>> So let's set up our mastering session.
I've opened up a completely empty Cubase project
that has absolutely nothing in it.
The first thing we're going to do is find
the mix that we want to master on my hard drive.
Let's say I wanted to master,
I have just finished the mix to the only way out,
and this is the track I want to master.
So the reason I'm looking at this is,
the first thing I want to do before I import this
audio is verify the sample rate and bit depth,
and I can see that right here.
It's a 441 16-bit,
so your standard CD format.
So as soon as I know that,
if I go to my project setup,
I will verify that I have
the same specifications for my mastering project.
And the reason for that is you don't want
to lose any quality.
If your song you were going to
mix and master was at 48k,
or at 96k,
or at a higher sample rate and a higher bit depth,
you definitely want to ensure that
your mastering session is at
those specifications so you
don't lose any quality when you import.
So now that they're matched,
I'm going to go ahead and import the audio file.
File, Import, Audio File,
and I'll navigate to where I made my mix, say Open.
And I'm going to create a copy
to the working directory to
the new area that I've saved
the mastering project so I'm not
referencing the other file.
And now I can see my whole mix file.
Now, there's a couple of things I'd like to do visually
before I get started with the mastering process.
It can be very misleading if you're
using the audio file as a guide
to how much compression or what
the level of the actual audio file really is.
For example, if I move
this fader here on the right-hand side,
you'll notice right now my mix looks
like a complete brick,
completely compressed to the maximum threshold.
The first thing I do is I lower this all the way down to
zero as if there is
no visual gain to the waveform by Cubase.
The other thing is I'll zoom in vertically,
and then I'll close
this right-hand side because I don't need it,
and do Shift F to get
a nice overview of my whole waveform.
And immediately I know what I'm looking at
is a true representation of the waveform,
I can see that I still have some headroom for mastering,
which is exactly what you want.
I can eyeball very roughly
where the peaks of this track are going to be,
and it looks like perhaps right around here, or here.
Now with this waveform fully
zoomed in vertically and horizontally,
what I'll do is add the mixer within this one window.
And you do that by opening the lower zone,
you'll have a couple options here.
We'll select the mixer view,
and right here we can look at
our audio file as well as our stereo out.
So if I hit Play now,
I'll keep an eye out on the peak amounts.
[MUSIC]
There's a peak value there about minus 1.9.
I'll just keep that in mind.
Let's go over here and take
a listen.
[MUSIC]
Great.
So there was a higher peak here at minus 1.1.
And that's generally about
as high as it gets on this track.
So I'll keep that in mind because this,
we will apply to the limiter in just a second.
Now, there is another way to quickly have
Cubase analyze your whole file digitally.
You do that by going to
Audio and selecting the Statistics.
Now, this went ahead and analyzed my whole track.
What I want to look at is very quickly
see what the true peaks are, minus 1.1,
and that's what we had here as an indication
as to how high this whole track gets.
This just confirms what I saw,
so I can close this and just remember
that for my limiter value which we'll add right now.
So on the stereo out,
we'll go to our Channel Settings,
and right here on the last slot of the inserts,
I'm going to add my limiter.
Type in Limiter.
There are several third-party
limiters that I have on my system,
but I'm going to use the default Cubase limiter.
And now listen through the last portion of the song here.
[MUSIC]
So I can
quickly see my peaks.
My input and my output are identical
because I haven't done anything to the limiters.
I can reset the values at anytime by
clicking on here, which is very handy.
But now let's start dialing in
the settings that we want to use for our limiter.
So the first thing I'll do is work on the output,
and I'll set that to minus 0.1.
This will ensure that any level that comes into
this limiter will never exceed 0.1 decibels,
and thus my mix will never be louder than this.
Remember that minus 1.1
peak value that we had on our track,
we're going to go ahead and boost
the input signal by that same peak value.
So I'll go here, and instead of minus 1.1,
I'm going to add 1.1.
Now, when I play through the same section,
you'll notice that the peak value,
or what we'll get out of our output should be
around minus 0.1 because
we've gained the whole signal there.
[MUSIC]
As you can see,
we're now at minus 0.1 on our peak level,
and the llimiter is acting to stop it from ever clipping.
So this is exactly what we want.
We've now made up the headroom that
we had in the mix initially,
and the limiter is making sure we don't clip.
So now we're going to add a multiband compressor.
And what this allows you to do is compress
four bands independently on the lows,
the low mids, the high mids, and the highs.
[MUSIC] You're able to solo the various section.
[MUSIC]
And really control
what areas you're compressing.
You can see those are the gain reductions.
[MUSIC] So all the same,
items apply that we did with our regular compression.
[MUSIC] But now,
[MUSIC] we have complete control over
the frequencies by moving
through the frequency spectrum up
here and compressing each
of the four bands independently.
You can change the ratio of each band independently.
And if you just want to find a nice preset,
so let's say this is a Rock Master
[MUSIC]
That's with the plugin.
Without the plugin [MUSIC].
So another handy feature to use while
you're mastering is using SuperVision.
It's a great tool to be able to monitor and meter
all the different meters that you would want
to keep track of for your mix.
So once you've set up your multiband compressor
and set up a limiter that
will help decide where
we're going to peak out at in terms of our signal,
it's always nice, especially when you're mastering,
to use this tool.
And like I said, it's called SuperVision,
and you can find it under Analyzer,
or you can just type in, it's
right there, see SuperVision.
Or, of course, if you don't know where it is exactly,
you can just type in super vision, and it's there.
It's the top one, and it's really totally
customizable like everything that
we've been learning in the course,
depending on what you want to look at.
It's a hovering window,
so you can move it to another screen if you want to,
if that's quite handy.
So I'll hit Play here.
[MUSIC] So I'm just
keeping track of the true peaks
here and what's going on with my mix.
What I like about this plugin is you
can go ahead and start configuring
this to add other meters
that you might be interested in looking at.
So right now it's showing level,
why don't I show my level and
my loudness at the same time?
[MUSIC] So I've got
all my parameters literally in one window,
which is, like I said, really, really handy.
Let's say I want to add another one on
the right-hand side of this lower zone.
I can go ahead and do that,
or I can get rid of that by just exing that out.
If I add one up here,
then I can add a secondary one right there.
So really customizable to what you want to work with.
You can split screens within,
you can add like this.
So right now, if I changed my mind
and I wanted leveling
and loudness to be up here on the top,
of course, I can go ahead and do that.
I'll just go here, I'll make this Loudness now,
and then let's say I change my mind
on the meter they wanted on this one.
Let's say I wanted to look at, let's say,
the phase scope, which is a smaller one.
So it might be interesting to
just go ahead and add two more of
these smaller icons underneath that I can re-size,
because they take less room,
and choose some other visual aids here,
a spectrum bar, and this one,
let's say I want to see the spectrogram.
And now when I hit play,
[MUSIC] I literally have
everything that I would want to see in one place,
and it's really, really well done.
It's cleverly integrated into the program,
as you can see, very easy to use.
So definitely check this out,
and have it ready on your masters or on your mixes.