SuBBaSS Terrorist
Mastering is preparing a track or album for the general population. Not only cleaning up the track but also preparing it, to be as transparant and juicy as possible on the most soundsystems available on this planet. A mixdown might sound great in studio settings, but the final master still has the final prerogative to make a track to be a winner.
Since the loudness war is going on, a lot of cd’s have been mixed at maximum volume, but often without any room for dynamics to let the track breathe a little. I wanted to preserve as much as possible while not loosing my playing position in the loudness war where louder gets more appreciated. Loudness without loosing quality is the major important key here.
Since a SuB-BaSS Terrorist is happening mostly in sub-bass (around 50hz), I had to keep in mind this track should not loose any of its potential which it has been created for. The theme was to support low undertones, which you would not only hear, but also feel!
- All mixdowns of the album have been created at -6db, to leave enough overhead towards final tweaking, to prevent any distortion.
- The low-shelf lies on 30Hz and basses are final cut at 25Hz, where it’s mostly rumble and generally annoying wobble.
- The high-shelf lies mostly around 5-10kHz, some tracks have artificial glitches on the background which needed to be preserved.
- Anything higher is not going to brighten it up that much.
- the multi-band compressor was set up around low: 50hz, mid: 140-400Hz and high around: 2.5kHz depending the track.
- The ratio has to be set quite high depending which Bass-Roll used; mostly around 1:8 to 1:16 to preserve details and prevent over-sterility.
- The limiter has been set at -2db, in order to support any format – CD and MP3.
This has been perhaps one of the best challenges to date for me and required me to get up-to-date again with the art of mastering, to work with sub-basses while preservating the best of the tracks towards systems, often not supporting (any) sub-bass because it requires a sub-woofer to play -45hz tones.
This album can be best enjoyed at high volume, but is already prepped up to be sounding great on an i-pod as well!
Related to this post:
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