Audio Recording Tips

Welcome to the digital age, with all audio equipments, software’s and gears available for personal computer; any recording enthusiasts might be able to do digital audio cd mastering work at home. Mastering stage is the last stage of the music production process. The input is the completed audio mix down done by the mixing engineer and the output is the commercial (broadcast) quality version of the song, ready for marketing and album/single release.

A good hardware requirement are near field speakers such as M-Audio Studiophile AV 40 Powered Speakers. If you do not have one , you will have a hard time doing audio mastering work.

Below are the tips and procedures that will provide you a good head start in doing this type of post-production work (this is by no means a complete guide; your day to day experience will even teach you better):

Step 1: Make sure you have a clean mix down in WAV format. This is suggested, at least you have 44.1 16 bit CD resolution where you need to work. The best (depending on your computer sound card), will be higher resolution such as 44.1 Khz 32-bit or even 96 kHz 24 bit. It depends on your mix down quality so make sure the one you have should be best version possible.

Do not master MP3, instead contact the mixing engineer to do a WAV mixdown using the above suggested resolution.

Another good thing to check if you have a clean mixdown is that the peak signals of the wave should not exceed -3dB to -1dB. This will provide some headroom or space for mastering work where you are compressing and boosting a lot of things.

Below is the screen shot of the sample audio wave after mixdown and before mastering stage:

Step 2: Start talking with the recording producers, artist or any A&R involved in the project. Ask them for their inputs as to how the complete version should sound like. Be ready to research CD’s of their reference artist. This is particularly important for commercial releases where the complete version needs to be consistent also with the targeted genre (rock, jazz or country). Write it down.

Step 3: Make a backup of the mix down, store it in your external hard drive. And load one to your digital audio workstation personal computer. Using your favourite audio software with audio editing capabilities, EQ effects, compression is enough for you to do mastering work.

A good software to use is Adobe Audition for Windows and Pro Tools for Mac. Another good software includes Cubase, Sonar, and Audacity for free audio recording software.

When it is loaded to your audio editing software it should look like the one in the above screenshot.

Step 4: Start with removing noise in the audio start and end only (silence section only not the entire audio mixdown wave). If possible cut it down to have a 0.5 seconds silence before the audio wave starts. If you are using Adobe audition, you can apply techniques discussed here: http://www.audiorecording.me/remove-noise-in-recordings-using-4-easy-steps.html . The same principle applies with any recording software.

Step 5: Start with applying “presence”. A good 1 dB boost (entire wave applied) at 2Khz using a Q of 0.5 is enough. Do not apply too much, it may sound “horn-like”. Presence makes it possible to have a clear vocals and instruments in poor hi fi systems (or AM radio) or in too bassy systems common in most audio listening environments.

Step 6. Apply high pass filter at 20 Hz. This will remove the rubble. This will attenuate starting 50 Hz all way down but passes above it. This will prevent mud in bass systems and focus energy to useful frequencies. However bear in mind that 50Hz is a very important sub woofer frequency for rock and pop music, you should not cut it drastically.

Step 7. Tailor the audio sound to something you like. Use parametric equalizer. Things like boosting at 80Hz for kick clarity, cutting at 200Hz for mud removal and applying boost at 15Khz is done in this stage. Again experiment and do not boost more than 3 dB in any channel or use Q less than 0.8 (recommended is 1).

Step 8. Use your compressor to maximize volume. It should average -13dB to -12 dB rms after compression. Compare it with your reference audio. Is it too loud? Or too soft. Make some adjustments if necessary. Do not over compress. Your hearing ability and skill to distinguish what sounds good and bad is extremely important in your mastering process (this needs practice and may develop after many months and years of doing production work).You can read some useful tips here: http://www.audiorecording.me/tips-when-doing-home-audio-mastering-doing-setting-screenshot.html .

Step 9. Let your critics listen to your completed work (recording producers, artists etc) and ask them if they are happy with the results. Good luck.