Audio Recording Tips

I would like to share some of the rare tips engineer does when doing mastering at home. As we all know that “mastering” is the process of crafting the completed mix into a professional -commercial ready sound with its required loudness, punch, EQ, space and clarity. Mastering can be broken into the following general steps:

Step 1. Signal conditioning- removing of long silence before and after mix down. Also removing noise can be done in this step.
Step 2. EQ using parametric equalizer – purpose is to shape the sound to a certain standard, depending on your genre.
Step 3. Compression – purpose to make the audio wave as loud as possible without distortion.

If you are doing home mastering particularly if you are using a digital audio software (like Adobe Audition, Cubase, Protools), things can be a quite difficult and complicated. It is because it differs a lot from real professional mastering where things can be adjusted in real time using a console. Aside from having an incomplete set of equipments, acoustics, and gears which is common in home studio recording. It is very easy to get lost when doing mastering. This is particularly true when you are testing different settings of EQ and compression to get the “best sound”. Mastering is more of less like a “home audio experiment”, finding out the best settings for EQ and compression that will give the best results WITHOUT sacrificing the quality of the mix.

One of the tips I usually perform is doing “screen shot” of the settings, I mean an image screen shot of the settings. The purpose of this screenshot is to SAVE the settings visually instead of memorizing or writing it which could take time and you can easily forget. In a mastering process using screenshot, it can be implemented by following the steps below:

1. Just BEFORE you click “OK” in your Digital Audio software to implement any audio settings like EQ. Press the “Print screen” button in your keyboard. See below (inside red box):

2. Open your favorite image editor. I recommend Irfanview as it is free, light and easy to use. You can download it here.

3. Using irfanview, go to EDIT and click PASTE.
4. The screenshot will then be shown in the irfanview. The screenshot should clearly see the settings you have just made. You can even crop it or cut it depending on your taste. See example below that I have done:

5. Now that you have made the screenshot, save it to your desktop in a filename that can easily track your work. For example, I save it as FIRST EQ.jpg, to reflect my first batch of settings I have made on a parametric equalizer.

6. You can click OK on the parametric Equalizer to let your audio software implement the settings on the audio wave.
7. Now that you done with EQ, you can repeat the above procedure with your Compressor settings.
8. When everything has been completed (EQ and Compression adjustments) Listen to your mastered track and do take note carefully if you get the sound you want. You can even compare to professional released recordings at the comparable sound level to see if it pass a certain level of quality.
9. If you find the sound of the resulting adjustment to be unsatisfactory, you can open your screenshot again (FIRST EQ.jpg or FIRST COMPRESS.jpg) and see how many dB adjustments you need to make. If it seems that the sound has too much bass, I could reduce the current settings (see screenshot above) of 80Hz, 0.5 Q from 3dB to around 1dB. Then take screenshot again and listen. Repeat this process until you have perfected your audio.

Note: Remember to make a backup of your original mix down so that it wont get destroyed during audio EQ and compression adjustments.