mixing and mastering

i just finished mixing and mastering a 4 song EP for the receptionist movement, and took the CD out for a ride in the car. liz is going to sell the CDs in europe when she goes on tour next week. i mixed and mastered at the same time, with a multiband compressor and adaptive limiter in the master channel’s effects chain. i thought about printing the songs first and then mastering in wave burner, a program that comes with logic pro, but it strangely does not have the adaptive limiter plugin available, and i prefer it to the plain old limiter that also comes with the suite.

if you feel like challenging your critical listening abilities at any point, give me a call and come over to play with the multiband compressor. it is not an easy tool to use, but the things you can do with it are amazing. being able to tweak everything in the signal path, from the individual tracks through to the final limiter, is really a thing of beauty. i remember the process of mastering the current user CD, running back and forth to my friend marc regan with new mixes, and the guesswork involved with predicting how final stage compression was going to make the songs sound.

there is nothing that compares to being able to hear the mastering tools inline with the mix console. it was a bit cumbersome at times, and the amount of variables can get a little overwhelming at times (i rebuilt the gain structure from scratch a few times on a couple of the songs).

i still think i can do a better job, luckily this is just the EP and i will get another shot at the mixes when we finish the whole CD. i might post one or two of the songs later.