Mastering Questions.. but not typical

[RawknRoll]

Hey,

So i have this predicament.

I have this song that is mostly acoustic but it needs to be at a commerical rock level.

I like everything ran through my mastering process except for the acoustic guitars. How do I Do this all in pro tools?

I want to run everything like drums vocals synths etc in my mastering software. But it's too much for the acoustic guitars.

I tried running a buss where I send everything but the acoustic guitars to a stereo aux and run the mastering stuff through that into my mastering channel which has nothing on it and just send the acoustics straight to the mastering channel but for some reason even though neither the aux send or acoustic guitars channels are clipping when it gets to the master and I have the master set to 0DB it is clipping at least in the pro tools form of clipping I dont' actually hear it. Regardless I figured I would pick some peopls brains whom have much more techinical knowledge then myself and help to understand why and if it's okay?

Forgive me for grammer and punctuation. I had to kind of get this out in a hurry.


Thanks!

Rawk n Roll

[michaelhoddy]

What is your mastering software, and what does the chain in your "mastering channel" look like?

And will this be getting radio airplay? Because if you don't like what a multiband compressor does to your acoustic sound in your mixdown, you'll hate what you hear on the radio. I know you probably already know this, but it's worth thinking about.

What do you not like about the acoustic sound? Usually, it's one of the things that, if properly recorded, holds up pretty well to compression. Try backing off the attack times on whatever you're compressing the stereo buss with, maybe? More brickwall and less compressor, maybe? Without actually hearing the mix, it sounds like you may be trying to hit the stereo buss a little too hard with whatever processing you're using.

One note on Pro Tools- seeing the clip lights on the channels doesn't actually mean it's clipping. I forget what the threshold is that lights the clip light, but it's below digital zero, and more conservative than you might think. I'm not advocating running everything into the red, but you may not actually be doing that.

[RawknRoll]

I'm just using T-Racks

I've loved all the mastering i've done with it before ( it's all distorted modern rock though. ) Yes there is a good possibility of radio play with this song and that's why I'm worried about the mastering light coming on after bussing it. The acoustic just sounds harsh instead of for lack of a better term pretty when I'm mastering it.

I'm going to try and play around with some mic placement etc and backing off the compression a bit. It's pretty much a balls to wall mastering that I always do for better or for worse. But i've heard plenty of rock bands with great sounding acoustic guitar that are still at the same level as their rock songs on a cd.

Thanks for any help!

[Rad]

In such cases (and in general) I always recommend that the mastering be done by a dedicated mastering engineer, precisely as an "insurance" against such mishaps.
Most folks shy away from that because they're used to the thought that mastering always costs huge bucks, but good mastering need not be expensive. I can't be of much help here, but I can definitely PM you with contact info of a mastering engineer I've used in the past who sort of specializes in fixing awful sound in mixed projects. He won't charge you anything for a brief tweak of your song and you can decide if you like the result or not.
Otherwise, I'm afraid we're in for a long and painful discussion of how to fix a pair of guirars that we naturally can't hear, so any advice will be only approximate.

[RawknRoll]

hey guys,

Perhaps I wasn't making myself super clear.

I love the way the acoustics sound not going through the master processing. Everything else sounds better for doing so. I have in the past sent out my mixes to be mastered with less the great results on more then one occasion. I feel I can find the sweet spot better in my mixes because I know what I want to hear. The only thing I can't figure out is simply how to bypass the acoustic guitars through the master channel strip..... hmmmm.

[cmchamp]

So, run your acoustics out the master fader, but do all of your other mastering processing (which seems to color your acoustic guitars too much) through an Aux Buss.
C.

[RawknRoll]

Hey CM.

As stated above I tried that and for some reason even though it's not clipping in the buss or acoustic guitars the master ends up clipping. Any ideas as to why?


Also,

Does anyone know how to save actual channel strips in pro tools? I googled it and have been unable to find it.

Thanks,

Rawk n Roll

[yeahforbes]

As stated above I tried that and for some reason even though it's not clipping in the buss or acoustic guitars the master ends up clipping. Any ideas as to why?

Any time you sum two uncorrelated* signals (in this case, the guitars + everything else) the resultant signal will be louder. Roughly 3dB louder than either of the two components if they were at the same average level. What you might try is leaving the majority of your "mastering" chain on the aux bus except move the limiter portion to the master fader. If it's all contained in one plugin (I don't have T-Racks), you'd need to disable the limiter on the aux and then copy the plugin to the master with ONLY the limiter enabled there.

*When they're correlated, mixing at equal volumes will produce up to a 6dB increase if they're in phase or up to an infinite decrease if they're out of phase.


Does anyone know how to save actual channel strips in pro tools? I googled it and have been unable to find it.

I'm pretty sure this doesn't exist the way you describe. But you can still achieve that functionality by going to File > Import > Session Data and selecting whatever channels you want from any other session. Be careful to avoid importing the actual audio from them though... in HD you can ignore "Regions and Media" but in M-Powered you can't, and I forget what LE lets you do. One way to avoid mistakes in M-Powered is to go to the session you want a channel from, clear all the regions (but don't delete from disk), and Save As with a name like [song name] Template.ptf, then import from that.