Episode 104 - Mastering w/ Ruairí O’Flaherty
Live with Matt Rad - Episode 104
Nov 22, 2022
w/ Ruairí O’Flaherty - Week 2
Show notes by: Bradley Will
Show Notes
Q: What is mastering?
Matt:
I’ll start with my own summary and you can correct me. As I see it, it is the last technical process before distribution. It is done by someone who understands how the music will be distributed and consumed. They have in-depth knowledge of the recording mediums of the day and understand their qualities that need to be accounted for.
Ruairí:
Traditionally mastering was done in-house by the record labels.
Doug Sax was the first person to offer the service separate from the record labels.
He saw an artistic opportunity and other ways to improve upon the process.
He really paved the way for the game of mastering today.
We do some artistic framing of the work and make sure that it gets to the customer in good shape.
The most important thing I do is to take a client across the threshold of completion.
On one side the possibilities are all open, and on the other side the record is done.
What I need most from a client is their feeling that the process is done.
This is very important in the modern era.
Matt:
The mastering engineer is the last person in the creative process.
The loudness wars are an ongoing push and pull between the conditions for the ideal sonic quality and between the desire for greater perceived loudness in the final product, because it feels more exciting at first glance.
Ruairí:
There’s a trope on the internet that mastering is processing. That it’s somehow a high-minded dark art where we’re doing esoteric things to your record. This is rarely true.
What we are doing is serving as an objective ear.
I don’t have any secret weapon tools that no one else has access to. They’re the same tools that regular engineers are using.
A high end listening environment that we can trust and know is very important.
Along the way when making a record there are a lot of things that can color an artist’s perception of how the record sounds.
We come in and hear it with fresh, open ears. They hear it objectively without all of the emotional baggage that the record makers have acquired through the process.
We are constrained by the ways we can alter the record because we only have access to the stereo 2-track, and that’s a good thing.
Matt:
As a rule of thumb the difference between an A-grade mixer and an A-grade mastering engineer is often an order of magnitude cheaper. It could be $3,000 for the mixer and $300 for the services of the mastering engineer.
While a great mixer may have mixed 1,000 songs, a great mastering engineer has likely mastered 10,000 songs.
What do people do when they don’t have the budget to spend $300 mastering each song?
Ruairí:
The first twenty years of my record making life were spent in a small town in Ireland. It was 20 years before I had regular access to high-quality gear. It was very hard to get the information that I needed. I was in the dark about what mattered for a long time.
What I’ve come to learn in my time in America is that the sound of great records is not made in mastering.
There was a time when the sound of records was shaped by mastering, but this is no longer that time. The mastering engineer did not make it sound the way that you’re hearing.
They may be making small crucial changes but it’s never anything large.
We are imparting the feeling that the song is done. To make it feel cohesive and finalized.
I regularly tell people who reach out to me that they should pay to have their records mixed better rather than spend your budget to hire me. That is going to have significantly more influence over the sound of the record.
The most important place where the sound of a record takes shape is in the writing and the arrangement. Every successive step has a smaller and smaller influence on the record.
Vendors can’t sell you good arrangement or a good song over the internet, but they are able to play up the importance of high-end gear, even though it has magnitudes of order less influence on the sound of the record.
Matt:
It’s so important to have a friend or collaborator who understands you and your taste and your abilities very well, so that they can give you strong, informed feedback.
Jon Castelli and Dale Becker have this relationship.
Ruairí:
Dave Collins has been my mentor in mastering for many years now.
Many mastering engineers want to impress with the “dark art” component of it. What Dave brings (despite also being incredibly competent) is a low-key focus on the sounds and the record itself.
The art of the records are far more important than fixating on all of the shiny gear.
Matt:
Quite often mastering engineers will make extremely simple moves. The kind of thing I hear about feel like I could have done myself, but the real value is in the perspective and having someone you trust to finalize your record.
There’s not some magical thing to fix your record at the end of the process.
Ruairí:
As a mixer, you have far more influence over the sound of your record than a mastering engineer will. It’s up to you deliver things to the mastering engineer as close as they can get.
I’m not a mixer, so I try not to give mixing advice. In an ideal world you want to lean less on your mix buss and make your changes upstream on groups or individual channels.
Ignoring this and doing complex processing on your mix buss can very easily send you chasing your own tail. Keep your mix buss simple if you can.
Bad Information On the Internet
Matt:
There are so many targeted ads and clickable solutions that offer solutions to mastering or self-mastering. How should people think about this?
Ruairí:
I don’t ever want to be a voice of authority to people on the internet.
I love how devoid of rules that music can be.
I have deep empathy for people who are struggling and lost because I’ve been in their situation and spent 20 years that way while living in Ireland.
I have two thoughts about the information space things:
1. A lot of the people who are sharing tutorials online are rarely very good at it. The people who ARE good at it are out doing the work and not giving lessons, with few exceptions.
2. The people who ARE good, even when they do talk about it rarely have a strong grasp on why they’re good. Quite often the last person you should ask for advice are those who are excellent.
Quite often these people are simply phenoms. They have one-in-a-million talent and taste and little understanding of why that is.
I’ve been exposed to many people like this. For many of the greats their brains never catch up with their intuitions. They’re brilliant because they don’t let their thinking minds catch up to their intuitions.
An adjacent point I’d also make is this: If knowledge or skill is a landscape, there are two peaks on this landscape:
1. Where you compare and you figure things out for yourself. You do some formal tests and A/B test them.
Once you can answer a question you move past it and go back to making records.
2. Forget all of technical considerations and in the room move towards all of the things that feel good or are awesome.
Having witnessed Trent Reznor, he either moves towards a thing or moves away from it. There is no rational explanation or desire to find out. He just continually accepts his intuition and discovers things that are awesome over time.
The valley of despair between these two peaks is when you take half-baked ideas from half-baked people and accept the worst of both approaches.
Take the time to figure things out. Figure out what you like and then move on. Pick the mic you think is best and put it up. If it sounds fucked, swap it out again and then move on.
It’s much more exciting to watch people following their intuitions. Just follow your taste.
The Philosophical Purpose of Mastering
Matt:
What is the philosophical purpose of mastering? What can we tell people who are new to this world? What is the “why” for mastering?
It is an objective process that gets you over the finish line.
Ruairí:
I’ve sent back quieter masters than the mix came in.
I usually narrow mixed more often than I widen them. The idea that we should always widen in mastering is a bad idea.
It’s very uncommon for me to use outboard gear.
Records usually come in with too much coloring, if anything I need to impart less color.
Matt:
Everybody has so many tools for mixing and mastering these days and many people are overdoing it.
Ruairí:
I need good speakers and a good room to master a record, but I would happily master records with the stock plugins in Pro Tools as long as I have that, rather than trade it for fancy gear and outboard.
I live in a world of .5 dB moves that can shift the entire record. I need the sensitivity to changes.
Matt:
You can master a song in an amazing listening environment without the great gear. The mastering engineer is the epitome of good monitoring. The will have the most refined and objective perspective.
Ruairí:
Monitoring is an important ingredient. But if you give a great-sounding room to a 22 year old who’s just started mixing you still won’t get great results because they don’t have the reps.
There is a huge chain of events between a great artist writing a song in the moment before it arrives at me listening to their record in my car and having an emotional reaction.
Ideally we want to minimize the negative impact of each step in the production chain between artist and listener.
A lot of people think that the role of mastering engineers is to push a record towards the center of the sonic bell-curve so that they sound more like other records.
I am inclined to look at where the center of that bell curve is and have the good judgement to know that it may sound better outside of that curve.
It’s important to zoom out from the baller gear and ask ourselves what are we really trying to do with this record.
Find partners to usher in your creative vision.
Q: What should bedroom producers do for mastering when they don’t have the budget?
Ruairí:
I would almost say to ignore it. Don’t rely on the mastering engineer to give you the results you want. Instead examine the arrangement. That’s where most of the sonics happen.
Mastering engineers are not where the loudness of a record is determined. It’s in arrangement. Focus your energies here.
If you focus on the fundamentals of making records you will do great.
