Why does my mastering smash my snares?

[Javi Perera]

Hi everybody!

I always have the same problem. When I'm mixing my snares sounds pretty good, but in the mastering they lose almost all of its attack, and sounds squashed...

Why does it happen to me?? Bwaaaaaaa!!

Btw: I use this mastering chain:

Waves REq --> Waves LinMB --> Voxengo Elephant

 

[GarethSE]

Use gclip on your snare track during mixdown so that the main brunt of the transient gets cut off.
if youve got a huge snare transient, your limiter's going to push that down even more than anything else, thus why it's getting buried, or at least thats how ive understood it to work
clipping off most of the transient prevents this from happening

 

[Javi Perera]

I think everything begins with a good mix, so I adjust the levels of every component in the mix so that it sounds good before mastering. But when I make the mastering, everything fucks off...

 

[GarethSE]

yeah if youre mastering stuff to be loud you have to do certain things to make sure stuff wont get buried, such as the snare
i use gclip on every individual drum track so that the transients dont get lost in mastering
doing this will increase the clarity of your drums during mastering so much

 

[AdamWathan]

Yeah GClip to the rescue. Clip your snare, I always have to do it to retain a remotely similar snare sound by the time I bring the RMS up.

 

[crazykarl]

Try mastering using stems?

 

[Ermz]

It's happening because limiting isn't a very transparent way to master your material. If you strategically clip the transients you'll have a much easier time getting level whilst retaining a relatively transparent mix. Clipping the snare in the mix really helps, as mentioned, and a combination of limiting and clipping during mastering will give a good compromise of RMS to alteration ratio.

 

[GarethSE]

i usually:

clip (not taking off very much)
clip (taking off more, because aparrently gclip works better that way, ill take steve slates word for it)
saturation
clip
maybe compression
and clip again if i use compression
limiter taking off no more 1db.
that usually gets me -10db rms and sounds pretty natural.

 

[Metaltastic]

I clip the snare track, clip the master, and then put Elephant on after and also get -10 RMS that sounds pretty natural (to me, of course)

 

[Ermz]

Only using the GSSL and iZotope Loudness Maximizer has been getting me -7dB so naturally I have to actually consider willfully backing off. There is something so insanely good about that clip/limiter that it's almost criminal.

 

[Splat88]

Yep, clip that snare so its not affected during the mastering stage.

 

[Seizure.]

Only using the GSSL and iZotope Loudness Maximizer has been getting me -7dB so naturally I have to actually consider willfully backing off. There is something so insanely good about that clip/limiter that it's almost criminal.

In which setting?

 

[_Protoss_]

I have the same problem , but the worse of all is that i'm on mac. Is there any Gclip alternative to mac users?? PSP Vintage Warmer maybe!??!?!

 

[006]

StillWell Audio's Event Horizon. It has an unlimited trial version, the cost is not that much either.

 

[Fox Mulder]

Yep, as mentioned above clip the snare. Make sure that the snare has enough low mids and also make sure that the low mids from other instruments aren't interfering too much with your snare. Works every time for me. In fact, the snare's fundamental frequency is based around that region.

 

[jeid]

I've had the same problem... I'm not understanding how to clip the snare though.

How do clip snare?

 

[Fox Mulder]

I've had the same problem... I'm not understanding how to clip the snare though.

How do clip snare?

No problem! Just read through this.

 

[jeid]

Haha, nice one, I'll just do some more research

 

[_Protoss_]

StillWell Audio's Event Horizon. It has an unlimited trial version, the cost is not that much either.

Thanks 006!

 

[Javi Perera]

I think it could be great to upload a piece of one of my mixes without mastering and let you trying it out, couldn't it?