more clarity especially in the low mids when the snare is playing and it balances the hole over a mix with an overall q so i can see that the mid range was pretty good compared to the camera song because i also use it as a reference track but in the lows it was boosting some as you can see and then the highs it was like reducing some so let's compare that so i got him more kick ooh so perhaps i used tiny bit too much of that on a pro mb but over here i like what i'm hearing another cool thing is and i could probably ditch the pro mb if i was using only uh only on the kick but it also does that the compression on the low end i don't know why it automatically turns off everything after using the master system but i really like what it's doing a lot but still stump all right so now we get to one of my favorite tools that i wish i had when i was mastering this album called flatline from submission audio so this is basically an advanced clipper so for those of you who don't know what clipping is and i was first skeptical about this plugin i'll be honest but now i've i've fallen beyond fallout love with i really like this so basically if i have like audio peaks a hard clipping would be shaving off that peak like like that so this would become this and then you would have like more headroom right and then when you have soft clipping instead of like being really hard like shaving it off it would be more like well basically what the word says like softer so that soft shape can be done with this but basically by using a good a good clipper you can get your mixes louder and it also shapes the sound a bit how you set it so what i'll do is i'll turn off my limiter and i'm going to use the limiter on the end of my mastering thing mastering chain and sometimes i use it the other way around sometimes on some mixes i done i use the limiter and then use the flat line at the end but for this song use it this way so this is the nice shape so this is heart clipping so it's like like shape like like shaving it off like no no mojo uh as i would say and this basically controls how much of soft clippings so this is full soft clipping and this is full hard clipping as you can see 100 is hard clipping zero percent the soft clipping and you can basically put it where you want so now this mix is going to be lower in volume because i turned the limiter off let's do some clipping so i use this function so it also simultaneously adjusts the output right so if we use like this i would be flipping without like adjusting the volume and then when i use this cool function it also adjusts the output simultaneously [Music] you can see over here these peaks that's where the clipping starts and this is like a good clipping and like the cool thing about it like when i put it on 75 like i'm getting it's it still sounds amazing to me and i could go like onto that's where i think it's way too much so my mix is becoming really loud it's sounding punchy but the transients are still there and that's something with most limiters like you can't really keep try putting and i know it's an older plugin but try putting like an l2 from waves on the master bus and putting it loud all your trenches will be lost but with this all like the information is still there and that's so amazing about this plugin in my opinion and most of the time i'm aiming for like a minus six loves so let's turn the shape all the way down so you can really hear the difference so this is soft clipping you can hear some trenchers are getting more lost it's sounding more softer so the the shaving is a bit more i would say like well softer that's the only word that comes to my head still sounds good though and let's see what it does when i turn up the shape knob when we compare okay let's put it around 80 and now i'll use the limiter just so it keeps like the final stuff in [Music] check all right and that's basically how i did it on this album again i wish i really wish i had the flatline plug-in back then so i could master um so i could use it on them so i could use it when i was mastering a new oblivion but i have it now and i like how it sounds on my master so uh this is never gonna go away also the cool thing about it is you have the over sampling function but like you like you heard like you heard like when i was using the shape tool it sounds phenomenal but that's that's my opinion but hopefully you uh you agree with me all right so that's basically it hopefully you learned something today if you like this video give me a thumbs up hit subscribe button and leave a comment down below so we can talk about mastering and i'll try to answer all of your questions my name is mendel and see you next time guys cheers hey you

Channel: Mendel bij de Leij

Views: 15,710

Keywords: Mastering, Mastering Metal, How To Master Metal, Metal Mastering, Metal Mixing, Mixing and Mastering Metal, Metal Audio, Metal Cubase, Mendel, Mendel bij de Leij, Audio Mastering, Mastering Engineer, Metal Audio Mastering, How do i master metal music, How do i master rock, How to master Music, How to master metal, Mastering Deathcore, Mastering prog, Prog metal, Mastering prog rock, Mastering djent

Id: POC1A6xwsvY

Length: 26min 28sec (1588 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 13 2021