Mastering 101: Basic Mastering Tutorial - Part 1

This is a tutorial on Mastering in Pro Tools 10 that glosses over iZotope Ozone 5 and what each module is used for. I also explain basic features and functionality of Ozone 5.

[mafiolor]

thanks brian you have help me out alot and saved me alot of money on paying buying this you are a great

[illgates]

I've had ozone 5 for 2 years and never used it. lol. Finally used it and I'm very pleased. It's a sexy piece of software

[devonwau]

Thanks for this Brian. You really opened my eyes.

[BrianBuckalew]

Yes, it is very reasonable. FS in means decibels relative to full scale which measures decibel amplitude levels in digital systems which have a defined maximum available peak level of 0 dBFS. I would recommend leaving plenty of headroom (-6dBFS is plenty) prior to mastering. When you import a file into a mastering session the loudest peak should be no louder than -6dBFS. Sounds like you got a grasp of this concept and Ozone is the right tool to use.

[JClark]

They play this song on the radio here in my city! I love it. Sounds great!

[BrianBuckalew]

The song is done by a client of mine and is called "Your Great Name". It can be found on my studio website under the "MUSIC" tab.

[sauelalmonte]

Actually bro from a lot of mastering tutorials most if not all use a stereo track to master. The multi tracks are the mix down and the stereo track is what is usually mastered.  From what Ive seen. Also Ozone is an all in one plugin with limiter compressor etc. You can set up your flow chain with in the plugin as you would if you had multiple tracks/aux.

[beatrocka]

This is helping out a bunch. I've watched a few of your vids for info; you're awesome.

[TheBoundlessJourney]

Brian, thanks for this video man. I'm sure there are hundreds of little more intricacies in your mastering (heard some of your other work on soundcloud. It was really good), but this video gave me a very good overall concept of mastering and has really helped with my own project and my first attempt at mastering. Thanks a lot. 

[theabnormalcatfish]

Hey man, As a aspriing sound engineer looking for refreshers and new ideas on how to master. I feel like this video needs a couple of improvements. Firstly, I feel that instead of blasting through the various bits of izotope with your settings, you can go into perhaps more detail on what they all do, as I feel that what works for one track may not work as well for another, e.g. compression and where to cut and boost eq.

Second off, I found it hard to actually hear the difference of izoptope, as the audio quality of this video sounds like its coming from laptop speakers, so besides general loudness I'm not hearing much stereo width and tonal differences through my Yamaha HS8s as I might be if I was sat in your control room as you were running through this. Perhaps when editing this video you could of inserted the audio file after the dialogue so that I could hear in more detail what you were doing to the track.

Besides that cheers for putting the video up, I might have a look at other videos and see if I can get more depth explanations from you

[JaMal-pszh]

Thanks Brian for this informative tutorial.  I have been doing all my masters based on your stock plugin tutorial you made a while back and that has worked for me so far especially since I am using stock plugins only at this point but this is more advanced.  I may consider getting ozone eventually.  Some pretty cools stuff in that plugin for sure!!  Thanks again. 

[AnthonySolano]

Thanks for the video. It help me to understand the ozone 5 plug-in. Keep up the good work. I might need to hook up with you to see if you can master some of my tracks

[subsoniqmusicstudio]

Great video, well taught, to the point! I feel like I learned something.  Thanks!!!!

[BrianBuckalew]

It's odd you say that - I was just running that through my brain the other day. Thank you for confirming what I had suspected.

[TheOmniaGamers]

Looking at the comments at the top you get a lot of hate for very pathetic things :P
I didn't come here to listen to ur voice and judge it or anything, I compose my music in FL studio but when I render it, it sounds horrible so I got a tip to use Pro Tools instead (to master it by exporting separate mixer tracks) and this video tells me what I need to know.
Thanks man, much appreciated

[ChocoCheetah]

Nice tutorial Brian. This a big help to me as an ameture trying to do it the hard way. I'm using ozone 6 with ableton live. Sadly I can only truly use it as a standalone rather than a plugin since my computer spazzes out after becoming overloaded. Anyway thanks again.

[WBCStudio.]

Thanks for the tutorial, you have really helped me.

[Bread_n_Butter.]

So would you recommend ozone 5 (non advanced) to someone who's just starting out with the whole mastering thing and work up to the "advanced" version? Or should I just go ahead and start with and take my time and learn the advanced? Of course price is an issue, but I think it's a worthy investment especially with income tax season just weeks away. Thoughts?

[dshester]

Brian, is there a reason why the dithering is set to 'none' on type and then 'clear' on the shaping.  Also, was the 2 track master a 24bit stereo track and you are converting to 16bit?

[michaell.]

You are getting clipping on the maximizer because it's not the last part in the signal chain. The post EQ is, which is why it's clipping. Your margin of -0.3 should be as high as the output goes if you leave the maxi last.