Secret of Finnvox studios masterization?

[marmotelio]

Hi...please view this wave...

do you say the top of the wave? (the little variations)

Hi think this is the essence of the good sound of metal songs mastered at
finnvox.

I open other songs ..like angra song...(no finnvox)
and the wave is very maximized..but..the little variations are not present.

Is an standard?

Would exist any vst that make this work?
or hardware

 

[Ben Johnson]

First.

 

[ahjteam]

Thats Mika Jussila for ya. He has mastered like over 3000 cd's and here is his setup:



but it looks like he is using this for the loudness maximizing:

http://images.owneriq.net/download/images/5/59d490f5-40d4-4037-a18f-a1f4647b04f5-000001.png

and more about the mastering here: http://www.mikajussila.fi/en/music

edit: nice quote from the page: "My grand total is now over 3000 CD's, not forgetting the 2000 vinyl LP's I already mentioned earlier (they are not listed - yet). This is a world record, I dare say. So I'm a self-proclaimed world record holder until someone proves otherwise (feel free to try!)."

 

[punkrockacademyfightsong]

I'm pretty sure the "little variations" you see are caused by dithering from a higher samplerate.
Of course the waveform is shaped by the knee of the maximizer but the random little spikes are caused by dithering. Try it and you will see. However this won't instantly make your sound a mllion times better...

 

[pikachu69]

This also happens if you convert to MP3.
A .wav file can be flatter than a 10 year olds chest but once converted to MP3 it can look like you pic, sometimes worse.
I always master at -.3 rather than -.1 so when converted to MP3 it will not clip above 0.
Is the pic above a .wav file or MP3?

Cheers.

 

[thegun]

Hi...please view this wave...

do you say the top of the wave? (the little variations)

Hi think this is the essence of the good sound of metal songs mastered at
finnvox.

I open other songs ..like angra song...(no finnvox)
and the wave is very maximized..but..the little variations are not present.

Is an standard?

Would exist any vst that make this work?
or hardware

i know the trick but there's seriously no reason to do it that way :/

 

[sinewavealex]

Yup. Finnvox totally rock. Mika in particular. Sorry for the long post below gentlemen.

Got my band's EP mastered by him at Finnvox as well. He upgraded the overall package pretty neatly, removed a lot of irritating stuff that were bugging us. It was a pretty hard release to mix/master since it involved a metal section,orchestra arrangements (vst), synths, lead parts, clean singing and 3 vocal harmony tracks for most of the singing time.

Then again, do I really need to emphasize how good he is?

Lately they got that E-mastering thing going on, which is when you instantly pay online something like 50euros per song, upload it via digidelivery and it gets mastered by the first Finnvox mastering engineer available, then sent back to you. All through their website's interface. Given this option we would have jumped on it back at the time, too bad it didn't exist yet.

Then again, this has a few downsides obviously. Maybe for this low price you don't get the personal approach that is given when you schedule mastering properly.Hope they're not turning their mastering dudes into sweatshop workers.

Another downside is that your songs may fall to the hands of any mastering technician this way. from the biggest gun in FV to the smallest most inexperienced intern. Hell, you may be the first band he ever mastered for FV.

 

[Jarkko Mattheiszen]

Then again, this has a few downsides obviously. Maybe for this low price you don't get the personal approach that is given when you schedule mastering properly.Hope they're not turning their mastering dudes into sweatshop workers.

Another downside is that your songs may fall to the hands of any mastering technician this way. from the biggest gun in FV to the smallest most inexperienced intern. Hell, you may be the first band he ever mastered for FV.

That's pretty bold. I can pretty safely assure no-one's album will be an intern's first ever mastering job when you work with Finnvox. They have three ME's, and the first one available out of them will do the mastering. Definitely not some random kid who has never mastered an album before

And no, I'm in no way affiliated with FinnVox or their staff.

 

[sinewavealex]

By no means have I intended to diminish the studio or its staff. My point is that as opposed to the standard process, you have less control over it when you E-master. It's a black box. You upload the files, you get them back. Without talking to a human that is. And you don't get to choose the person doing it.

 

[ahjteam]

when I visited Finnvox in May, the tour guide said that Mika Jussila does most of the e-mastering stuff.