Demonstrating premaster problems

To kick things off, Charlie reveals a session he prepared for us. “Before you arrived, I loaded up a project (Break & DLR’s No Idea) and messed up a few channels, to show you some of the issues I often get when mastering – things I’ve learned the hard way through making those mistakes myself.”

Charlie A/Bs between two versions of the track: a ‘good’ mix, and his messed-up version. “When mastering, I often notice too-loud high-end, and lumpy low-end. So on this ‘bad’ version, I’ve purposely turned the kick up too much, I’ve turned the hats right up, and I’ve taken the lowcut filters off the subs.

“On first impressions, this bad version might actually sound better, because it’s brighter; and the ‘good’ version sounds muddier. But with mastering, especially for vinyl, it’s always better to supply a ‘duller’ track, and get that top-end brought up, than to give in a bright track that you might have to lose treble on. So I always leave a bit of tops available to boost, but you want a really consistent top-end. Look at the spectrum analyser: you can see the ‘good’ version has smoother, more rolled-off tops, whereas the bad version has higher spikes around 10-12kHz.”