mastering.

So I originally got this dual 1.0GHz PowerMac G4 I call Carbon, what ... seven years ago or something? So I could learn InDesign and Photoshop. It came pre-installed - Photoshop 7 and InDesign 2. The Apple 17" Studio LCD monitor is now the proud display for my 800MHz PowerMac G4 server I call Iridium (the minimum G4 CPU that boasts gigabit ethernet). Upgraded last year to a 23" Apple Cinema so I could have some more screen real estate for Logic (should have gotten the 30"). Done with Photoshop and InDesign. They aren't even loaded on Carbon, kept lean with minimal apps (OS 10.4.11 is enough of a resource hog) to keep Logic humming with twenty-plus instrument tracks, busses, masters and such.

And so tonight, a new art ... mastering.

The subject is that minute-forty I posted a couple weeks ago (even though I have continued working on the multi-track adding more and more music to it but have not yet bounced that down to two tracks). Brought in the two-track mixdown and then bussed in an adaptive limiter on top of a multi-band compressor to the stereo instrument track then some linear EQ on top followed up with a second adaptive limiter to eke out just a little more headroom to the master channel. Just trying to bring up the noise floor and dynamic range. Awesome. Called up the spectrum analyzer to check out the frequency range as I looped the loud intro and the quieter middle. Over and over. Add a multimeter to really check out the frequency distribution. And Logic of course lets me save all of my plug-in settings so when I ultimately finish the song I can re-apply all of them to that new mastering session. Maybe tweak them a bit more.

This G4 never fails to amaze. Neither does Logic. Seriously. I get made fun of periodically for my older Macs and my three-versions-ago software. Whatever. I keep my machines lean and mean. The fact I bought this piece of software on Ebay for something like a hundred-forty and it is seriously a recording studio inside of my Mac is incredible. This particular song is definitely taxing that very Mac, but I am making sure to run the Onyx cleanups and keeping it at peak performance. Have to go in and periodically freeze tracks but all is well.

Hmm ... now I would like some bigger monitors. Yes, definitely. The key to mastering is listening on lots of different speaker sets. Headphones. In the car. Little speakers. Big speakers. But it is decidingly difficult trying to master on little M-Audio 4" monitors. They're good, but not that good.

Soon.