Another example of John's mastery! (Massive Mastering)

[Blue Bear Sound]

I recently did a quickie recording for a local fingerstyle guitarist - pretty much a 3-hr Live-Off-The-Floor, just a few take edits - but I sent it to John for his wizardry........ DENIS TURBIDE: Sampler

Thanks for the excellent work, John (as usual!)

[JDR]

Sounds great!

very Bruce Cockburn.

[guitarfish]

Beautifully composed, played, recorded and mastered! If you close your eyes it just wraps itself around around your head...

Is Dennis signed? Google doesn't find him (except for a consumer review of a larrivee acoustic... ) but I'd like to hear more.

[Blue Bear Sound]

He isn't signed... and that must be his review - he had 2 Larrivees for that recording (different ones on different songs)....

I'll pass along your comments though - I'm sure he'd love to hear them!

[MASSIVE Mastering]

Thanks for the excellent work, John (as usual!)

Only as good as the mixes that came in (as usual).

Gracias.

Heh... "Gracias" isn't on my spell-checker. And me no habla Espanol, so I have no idea if my spello is correctomundo.

[iguana]

Stunning on all counts. I love the delicate highs of a well tracked Larrivee. My compliments all the way around. Jeff

[seanakio]

Wow that is really nice work... not that I have the crediblity to say that but it sounds like the guy is playing in the room im in. My father plays guitar really well, I would love to be able to catch him playing a peice like this. All in time.

Sounds awesome guys.

[Weasel9992]

Nice, Bruce. Clean high mids, nice finger noise, well-defined lows. Well done. Kudos to John too, of course.

Bruce, care to share your front end on this?

Frank

[John Force]

Bruce, care to share your front end on this?

Frank

Whoa Weez! This isn't that type of forum.


Very nice Blue and Massive.

[Weasel9992]

Bruce, care to share your front end on this?

Frank

Whoa Weez! This isn't that type of forum.


Very nice Blue and Massive.

There's that sense of humor again.

After three years on this forum I should know I have to watch every word.

Frank

[Blue Bear Sound]

Bruce, care to share your front end on this?

Stereo pair of Rode NT2A mics in XY config at the body, about 2 feet away (with the center axis aimed at the 12th-fret).... an AKG 451B pencil on the neck, hanging downwards over the 1st fret about 6-8 inches away...
and a DI signal that wasn't actually put in the mix directly, but was used to drive the effects buss.

All signals went through an API 3124 pre (all 4 ch.) and directly into the console, and the 24-bit console mix sent digitally to the DAW. Multiple takes were edited/assembled in the DAW using CD Architect.

An interesting side-note to this project is that initially, Denis wasn't going to have this mastered - and it was only after I'd already finished assembly/lite mastering that we got to talking about his actual plans for it. Having then said that he wants to take it to pressing/release as a sellable demo, I suggested he needed to have it professionally mastered (and not the "lite mastering" that I had already done for him by that time!)

One downside of using CD Architect for assembly is that there is no way to create hi-res (ie 24-bit) files of any edits that were done inside it (which is a stupidity/lack of insight on Sony's part, but I digress...)

Even if you export the files without dithering they end up as 16-bit. And so, not willing to spend more time (and money) recreating the take edits in something like Cubase to retain the resolution (this was supposed to be a quickie, inexpensive LOTF recording after-all), he wanted to send John what we had... which we did (naturally, I disabled any of the "lite mastering" processing I'd done to that point except for the dithering, which was needed since I was forced by the s/w to take the edited mixes down to 16-bit......) John got comp'd single verisons of each song at 16-bit.

All of which proves the point that we're always talking about here - if someone can't make it sound good at 16-bit, then having more bit depth/resolution won't help them!

[JDR]

All of which proves the point that we're always talking about here - if someone can't make it sound good at 16-bit, then having more bit depth/resolution won't help them!

this is 16-bit?!
yikes, that's pretty incredible! (from my perspective)

thanks for the write up BB, I'm always interested to see how the pros' set up for acoustic guitar takes.

[Blue Bear Sound]

All of which proves the point that we're always talking about here - if someone can't make it sound good at 16-bit, then having more bit depth/resolution won't help them!

this is 16-bit?!
yikes, that's pretty incredible! (from my perspective)

Well - sort of - somewhere in between there, actually....

Everything was recorded/mixed at 24-bit/44.1kHz.... but as a consequence of the limitation built-in to CD Architect, the result of comp'ing/editing multiple takes of the 24-bit files was a 24-bit final version of each song then dithered down to 16-bit - which is what got sent to John.

Had he mentioned his intent for the project earlier on in the process, then I wouldn't have done the take editing in CD Architect at all, but rather Cubase, which would have retained the 24-bit resolution right down the line!

[MASSIVE Mastering]

And because of that, I used the quietest, most transparent dithering algorithm I have to add as little dither noise as possible to the existing dither noise.

Eh, but it's the one I use most of the time anyway...

[PrototypeEightyOne]

why cant i create a topic in this forum?...i spent 10 min writing out my request and submitted it and it didnt go through...

am i not able to create a topic, and only able to reply...?

[MASSIVE Mastering]

The admin has been notified - I'm sure it'll be fixed in a jiffy.

[PrototypeEightyOne]

thanks massive, sorry for the off topic post in your thread, but needed a reply from somewhere!

[Tweak]

Should be fixed. If not, please PM me (Tweak).

Thanks!

[Rimskidog]

And because of that, I used the quietest, most transparent dithering algorithm I have to add as little dither noise as possible to the existing dither noise.

Eh, but it's the one I use most of the time anyway...

John, do you mind saying what you are using for dithering?

Thanks
Trev

[MASSIVE Mastering]

POW-r 1 generally. Samp's linear on the bottom .25 otherwise.

[Rimskidog]

cool-ta

[SupremeWise]

Awesome guitar player, I really enjoyed listening to it even though it's just a sampler. I would really like to hear more of his work, is there a way to buy any of his music?

The audio quality sounds great also.

[Blue Bear Sound]

Thanks, SW - I'm sure Denis would be pleased to hear his music is so well received... for those interested you can contact him by email here: dturbide@yahoo.com

[Phil (Diddy) Combs]

Very nice! thanks

[Blue Bear Sound]

Some people were asking about getting Denis' CD -- he's now up on CD Baby:
http://cdbaby.com/cd/denisturbide