Am I going to notice a difference when upgrading from T-Racks on the master bus with preset "mastering" settings to buying Izotope4? That seemed pretty popular from what I found on here. I kind of have trouble getting that hi-fidelity polished sound I would like. I usually just gate and verb when needed and then T-Racks the shit out of everything to compensate for bit or punch. I use the standard eq band that come with my daw nothing fancy, could that be a problem? When I highpass the OHs and equalize everything else, getting a mix that is good to my ears, and upload an mp3 to Myspace (just keep reading lol) it loses like ALL of the "shine" or "crisp" or what have you... When the file is compressed my mixes sound like SUPER flat and dirty. When I go to pages of you more experienced gents that don't have topnotch converter but know how to get the best out of your firestudio's, 002 rack, motu's, you don't have that problem when your mixes are down to a 96kpbs stream... As some have said, investment in a room is a major element- but even people with a slightly treated bedroom are getting good results. I'm temporarily stuck as a mobile service (without a snake), so I have to clear our bedrooms and dampen garages/halls and work with that. I don't think it could be tuning or recording technique since people approach these problems, adapt or just replace entirely and manage- and I really doubt it mixing when I'm pretty much applying everyone's general advice to get what sounds good. The final mp3s sound good, but it's when I turn the mix down and or export to a low bit rate, I can just hear this like flatness that drives me insane. Like everything is individual in a bad way, whereas comercial recording produce something that can be turned up or down and still sound like one complex element that like blends
When I first bought my firestudio I was using magneto (cubase/nuendo guys) on the master bus because it has that whole "hi-fi" knob to compensate hahaha but I'm sure the people that know about this plugin know about the pumping and you're probably thinking "...wtf..."
I just stopped attempting to "master" my tracks entirely because I know I'm doing something wrong here because the end result isn't exactly what I want without it and worse when I try to
My posts always turn into fucking ten pages, sorry hahaha
To sum it all up into a few points, if my book up here was explained well:
Like I said, I experimented with Magneto and tried T-Racks and just didn't get what I wanted.
Is this problem due to lack of a good mastering plugin such as Izotope? Or could a good saturating-type plugin help this at all? Or is it my approach? I also haven't been able to find any Y/N if recording in 96 makes a difference over 44.1 if it just gets bounced anyway... Does that make a noticeable difference in pre's and then the final product?
Like, I could just crack Waves, but aside from stealing I wouldn't learn anything from it or know how to apply it to make it better...
I'm going to be finishing a song that I am recording tomorrow night and will have it up on here very soon so maybe that will help if you actually hear what I'm talking about. I think I've outgrown T-Racks by now... But if this is really the problem I will go buy that shit right NOAW