mastering superman

.aa – week twelve.

This week we continued the mastering exercises, taking original (un-mastered) recordings to make our own using digital plug-ins. We also had the Edensound Mastered versions to compare our own efforts to. I used the filterbank EQ, Aphex Aural Exciter, MC2000M4 compression, Maxim Limiter and the power dither.


superman (un-mastered) | superman (my version) | superman (Edensound)

The main difference between my mastering and the Edensound, is the bass is stronger in my version and the Edensound sounds a little more ‘chimey’ and ‘verby’ around the vocals and acoustic. They are both loud, the Edensound is both a little louder and a little warmer (less crunchy) in pushing the gain. This is the difference between digital and analogue equipment. I noticed also that while I grew to prefer my EQ and compression settings, the only worked particularly well with the speakers I was monitoring with, but when I played the recordings through my laptop speakers the Edensound version was again better.

.sources.

Grice, David 29.05.07 "Mastering (2)." Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide.