AI Mastering

[Nick]

Is using AI mastering like Landr for songs I recorded and mixed myself the equivalent of crossing a picket line, or are there other reasons I shouldn’t? Is it like getting a hair cut at the mall and maybe you think it’s good but the first actual hairstylist who sees it is going to “know” and ask where you had it done?

Part of me feels self conscious about contacting a mastering engineer because I don’t have much experience mixing, and rates can be all over the place. Landr doesn’t judge, is $20 or $40 a month and also handles distribution…but even if it sounds ok I have no idea what it’s actually doing and part of me feels like it cheapens all the time and effort I spent on my mixes.

[plopswagon]

My future plan is that I submit a track so poorly mixed that Freddy starts to write out how to fix it but say’s instead, “just send it over, and I’ll do it, sheesh!”

[Nick]

My future plan is that I submit a track so poorly mixed that Freddy starts to write out how to fix it but say’s instead, “just send it over, and I’ll do it, sheesh!”

Damn, you saw right through me

[Doog]

I’m gonna be in the same boat shortly, so keen to hear everyone else’s thoughts.

I used Landr for the Loveland Frogman Doog EP years back, and it was fairly underwhelming, although cheap and good enough an improvement that I went with it.

I’m sure by now, using actual AI (rather than a set of presets that I’m sure Landr used to be) would yield better results than previously. BUT, using a real person who could offer advice on mix tweaks that would yield their best mastering could be worth the extra? They ain’t gonna ‘judge’ you, they just wanna get paid.

[Freddy V-C]

I wouldn't say it's like crossing the picket line, pretty much for the reasons you've pointed out (it'll sound "fine" but it won't have the finesse, similar to your haircut analogy) but it can certainly do the trick in a pinch.

You're right that hiring a mastering engineer can feel kind of intimidating, particularly because the rates can vary so much. I'm not much of a mastering engineer, personally, but I'd be more than happy to recommend some affordable engineers if you'd like to do it "properly". If you shop around a bit, you could absolutely get a whole album professionally mastered for $300 or so.

[Nick]

I appreciate it Freddy - right now we're just releasing a two song single (we tracked 10 songs for an album but decided to release these separate) - so I might end up going that route for the subsequent 8 song album/ep.

In our last band session we signed up for Landr since we're planning to use it for distribution anyway, and it's looking like we'll probably release these two songs with their mastering as well. In the few days since, I've already made revisions to my mixes that I thought were just about done and still feel I have some work to do...I'm still learning as I go but it is sounding better each time, and the freedom of being able to test out mp3 revisions at my whim is nice, even though I'm already seeing some of the limitations that would be easier to explain to a human - especially in situations where there's significant quiet/loud dynamic changes. But if it can get us close to that "Frogman Sound" it can't be all that bad.

[Doog]

lole

[Bacchus]

I've been having a play with Izotope's Ozone this evening and have so far mostly reinforced my belief that I'm pretty fucking terrible at getting things to sound good.

[Doog]

I tried Distrokid's 'AI Mastering' when uploading a Checkmate Atheists song for my ol' drummer James:

► Show Spoiler

masta.png (93.15 KiB) Viewed 4214 times

It was literally 2 sliders that just seemed to add more low-end bass and treble, and more limit/compression; sounded even worse than my hand-rolled shit!

I guess for the totally newb, it'd be a benefit, but my ears are just about good enough to be able to reference other mastered tracks and get closer with my rinkydinky setup.

[Nick]

Interesting. I did end up trying Landr’s reference track feature which did seem to work nicely, but in a way felt like playing a game of Monster Rancher with my MP3’s.

We just pressed the button to distribute last night and it’s pending review, will post them in the art shack soon.

[Nick]

Here was the end result:

http://artists.landr.com/064837445762

[Doog]

Sounds real good, man! I'd personally only say it's missing a bit of upper highs (The Sparkle Region) to help the shiny pop vibes even further, but it's totally listenable!

I guess it does largely depend on what you're putting into Landr's matchingmachine; I was just messing around with Logic's 'Match EQ' plugin to try and get an overdubbed part sound more like the track on other songs, and it kinda worked too, but it's impossible to make like a wholeass 3 minute track/song sound just like another, given all the changes that'll happen over time end up just being averaged for the new EQ curve.

[Freddy V-C]

This is sounding great!