 All right. Good afternoon and welcome to studio sessions with the New York chapter of the recording Academy. My name is share again and I'm with the New York City Mayor's Office of media and entertainment. The city agency that supports all the creative industries that define New York industries that represent 500,000 jobs and 150 billion in economic activity. I'm excited about today's mastering classes. These will be happening every June and Wednesday as part of New York Music Month, which is another initiative of our office again the mayor's office of media and entertainment. In person and virtual events happening all month. I'm going to put the link to our website in the chat so you can check it out. And without further ado, I'm going to hand it off to Maria and Jeff to talk to us about demystifying the mastering process. Hello. Good morning, or I guess it's lunchtime for most of the world on the East Coast. So, hi everybody. I'm Maria rice. I am a mastering engineer at peerless mastering. It's actually located in Boston, Massachusetts. And Jeff and I are both members of the recording Academy in New York chapter. So, I guess, Jeff, why don't you introduce yourself really quickly and then we can keep going. My name is Jeff looked in. I founded peerless mastering in 1994. And Maria and I run this place together. Yep. So, we've been members of the recording Academy for, I don't know, almost a decade or so. I'm also a governor of in the New York chapter and I have, I guess, you know, this kind of, you know, it's kind of the standard thing to everybody say what are what are their awards, Jeff, how many Grammy nominations do you have for Grammy nominations. I have three for best historical album. So, I'm thinking, Jeff, why don't you talk about how you started and into in this mastering business and FYI I'm going to be asking questions as if I don't know anything about mastering so Well, I started, I started mastering before I actually knew what mastering was I used to go to concerts in the 80s and I would record to cassette tapes live to live to two track cassettes. And I bring these recordings home and they sounded terrible and I would, I would use some equal EQ on them to try to make them sound better. So, I started that turned into something where I bought. I bought an early dog called sound designer to which was a four track dog that eventually the code eventually made it into pro tools. And I used to use that I used to record concerts to that and then sort of master them and in sound designer to and give them back to the band. And one band was so impressed one guy. His name was Robert Fisher he handed me four doubts one day at a show and he said master these and these were two albums that he recorded at professional studios in Boston. Nice. How long did it take you to record those your first like professional project to do my first mastering job I spent six months on it working about 20 hours a day. Yeah, that's really, you know, that's not extreme at all. No, I never do anything extreme. Oh, and, and to that point, just FYI Jeff is sitting in our lounge right now, the Christmas lights behind us. Normally we would be in the studio but we have text tuning the mastering room today so and I am in the B room which is our second room, which is where we've done a lot of our analog restorations for these historical projects. I'm actually, you know, I'm actually surrounded by source material right now. It comes in any format from like 45 to that, as Jeff mentioned. Also, like some of our most well known box sets have been mastered from cassette tape sources. And Jeff, like, what is what do you think about the process of pulling all these different, you know, all this different formats together. And how do you make them sound or how do we make them sound like a cohesive record. Well, it's super fun because if you have source tapes that vary as much as like cassette tapes which sound really bad and don't have a very good frequency range to real to real tape which sounds usually sounds amazing. It's really fun to try to make something that sounds really bad sound sound on par with something that is professionally or really well done. Or just make them work so that when you're listening the changes and as huge as it as it would be without mastering. Right. And I know for my part, I do a lot of digital restoration for these historical formats and just pulling out, you know, some, you know, tape noise and record noise and and, you know, not completely removing like sort of the layers of history but you know also just making it clear for the listener and hopefully making that recordings shine as they did originally. But let's talk about just like not historical recordings. When somebody asked when someone calls and says what is mastery and what do you, what do you tell them. Mastering is the final creative phase of the music recording process. It's the last chance you have to make your song sound as good as they possibly can. It's also the first time, usually when engineer when an engineer is thinking about the album as a cohesive piece of art. The job is to put the songs together and make them work together cohesively as a as a single album. And yeah, we so we basically are the last people that shape, shape the sound in the process. Yeah, so. So basically what what's the deliverable at the end of this process. What do we give back to the client. It depends now it is some clients want different formats. Normally clients end up with high resolution wave files or MCD resolution wave files are the typical deliverables, but we also sometimes have to create we also sometimes create 48k sample rate masters for video and for mastering and at most it's a dot ADM BWS file. Nice. So what should, what should someone expect from mastery and they have this mix and they've been listening to it. What are they expecting to change, if anything. It depends on what the depends on what the source material sounds like. I mean, if it's a, if it's a amazing mix done by, you know, a masterful mix engineer like say Bob Clear Mountain or Michael Brower. You almost do nothing to it, you just, you do the absolute minimum, in every case you do the absolute minimum you have to do to any mix to make it sound the best it can, because any change you make in mastering has the intended effect and it has unintended effects because we're not working with individual tracks or working with just the left and the right channel for mastering and stereo and any change you make in any frequency range will affect the instrument you're trying to affect as well as anything else that happens to me in that frequency range. So like how would how would somebody know that their mix is is ready for mastering. Um, the thing I would say is if you're happy with your mix if you like listening to your mix on different, you've listened to your mix on different stereos you, you've put time into where the to having the space and clarity that you like in your mix. That's a good place to start. Also, we always, we always offer free mix critiques before mastering if someone wants that if they're unsure about whether the mix is ready for mastering. And that's a pretty helpful. That's a pretty helpful way to go about the process. Yeah, what else like, I guess, I mean, we do. Do we ever like reject mixes at that point, you know, I mean, I have, I've rejected mixes before or a vast artists I say, Are you sure you want to go forward with these mixes. If you and give them a list of changes they could make that would make the projects better. If they leave it up to the artist if they want to make those changes or if they, you know, it's obviously their creative decision. I'll work with whatever, whatever they send me. But you know, if I if I come back with feedback saying these mixes will never sound that great. And but if you make these few changes, they could sound really wonderful in the mastering process, and they say no I don't want to make those changes. I don't want to work with what they send us. What are you what are you listening for. What am I listening for. Um, one listening for mixes that are already really slammed and very compressed and very loud, typically don't sound as clear as mixes that are not very not limited very much and digital distortion. I mean, a lot of times the biggest problems I hear in mixes people send me as you can hear digital distortion and clipping from either tracking or in the mix process. A lot of times people aren't checking to make sure that plugins aren't clipping it while they're using them. And they're putting something on the master bus that hides the clipping that's occurring in the mix bus. Yeah, so I mean, how will making making the music loud kind of affect its quality. Well, um, you know, I mean a lot, a lot of times in mastering we're asked to make things loud ourselves. But we've really, we've really refined that practice a lot. I mean, people that are doing people that are not are new to doing that themselves typically are using a game structure that does that's not very good that usually causes digital this just digital distortion. And once you have digital distortion introduced, there's no easy way to get rid of it. I mean, if anyone can get rid of it, you can Maria but it's, it's better to start with a product that doesn't have as many defects to begin with. Right. Yeah, it all starts at the source. Yes. So I thinking let's like go through like the process of mastering. I would think the first thing would be, I guess the mix, mix critique. But then also, you know, I guess feedback and communication with the client about the vision. I usually do a video call with every client before we start working together to just discuss their sonic goals and discuss what they're hoping to accomplish and talk about what can be accomplished. And that's really, it's really helpful. I usually end up taking a page or two of notes, talking to every client and, you know, just just knowing their personalities and hearing the things that they respond to typically affects the way I work. And we'll affect their end product because I want to make it as personalized as possible for every client. That sounds good. So I guess most people kind of want to know what is, what are the processes and later, I think when Jaylin comes on, I'll, you know, demonstrate these more, you know, more viscerally, but Jeff like what's your process. What are you focusing on? Okay, well, the first thing I do when I get a new project is I listen to it from start to finish. And while I'm, while I'm doing it, I'm either making actual notes or mental notes of what's, of what some, what's what should be the same between songs and isn't what is the same with songs and that should be and what the differences between songs are because part of mastering is if, if say the bass and one song should sound similar to the bass and the next song like the way it's played, we'd want to make it, we'd want to make that even. But say one song is, you know, just has an acoustic guitar and then the next song has a ton of like actual bass or electronic bass. And basically the differences between those should be kept and you know, we're not going to try to add bass to a song that doesn't really have bass or, you know, something like that. We, you want to maintain the integrity of the, you know, the artists of what the artists is going for. And, and thinking about what they're going for when listening through everything is a huge part of the process. Okay, so breaking it down, I think in chunks would probably be helpful for some people. So, as far as, you know, what is our, what is the chain generally look like, or at least the one you're using, which I normally use, but everyone has a different process but let's hear your process. Well, I mean, okay, so after listening to after listening through the album and coming up with I choose a song that's representative of there is such a song. And I usually start working on that one song. And I have a vision in my head for where the project, what the project should sound like what the song should sound like. And so I I typically the first thing I typically do is, is run it through some analog cues and and and adjust based on what I was hearing a typical mastering adjustment is between point one and one DB and even one DB isn't this isn't always that common like mastering just a little bit goes a long way. And so, once I start just like fine tuning the song, I'll start playing with different if there's if compression is needed, whatever compressions needed and whatever limiting is starting whatever limiting the song responds well to. Nice. So it's a lot of accumulated small changes. Really, yes, it's a lot of small changes and then when I'm once I've gotten into the song I typically start removing things from the chain to double check that they're absolutely needed in the chain. And I'm constantly adding and then removing and then, or making a big change and then lowering it down like, I'll make like a 1.5 DB change and lower it down to one DB or half DB to see if that sounds better, or out, if that sounds better. It's just a constant going through in second guessing everything I do constantly. Right. So yeah, I mean less is definitely more like if it's not broke. Don't fix it. Exactly. Yeah. And if I can't decide if something sounds better in or out it's always out. Right. If somebody wanted to understand what exactly is happening when compression member applying compression like how do you normally explain that. Well the way I explain I don't know if it's awesome but you know, basically compression is on once the once the attack time is is reached the compressor pushes down the wave form until the release time comes up. I mean, okay. So basically, you have a wave that goes like this, you can, you can make the wave smaller you push the wave, you can push the wave. Okay. Yeah. Okay. That's that's very, yeah. I mean, that's like, yeah, data oriented way to describe. Yeah, I mean, like, I have to describe it a lot to like people like my parents and I've never described it in a way they can understand. Yeah. I mean, yeah, basically like, yeah, I think more visually or I guess more. I'm like feeling it I guess and compression is, you know, well, ideally, sometimes you take sort of the quieter parts and bring them up. Or, you know, if you might have some, it's basically about in mass at the mastering stage, it's about sort of gaining some presence and, and, and I guess, getting the level that we want with the amount of headroom that we have, because we are limited by, by digital audio. And so that means things like, you know, a lot of sub base, a lot of, you know, 30 Hertz kind of stuff that could take up a lot of space and, and, and make it hard for, you know, people to get their music to a more, I guess, commercial volume. But also, you know, it's also used as sort of a glue, right. Compressors can be sort of an instrument. At the mastering stage, you try not to be so heavy handed at that point, but it does, it can be very musical. What's what people using in mixing, like, or, you know, on a single track, like, they would say two to one compression is, is pretty light, you know, some people are using, you know, three to one five to one, you know, compression and mastering you typically, you're often using, like, say 1.2 to one or 1.5 to one ratios, and they will have a big effect because they're affecting every single thing in the mix. And in mastering, you really try to be just try not to be very heavy handed. What's your opinion of multi band compression. Multi band compression is a is a valuable tool when something I think is is pretty broken. If you get a, well, if you're restoring a mix off of a cassette tape. And the cassette, and the cassette tape is just the frequency range is very limited and there's spiky things happening, multi band compression would be a really good way to bring it in line and make it sound more par with the professional mix or the sounding mixes that we're matching to an album where it's mostly recorded well and then there's some bonus tracks that come off cassettes. I think multi band compression is really good when something is broken and needs to be fixed. But when it comes to something that sounds that comes in sounding really good, I think it's too destructive. And will not yield the will will change the mix too much in ways that will destroy the integrity of what the engineer, the mix engineer accomplished. Yeah, so basically more of a remedial tool. Yeah, I found, yeah, I found that yeah, sometimes it can sound really good than the moment and then later, you're like wait what happened to that snare, what happened to that. Yeah, attack on that pie hat. Um, so I think maybe people will probably want to see what the studio looks like. I think I'll share some pictures as we wait for Jaylin to come online. And then I'm going to share, we're going to do some critical listening of his mix and the master I did of it. Last night, two in the morning. That's how it goes around here. And, and I'll show you, you know, exactly what I used. Most of it was outboard gear. So again, it will be a story in pictures. But yeah, let's see. I am going to just share some pictures of the studio because we cannot be in the studio at this time. Well, I'm in. Let's see. All right. Well, here's a quick video of when I was recording files last night. Which is my attempt at a cinematic sweep. Thanks, Jeff. So that is basically my world as of last night. And I was working on the mix that we'll be hearing today. So as you can kind of see, it's it's kind of the a room is kind of akin to the bridge of a spaceship. So on the left, we have several banks of dynamics processors compressors. A lot of most of them are used in parallel, which means we we kind of mix and sprinkle a little bit from each unit to create the right blend that is the least intrusive or damaging to the music really depends on the program material. And as Jeff said, like a lot of times, you know, if we can bypass it, we bypass it. The goal is not to radically change, you know, what's been presented to us. So yeah, yeah. And then on the on the right side, this is our banks of EQs. We have some analog and digital ones. I think my favorite one is is the Weiss EQ one. It's really surgical. You can also use it in midside mode, but lately I have not really been using it that mode. Again, trying to be as unobtrusive as possible. Down at the bottom we have our summit one, a couple of our converters analog to digital digital analog converters. The gold one on the right is the lavary gold. And it's also connected to antelope isochrome atomic clock, which keeps time digital time for the whole studio so things don't get out of sync. It's kind of cool. It has a radioactive isotope in it. So that's how we keep atomic time. And actually on top is a cool on top of that on the right is is a cool piece of gear. It's kind of a it's more like an amplifier that we use for lift. It's called the Whitestone and it's it's a piece of boutique gear that was created by my friend Kim Rosen and her husband. So let's see what's atomic time. It's I guess it's just basically the most accurate way of keeping time. So when you have all of these digital signals everywhere, it's it's very you might have already experienced it in your own, you know, stuff at home. You know, it's one blip in the in the chain could, you know, create audio to get out of sync or create like very slight distortions. And that's what affects the quality. So here, you know, especially at the mastering stage, the focus is on quality here. And purity of sound. So even the power is here is, you know, highly conditioned. And, you know, the rooms are acoustically treated to the most, you know, accurate perfection. Actually, that's why I'm not in the area right now because we have acoustics and they're tuning for at most. So which is really exciting. Yeah, let's I'm still waiting for June to show up. But, you know, I see some questions in the chat. So actually, this is pretty relevant is mastering a single always necessary. Yeah, that's a good question because I know Jeff was talking about how one important thing that we do is taking a lot of disparate mixes and making them fit cohesively in a in a whole in a whole album. Right. You have some that are lighter, some darker, some that were recorded really, really loud and some, you know, that are soft and, you know, just trying to level those between. But if you have a single, actually, that's really relevant because you were you're going to hear kind of the difference. So usually when you're when you're mixing, you know, the result is not the same as what you're going to end up hearing. You know, out in the world on Spotify and Apple Music. You know, it's we still apply we still apply the the dynamics processing and some EQ tweaks to really make it translate and other and every almost every listening environment that is imaginable. So, you know, it's it's it's one thing to hear a mix like in your house and your studio or in your car. And then it's another thing to hear it in a, you know, in an acoustically treated room or a couple of rooms actually listen to them in these two different rooms and compare. So yeah. I also see a question about if a musician has hearing or auditory processing issues, should they avoid mixing master, that's actually a really good question also. Because one of the reasons why mastering exists or and why people will hire a different person to do it is for the objectivity and that is relevant, like whether you have perfect hearing or not. Everybody could always use a second here, the second or third ear on the project, especially, you know, if you were involved in writing or producing. You know, there's a lot of things that you're listening for that at the mastery stage you probably aren't listening for that. We're paying attention to, you know, I'll notice clients will be, you know, paying more attention to like musical aspects of. Or songwriting or just all these or like whatever, whatever food they were eating when they were recording this piano part. And at this point, we're listening for consistency, we're listening for the tone, we're listening for the dynamic range and anything that upsets the balance. Oh, hey, it's Jaylin. But to close that point, I feel like you probably, if I think, don't quote me on this, everyone hears a little bit differently. And, you know, the human brain is really, is really impressive and what it can do to compensate. But if you're mixing and and or mastering and you have, you know, hearing issues, it's definitely it's it's definitely key to to, you know, bring your mix to people that you can trust. And, you know, and maybe have some some meters you can rely on, but don't rely on the meters too much. So hey Jaylin, how are you going? It's going pretty good. How are you? How are you doing? I'm like, I'm doing the thing. So are you ready to hear this? Are you ready to hear this this this work? It did last night. Let's get this work. I got the text at 5am. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm going to share so I'm going to share a couple other things real quick. So I just showed them a little video of the studio and what was what was going on. I guess I have to share the desktop, which is really annoying, but so I will just show. Can everyone see this picture of the doll? This is Sadie that we're working in. So this is basically what I was looking at when I was working on this project. This is the original mix and then a channel where all the where we record. And then underneath the yellow waveforms are different clips of other songs that I was kind of using for reference. And references are important, especially if you don't have if you're using headphones or if you're not mixing in a room that's consistent that you that you know very well. The reference is what keeps me lets you know like what ballpark are we in. So these songs underneath were already mastered elsewhere and it just is not that I was matching them, but it was more to snow and is this where am I in this. Is it ladder softer brighter warmer. All right. All right. Here's the moment you've all been waiting for. Also, I haven't listened to this since last night at five in the morning. All right. Should we listen to the original mix first yeah let's do that. So, Jalen you want to say anything you have any words about your process or, you know, about the about the artist and his vision. Sure. In this case I both produced and mixed the song. So, Rodney and I were working on this originally over quarantine so there were some sessions that were done asynchronously. Rodney's image is very like, whatever I'm producing and mixing for an artist I like to get a feel for what their vision is like, is that the classic five wise question where you ask why this then why that. That was probably the actual goal. And with Rodney the thing that his true why was that he wanted to make something that sounded distinct, and also very shiny, if that made sense. So that was where all the mixing and production decisions went things that were brash and shiny but also still had that also still had kind of a bit of a conventional appeal to so that's all from me. Yeah, yeah, when you told me the part about shiny I was I was mulling it over last night I'm like what does he mean by shiny. I'm thinking maybe kind of bright or maybe in your face. What other words do you have for shiny. No, the reason it's so general is because really like chrome is not a color. It's like a quality so yeah things that are that have some sort of polish whether it's if it if it's in a direction. It commits to that direction to the point where it's like it sounds polished. Shiny just because all the imagery actually is physically shiny. So, I actually think that's great. That's a really when you said shiny that was that was all those other words you said afterwards were kind of the impression that I had as well. And you know as we were talking about earlier with Jeff like having like this talk is like crucial in the mastering process because otherwise it could go off and I could have made it in a non shiny direction it could have gone really grimy with it. All right, I'm going to play this. I'm going to play like pieces of it just to save time. And let me know if you can't hear anything. That is all my negligee. You bitch is so late. Your new name yesterday push my buttons. Yeah, right there. That's how I activate aggravate step on your neck and I'll snap your vertebrae on delay. You niggas is lagging. You really on delay. First things first, I'll put you in the hearse if I reach in my purse. Make a nigga burst if I pull up my skirt. He just want to come taste it. Got a bad bitch in ATL like skin, red bone. She look like no, no. Hit you in the back with a bat. Look at that. Oops, I made a bull. Good fella, bring your umbrella. Make it rain down. Bang, tell up, pull up all the chatter that you chained sound. Work better when you under pressure. Make them go wild. It's my money and I need it now. Good fella, bring your umbrella. Okay, so that was the unmasked mix. It already sounds great. Jaylin, I remember you saying that there was that, you know, sort of the hi hat ticking percussive sound was, was the piece that was the piece that needed to remain intact, basically. So yeah, a lot of times when I'm mastering, I like to think of something usually like the snare as like an anchor. So when you start changing things with dynamics processing and even an EQ, you know, it's also kind of a barometer of like, okay, how, how much is this being affected? How much squish is happening? All right. I was just going to switch over to, so I, I bounced two versions. One was a little more reserved. The other one is a little more like I went for it. So let's go with that one, the shiny one. Here we go. Okay, so just to AB. I knew I was going to do that. This is the mix. That's it. Okay. I'm going to put you on the spot here, Jaylin, like, what's, what, what changed for you? The volume. Yeah, I should probably volume match, but yes, go ahead. Yeah, I was going to say the big issue I had with my own mix was, and this is where, you know, when you're mixing for an artist, you are at the mercy of the client. Rodney really liked that high hat, really high. I have tinnitus. So that was bothering me the whole time. So matching the levels to meet that, that high hat was a big priority for me just from my own listening and it was met. So that was the first thing I heard. I was like, ah, everything is glued together and not just so nice. So, and then it's also like, it leads into that, it leads into that direction where it's just like in your face is just like, has that spit shine polish. Yeah. Um, I was going to say thanks, but this isn't about me. So yeah, that glue came from, you know, some dynamics processing. I am, you know, just to illustrate, I have two versions that were also captured at some different points in the mastering chain. So I actually haven't heard any of these before the thing, but so this version I'm playing right now, audio five is pre upward compression. So this would be the quietest version. So this would basically only be EQ changes for hearing in theory. I reach in my purse. Make a nigga burst. If I pull up my skirt, he just want to come taste it. Got a bad bitch in ATL. Lights can't red bone. She look like no, no. Hit you in the back with a bat. Look at that. So it's a little, um, it's a little tricky to listen to because, you know, I actually turned your mix down a little bit first before beginning work, just so I had more more room to to perform these crazy stuff. So I'm going to share. I have to share. I hate that I have to share my desktop to show you pictures, but oh, here we go. Here's one piece of the process. This is the floor mentioned Whitestone and our and our atomic clock. EQ wise. These are the exact settings actually that were used. I just took them while I was bouncing last night. So at the top of Analogy Q by GML. As Jeff mentioned before, we rarely make changes bigger than a DB. It's but you see there's like an accumulated effect of all these different, all these different changes. We have, you know, a little bump around like 50 Hertz at the low end. I added, actually, it's a little darker than what was submitted. I added more warmth, more stuff in the lower mid range can see around 270. I don't want to bore people with numbers. And also, you'll see an interspersed a lot of bumps around 2K 25 Hertz to 2,500 Hertz. And that is to bring out some presence in the vocal. But obviously, we don't want it to be shrill. And that's where that's the line that gets gets walked. I also add a, you know, bit of air around like 20 Hertz. You'll see that in the YCQ. I basically just devoted this to sort of a surgical base bump. So, you probably know about the whole thing with the harmonic series, right? And so, you know, so a lot of the base material was coming in around like, I know I want to wrap this up so we can do more Q&A, but like coming in around like 30 Hertz and that was, you know, it's kind of a range that most humans are not going to hear, or especially if they're listening on, you know, and AirPods and whatnot. So it really takes up a lot of headroom and makes it so it's difficult to manipulate the volume for more presence. So I did reduce around that big frequency around 34, but because harmonic series, I bumped it around, I doubled it, bumped it around 69, and then another bump at 138. And then I started, and so like in theory, I did that and it sounded fine. And then I just started using my ears and it sounded better. Yeah, let's listen to, this is the return analog version. This is everything. This is pretty much all of the treatment before it hits the plugins, which So what we're listening for here is like, again, more presence in the vocal, a little more bump in the base, but the tone is a little different. So, yeah, and then we apply the finishing touches, which is making it loud. So yeah, I think it's time to take some questions. Yeah. Hmm, let's see. So Finn wants to know if an artist sends a mix for critique. Are they committing to getting it mastered? It's going to depend on the studio. But just being Frank, you know, most engineers are probably going to, you know, prioritize critiquing your mix. If it's something that they're going to work on, but they're not not committing. Also, you can submit a mix and then get feedback on it and then be like, All right, cool, I'll come back. I'll do, you know, next year whenever it's ready. So again, all power to the client there. So as a mastering beginner, what are the most important things to know? Hmm. And then I want you to chime in with me too, because you kind of have, you went to school. I will say for my part, it has to be to, it's the critical listening is really the big part. You know, everyone kind of starts with being like, Oh, you know, how do I like what settings do you use like what's the best gear, what are the best plugins. And that's all well and good. Oh, by the way, these, can you see this? This plug in stripes on my screen stripes. Yeah. Okay. I was sharing my, my screenshot of the plugins. But yeah, so here it is. No, that's not it. Here it is. You know, yeah, we do everything. It goes outboard. We have this analog chain, but like, don't tell Jeff I showed you, but yes, we do use ozone stuff. But the thing with this and it's also why it takes, it took hours to master one song is that, especially with the isotope things, you can make a lot of changes that you didn't intend in a lot of different effects, which is also why, you know, it's so important to AB and go back and forth and leave the room and listen to some other music and come back and then be like, okay, that just so, you know, when I use it, it's, it's generally very sparing, but this does add some of that glue at the end. My process was to get everything as close to how I wanted it out before it hit the plugins. And this, these, this process, you know, plugins are great after at this stage because if I tried attempted to do a lot of this gluing stuff out, outboard or getting that volume, it probably might have, it would have created like distortion or those kinds of things. So these are like, these are the compromises and balances we make. So I mean, I guess the most important things for me if you're if you're starting out is learn to listen critical listening and just understand the concept of balance because it's basically all it is, is balance and where, what is the aesthetic, you know, what is the music trying to tell you, it wants to sound like if I can jump in also learn your tools, that makes sense like don't stick to don't run out and get a bunch of things, whatever your stock EQs whatever your stock compressor is, learn how that works what that does the analogy that was given to me when I started school, going to NYU was imagine you have a toolbox and you need to build it and you need to build a table. You're going to immediately reach for the power drill if you don't already have a power drill or are you going to go reach for a hammer screwdriver and some nails. You need that table done as soon as possible so figure out how to use those tools you have and then get to the results you need and then further on be like oh you know what would have been really easy if I had a power drill to do that part that I was doing by hand. Yeah, it's, that's a good, I never thought about the power drill analogy. So an anonymous attendee wants to know if someone is an acoustic singer or a songwriter recording on a program such as GarageBand but wants to have their music played on the radio how do they know what to do to master in a way that would be acceptable to radio ready production can built in mastering programs do the job as opposed to professional mastering company. Well, you already know what my answer is going to be. Yeah, so I actually, if we, if this was like a two hour or three hour session, we were going to do an experiment where I actually mastered the same track in logic using native plugins. I actually used to teach a point blank music school and I've done some other mastering workshops and basically you know the standard in school is just so it's democratic is that everyone has to use native plugins the same DAW that is very accessible such as logic or Ableton. And, you know what, you get really good results, it's really about the listening and you know you probably, I would say the best piece of gear to invest in would be your, your headphones. If you're, if you're gonna, if you're going bare bones, would you agree. Yeah. Is that basically what you work on or do you have like monitors in your place. I do. I have, you know, rocket fives, right, the, the EDM standard, as I've heard it called, those lovely yellow cones. But yeah, I switch between, I think there's another question that's something like, how do you check that your mix sounds the same in headphones and speakers. The standard that I learned was that speakers are better at reproducing mid and high end and headphones low and mid and low and mid range frequencies. So when I'm mixing I actually have a, I actually have, I'm using Ableton for most of my stuff now. I have a little Ableton rack that is just the mid range and it's monoed. And for a large period of time, I'll just be inside of that mono only mid range mix. And then towards the end, all right now expand and see what I have, I'm not able to see 250 hertz and below and then what I am able to see, or what I'm what I haven't been able to see 10k hertz and above. And then you find that the amount of edits you do lowers dramatically. That's a cool way of breaking it down. Yeah, I also found one cool thing about, you know, a lot of plugins, like the FAB filter and isotope stuff is that you can sort of solo the things that are being affected, which was not a thing you could do with, you know, a $30,000 compressor. Go figure. Someone did have a question is, is this stuff really expensive. Yes. So the software that we're using is, and everybody is different. Sadi, which is a pretty company out of the UK. And it kind of comes with its own computer unit and all this other stuff. It's, again, that's kind of like 30,000 just for our restoration plugins, which which we use to take out, you know, it's kind of the top standard taking out devices and stuff like that. But other people use different does people use, I don't know, Reaper, use logic, as I said, all kinds of things. And each piece of gear is pretty pricey. Probably. Yeah, everything's, you know, between between six and 6,000 is like the cheapest thing 30 goes up for like our converters and that sort of thing. But yeah, it's, it's, it's really about quality quality of sound. And if that if you can achieve that with whatever you have, then that's that's what matters. You know, at the end of the day, it's like what's coming out of the speakers, what are people hearing when they, you know, open Apple music, right. So yeah, yeah, yeah. Shout out to Reaper. All right, cool. So Finn also wants to know what to look for when choosing a mixing mastering engineer. First of all, let's not have mixing and mastering be the same person. Right. So, I mean, Janet, what if you mastered this thing by yourself? I don't know. I don't think it would have gone as well. I honestly, I can like, I think of music in the whole recording process, kind of like a basketball team, where it's like, I think of the producers like a point guard is like the smallest guy who kind of has to run around and run the offense. Pardon. I'm sorry for all the people who don't watch basketball here. No Celtics. Sorry. Ah, I'm a Warriors fan. You know this. No. I actually, I'm a Warriors fan. Why? I'm sorry. I'm indoctrinated. I'm in Boston. I actually, yeah, honestly could care less. Anyway, continue. But yeah, so I think of the mixing engineer kind of like as a shooting guard who's like a defensive person and can, you know, stop all the bad things from happening. And then a mastering engineer is like a center who, you know, they're the unsung hero. Ideally, if your team is good, you don't have one person trying to play three positions, maybe two. But ideally, you want one person in one seat doing one job because they can then dedicate all their time, effort, and energy to that one. And if you're on a budget, the two that I personally combine is producer and mixer. That's what Roddy did with me. And then, but I don't recommend mastering and mixing, or also artist and producer if you're an artist, and then mixer and master engineer. Yeah. I myself have committed the hubris of mixing and mastering the same thing. And even, you know, I thought I could overcome like the sage advice that I've been giving everyone. But no, no, it sounded like crap. It was terrible mixing wise. And then, and then also like there was a, I was blurring the boundaries between, you know, what is like, here's something in the mastering stage. And then be like, Oh, I'll go back and fix up in the mix. And then it just becomes this big blob. If I may give a tip, there's been a situation where I've had to song write, produce, mix and master a song. And the way that I handled it was at every stage bounced out the stems and changed the color of my doll. Because then I was in a different, a different session. And, you know, when you're on a budget or when you're working and you're just one or two people, you do what you have to do. So, you know. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it does come down to like you do what you have to do kind of mentality, you know, like see here at peerless. This kind of represents the kind of the highest standard of what you can do. But, you know, again, like I said, I taught mastering and using logic and, you know, isotope plugins and, and also I love electronic music. And you know, that's just kind of how we roll, you know, it's really it's it's it's a different mentality. So let's see. Yeah, it seems like a lot of you guys are DIY peeps. Love it. Yeah. Like, yeah, if you heard me working on music in my my bedroom, it's like, actually, I would just be embarrassed. What's the difference? Yeah, producing and mixing. I think Jaylin, I want you to take this one too because yeah, yeah, you have to wear both of those hats. Yeah, again, with that with that basketball analogy. Sorry for everybody. But the producer is basically the producer basically runs the offense. So it's like a coach, effectively. So you're in charge of the executive decisions that are happening aside from the artist. So with the producers hat on, you could be producing a you could be producing by making a beat, you could be sitting in the room telling somebody who is playing the drums. Hey, if you're telling them, hey, if you can you try playing with your heel down a set of up on the kick drum this take. So you're really the basically a creative director of the song and then mixing is more actually executing the steps for a like, basically from balancing the queuing compressing basically getting the song sounding to position where it can be mastered, which is the final product. So totally different, totally different role. Yeah, and then I would say like the mastering, you know, so mixing is all about balance, of course, and then the mastering kind of like takes it to like a more finer tuned dimension. And really kind of all it's all kind of the same, we all have the same goal, but we're kind of working at different resolutions, like was like micro macro sort of mentality. So, I guess so if you have like a one album, like a concept album with wildly different styles in the songs. What's the main thing that should stay the same across all the tracks. It's going to differ for everybody and it's also going to depend on the kind of music but for us for me, we usually try to keep. We like to try to match the vocal levels between the songs. So, you know what's telling the story here. If it's a song with a lot of if it's a vocal album. Well, clearly the vocal is telling the story. If it was, you know, if it was electronic music, or dance music, you know, you know, I would, you know, you focus on the groove like that's telling the story so then that's what we want to sort of work together. Jaylin, good starter headphones. I started producing an age 10. I scoured money from when I was like doing day labor jobs at Home Depot to go and buy my first skull candy earbuds. So, I'm dead serious skull candy whatever you can get your hands on is what you should start with. I think that that teaches you a lot of things, honestly. I don't know, like, when people say starter headphones. There's like an implication because you know, I think that starter kind of implies that it's not like a professional product, you can use whatever headphones you really need to. I know this the old the this is like an old analogy but Skrillex's scary monster Nice Brights was mixed on was mixed and produced on one KRK Rokit five that was blown out. Yeah, you know, it's like, it's like the human ear. Sometimes one is blown out. We compensate. Tonight is joke. But that's also why we have the basketball team, you know, it's it's it's so that we can sort of normalize things because everybody's perception is different. You know, perception is reality reality is different for everyone. But, you know, there's also a medium, a standard. Somebody asked about mastered for Apple music. What's the main thing done differently to songs mastered for Apple music. All right, that's like the secret stuff. But actually, you know, like, it's kind of a proprietary thing, you know, Dolby has its utmost thing. You know, so master for Apple music means you can go to their website and find this as well. But we're certified as a master for iTunes studio. Basically, so you can get a certification and basically you're just agreeing to adhere to their standards for submission. And Spotify, Apple, you know, CD, baby, whatever, they're all a little different in terms of like the resolution or the amount of headroom they want. So, you know, Apple music will want, you know, the highest resolution that we have. So I mean everything 24 bit, of course. And then, you know, we'll ask for a certain amount of headroom and I think that is so there's a lot of like secret proprietary stuff that we don't know. But that's it that they have the headroom to do their dynamics processing. Something important to note is, you know, anything you send to like Apple music and like Spotify, especially, they're going to normalize it. And there's actually like a website. What's it called that you can sort of listen to like how your mix might change once it's run through whatever their current algorithm is. And there's some plugins. One is like the you lean meter, which is actually there's a free version where you can kind of like preview, you know, what things are going to sound like. There are recommendations for loudness. In terms of the loudness units, looks, you know, try not to get too fixated on that when you're working but, you know, it's something, you know, that also like I noticed like record labels keep an eye on because they want to make sure that they they hit that they hit that volume of, you know, of the genre so that you know the song will end up being featured in a playlist. There's a lot of little things at play. On this end, it's really more about just like maintaining the highest quality at every stage. So then because, frankly, it's just going to keep it's going to get work from here on it just starts to degrade when it goes out into the world. So yeah, should we should we do more or where where are our hosts. Okay. Okay, one last question. Okay, let's do from memory cell wire older popular albums remastered. For example, the Beatles it sounded good before why do they remaster to match up how love modern music is. I love this question. It's actually something that we debate a lot at the Recruiting Academy. So basically, the Beatles is an interesting example to because they actually have they put out a version was it Sergeant Pepper, I think, where they were actually remixed, and it was a little more modern sounding and it was very divisive. But there are other things that, you know, that actually kind of make them that we do to make it sound a little better. It really depends. It really depends on your aesthetic. For our end, our historical album, our restoration work is basically about making it sound how it was meant to sound, you know, in its original state. So before it got, you know, layers and layers of age before like the tape started to shed before, you know, before there are pops and clicks and damage on the vinyl. Sometimes the vinyl is the only source remaining and so it's really about preserving history when it when it comes to remastering stuff like that. But, you know, there'll be things, you know, I yeah, I'm like listening to stuff from the 90s that's now remastered for now and it is, you know, I kind of like it. It's very divisive, but it's basically, you know, labels want things to stay current and in rotation. And also, you know, if you have something like the Beatles. You make you put out a remaster. That's another that's that's another set of revenue you're getting in there. The next year you put out a re remaster. That's another yeah, it's yeah, these some of these albums can can be cash cows for for decades. But yeah, I actually have one right here that we did. I don't know if anyone's into indie music magnetic fields. So he just didn't talk about this but actually one of his first really big projects was he did on, you know, his old computer old technology and you know he was just starting out. So then merge records wanted to put out a remastered version. Not, not because they didn't want to change the sound but I think they just wanted to, you know, sort of freshen things up and bring it to, you know, an audience that was not in the 90s. And so we remastered it using our gear. But, you know, honestly, the artists kind of prefer the original side. Again, very divisive. Why 69. Well, there are 69 of them. And there are 69 songs and I'll leave it at that. So yeah, cool, cool, cool. Oh, thanks Dario. And yes, this is not a tattoo it is a shirt. Cool. All right, well thank you everybody for coming. This was really fun. I think we should, I meant, let's I'm going to type our email addresses in the chat. If you have any more questions, Jaylin, you can do yours because I'm not going to speak for you. And yeah, and we're all on social media and Instagram and Facebook and stuff. So, cool. Have a great day.