I agree with Kevin. If you EQ in your mastering process it kinda messed with it in you AFTER. Too much mid range and compression overall. Before is nearly there for me.
regarding Sunny day ,they were both fine with me, the vox did sound brighter on the second which after gettin used to it was also ok ,i was listening on ear goggles though, so i cant give a full review , i think what is very noticeable to you Larry isnt necessarily as noticeable by someone listening for the first time ,a lot of it is just detail ,i like the tune though and yes i managed to listen through it twice ,so it can`t be that bad ,you even sound a bit like Joe Walsh vocally. like the song ,is the brass real.
The mastered sounded a bit more open in the upper mids and actually sounded a tad less distorted (which is odd as you mention you added saturation?) but yeah sounds nice 
The brass is stock Kontakt 5. 
Sunny Day was used because the “before” version was indeed “nearly there” as far as I was concerned. It could have stood on its own, but I was able to get a bit more room in it at least in my opinion.
Now let’s consider something more extreme. For the Musicians For Haiti project, Glyn, Wim, Peter and I did a song called Hunger. It was recorded in 2010, originally using a live bass and lot more reverb. I eventually replaced the bass with Scarbee and reduced the mix level of the reverb to something more manageable, and that’s what you’ll hear in the “before” version. I remixed and mastered this song to get something that sounds an order of magnitude better, in my opinion.
My inexperience as an engineer is reflected in the before version. 
I was going for a James Brown feel with this song, which the drums reflect and Glyn delivered on wonderfully.
Changes made during remixing:
Drum kit was changed from Multi-mic room to Tight Kit (Battery 3 → 4)
Added high shelf on the vocal group channel
Added SoundToys LittleMicroshift on the backing vocals group to thicken them up. This group gets routed to the vocal group.
Used stock track presents on the individual drum tracks. For those not familiar with how I record, a MIDI track holds the master drums, which I then render to individual audio tracks using the MIDI Transformer insert.
Removed reverb entirely from the master bus (in addition to removing the other inserts).
Added reverb to the lead vocal and drums group track
Added slight delay to the lead vocal and Wim’s tenor sax solo
Adjusted volume automation on a few tracks
Then I did the mastering process.
They both sound very good, my personal pref is for the “after” in this case but I really don’t think there is enough difference to justify the effort IMHO, I don’t belive anyone would be able to do a blind test and know which was mastered and which wasn’t…either one is totally acceptable as a listen.
I think the comments from cmafia and sherz cover it really,
for myself I have decided to try and get it right while tracking and leave well alone (apart from the loudness thing)
best Kevin
I understand your point, and (again) thanks for listening.
The amount of effort isn’t that much. The remixing took about 30 minutes. Mastering took about 30 minutes. Remember that everything in my mastering process is plug-in based so I don’t need to wire up hardware compressors or tape machines. In fact, the most effort during mastering for me, assuming the mix is good, is the mid-side EQ. The rest takes about 5 minutes total if that much.
Simply because this is one of my all-time favorite productions (mainly because I wrote this song for my oldest daughter) I wanted to apply the latest techniques that I’ve “developed” for myself in terms of mixing and mastering, using the set of track presets that I’ve saved as starting points and then tweaking to taste…err…hearing.
In any case, the last revision of this song as it was mastered then is here.
The new version is here.
Again, major kudos to MKP (Mark) for his lead vocals. Between him and my daughter (ironic that she sang backup on a song written to her), the song really gets something that my crappy vocals alone wouldn’t have been able to provide.
Thoughts are welcome.
Hi Larry, I listened to the two, and I think the new is better, with a more defined bass end. Although I was distracted that the old version was not automatically at full volume. Once you turn the volume back up on the old one, it does try to make you like the old one better. So the new sounds “flatter” until you turn up the old. In any case, they’re both decent representations, and without “mastering” ears, it sounds ok on both. But as I said, I’d take the second, once you volume normalized them.
Yeah, the second version has a “loudness” (misuse of the term since I’m using K-14) that wanders a lot because of the approach to mastering compression that I’m now using. Before, when I was more than a little ignorant, I would just slap a compressor on as the first insert with fast attack and release, set the ratio to 5:1 and the threshold to somewhere like -15 dB.
Now, I’m using an opto compressor with a much smaller ratio and very slow attack times so that the snare doesn’t get completely swallowed up. The downside to this is that the average volume wanders more because the compressor doesn’t clamp down as quickly or as hard. There are other contributing factors too, but this is probably the biggest reason why you’re experiencing this.
Still, I will have a look at this because maybe it’s wandering too much in the “positive” direction and needs to be shifted downward so that it’s closer to +0 on the K-14 scale.
Edit: I stand corrected. I’m looking at this now, and the compression ratio is extremely high. But the attack is incredibly slow (145 ms). I’ve lowered the overall volume by 1 dB to get the overall average to be more in line with my other works; am printing it now; and will upload in 2 minutes.
Never stop learning…
After watching the awesome masterclass video featuring Bob Power, I decided to try the things that I took away from that video plus update the song using techniques that I’ve learned since the last time I messed with this track. I’m personally happy with the result, but I’m happy to get feedback.
First the links:
Version 2 is the mix that I did when I created this thread.
One thing that I find I’m doing is no longer looking for big differences when I make changes to my tracks. I’m much more aware of subtleties and am more patient as a result since I know the differences of all tracks individually add up and become noticeable in the mix. Before, I kept looking for things in the track itself, which meant that I pushed things harder and ended up with harsher mixes. I’m not saying this is completely gone here, but I think I’m better at avoiding that now than I was in the past.
In the latest version, I deleted all automation, reset track levels to -5 dB, and started from there.
- On the bass, I used sidechain compression feeding from the kick
- I also added an LPF on the bass guitar, cutoff = 1000 Hz, 24 db/octave slope to make space at the top
- I now use CLA Vocals for both Mark Petruzzi’s great lead line and the backing vocals…after that insert, I added Pro-Q2 to add a lot of top for sheen
- I panned the organ and e-piano left/right (something I had overlooked before for some reason)
- I changed the settings on Guitar Rig Pro for both the solo and rhythm guitars
- I pushed the HPF on all relevant tracks higher to clean up the bottom end. All tracks have a cutoff of at least 150 Hz but it goes as high as 250 Hz on the strumming track (although I don’t enable that cutoff until the rest of the tracks kick in at measure 13 so that the solo part in the beginning has some body to it)
- I moved all of the inserts that I normally use for my version of mastering to the mix buss instead of having them in a separate project. I had separated the projects to a) lessen the CPU load due to the way I was using inserts in the past and b) to avoid mixing to the mastered finish, i.e. a good result is not the result of mastering but instead is because you gave a good mix to the mastering process. I have a better handle on what I’m doing now, and I disable all inserts on the mix buss while I’m mixing anyway so this sped things up
- As part of the mix buss, I’m now using 2 compressors in sequence (first is fast attack/release to deal with transients and another, slower, opto-style compressor to handle the overall glue of the mix). I’m also using FabFilter Saturn in lieu of Variety of Sound’s FerricTDS for saturation.
- I completely redid the reverb using the technique that I’ve adopted some time ago
Original has quite a bit of distortion
V2 still has a lot of resonances and sounds muddy
Lastest version is OTT, has a weird overdone "hifi midrange “squeeze” that nearly kills everything between 1kHz and 2kHz
you should clean up de resonances in V2 and cleanup your vocal while at it, it has a lot of autotune artifacts and some crossings which are not at zero, creating glitches.
I would recommend to go back to the mix and start working on your vision there. With DIY mastering the difference between your mixdown and “master” should merely be volume.
It’s a nice song though, so it deserves more STRUCTURED work.
Hey Larry, it’s great you bring these subjects up to review, I can always learn from them. I guess this is not so much a “mastering exercise” as a mixing exercise. I appreciate what Raphie said, but I’m not a mastering engineer. What I heard was a big change in the drums, kind of moving them towards Led Zeppelin, maybe not what you want on this song. I also noticed more distortion, particularly on lead guitar, and again, you might want something a bit more natural-sounding on a song like this. Anyway, thanks for the conversation!
Yeah, originally this was about mastering. I posted in this thread instead of the thread for the original release because the activity was all about changing the result and not the song creation process. But, yes, you are correct.
I know what you mean about the drums. Maybe I’m overcompensating, but in the past I had issues with the drums getting lost in the mix. This was mostly due to the way I used compression then, but there were also issues with EQ. I’ve addressed both of those - maybe not “correctly” given the genre - but at least you can hear the snare throughout the entire song. 
Additionally, I think the reverb affects the way the drums sound considerably.
I would not consider this “mastering”
Mastering is about making your track outside world compatible, make it sound good everywhere, with a loudness that works well.
Making the track sound “phat” is only a very small part of it and should not even be considered if one is doing DYI mastering.
At home mastering should be about
- fixing your room, you can not “master” on your 5,25” monitors in your spare bedroom. You need treatment and you need to measure the response with REW and take action where needed with listening position, monitor position, trapping and absorption, dealing with room nodes, headphones are not a replacement. If you don’t do this, you will NEVER hear what’s wrong with your mixes, so you will never be able to “fix” anything as you will only mix towards your room response curve. NO headphones and car stereo’s will NOT prevent this trap.
- you’ve mixed the track in the same room, WHY would you have the need to completely change your track with so much plugin tweaking? It’s a thought process, if you don’t like your drums? Mix them better! A reverb, widening plugin and to much compression just kills the whole track.
- PREP and QC > VERY IMPORTANT> even before you start mixing you should QC your recorded tracks, this means comped properly, resonances removed, cleaned of artifacts and up to your standards, only THEN you can deliver a good mix, which is worth “mastering”
The whole mindset in this topic is wrong. Pimping some old work, going crazy with plugins to make it sound “phat” in your spare bedroom CAN BE FUN, but it’s NOT mastering.
Agreed, 100% Raphie. But in the absence of me trying to make a living off of this stuff (which I don’t because I’m not that good), this is what I call mastering. It is, in essence, my process for trying to achieve the same goal: make the song sound good regardless of medium.
However, this thread was created to try to solicit feedback on what I attempted and not to be a critic of whether it’s mastering because I didn’t spend a few hundred dollars to go to a professional mastering studio.
True, so I gave you some VERY important areas to look into, that don’t cost you anything except time and determination.
Spending time there will make your mixes better and you’ll have a better understanding of your room.
You don’t need any professional mastering at this stage. For sure there will be people wanting to take your money, but to be frank your track isn’t “there” yet. This is free advice, regardless of what you want to acomplish.
STOP watching youtube plugin tutorials and start getting the basics right, you WILL acomplish a lot more, without spending money.
Just out of curiosity, what’s your background from a music production standpoint?
I’m an engineer, not a very gifted musician , I mix projects and master projects for customers globally. And have been doing that for over 10 years. My production background is house, which I have been creating since Cubase on the Atari, over 25 years ago.