Your mastering techniques for ambient music?

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Hi all,

I've been out of the loop on music makign for some years but have recently decided to give it another bash just for the fun of it. I have a series of drones and very slow ambient tracks with plenty of reverb, delay, and so on. I'm just wondering what techniques others may use to master them?

Bear inb mind, I'm talking about home based mastering, not anything fancy. I have this thought of nit using heavy compression during mixing, but maybe putting something like Satin, SDDR, or Magnetite on the master bus just to bump it up a little and add some vibe. After that, I dont know? Slates FG-X maybe? But if I limit it, should I restrict it to something like -6db headroom on the meter or go lower than that?

What about Ozone? I have us eof either Ozone 5 or Ozone 8 essentials. How simply should I keep it? I'm not looking to smash the heck out of the thing, and I want to retain dynamics. It would just be nice to finish them all off to a consistent standard.

Are there any special weapon plugins youd use for this, or just slap a limiter ont he master bus and be done with it?

Regards,
Steve
Mixcraft 8 Recording Studio : Reason 10

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The same as for all other genres, just make it sound good! ;) Although I personally prefer far less limiting with ambient music. Most of the stuff I master for Interchill and Dakini Records, or the modular synth heads, ends up around -14 dBFS LUFS.

I have found you have to be very careful with clipping and limiting on extended low end bass drones etc. If limiting distortion is gonna show up, it's usually gonna show up there first.

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Hermetech Mastering wrote: Sat Sep 21, 2019 2:48 pm The same as for all other genres, just make it sound good! ;) Although I personally prefer far less limiting with ambient music. Most of the stuff I master for Interchill and Dakini Records, or the modular synth heads, ends up around -14 dBFS LUFS.

I have found you have to be very careful with clipping and limiting on extended low end bass drones etc. If limiting distortion is gonna show up, it's usually gonna show up there first.
Pretty much what hermetech said. With ambient tracks I would go for more enveloping then smashing it through compression and limiting. Get things to glue together yes but let the track breathe. Not hearing your music this would be my base approach.

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Ambient and compression is a contradiction... Its rarely music to listen to in a car. If the mix sounds good, there is nothing to do...

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Understood, though there are certainly some that play around with a very in-your-face type of sound. Normalizing a mix is probably not a bad idea I guess.
Tj Shredder wrote: Mon Oct 28, 2019 6:36 am Ambient and compression is a contradiction... Its rarely music to listen to in a car. If the mix sounds good, there is nothing to do...
Mixcraft 8 Recording Studio : Reason 10

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In your face is the opposite of ambient. Ambient is all around, its subtle. But genre naming is strange, the most mainstream 4 to the flour can be labeled experimental while its the opposite as well. No idea why... Well the most sugar loaded cereals are also marketed as healthy...

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Not a mastering engineer by a long shot, or even an ambient producer, but I’ll probably try to make one again soon and use negative ratio compressor. Was messing with negative ratios yesterday on a track because I just couldn’t get the compressor to make the song sound better so started moving random stuff and tried negative ratio. Noticed negative ratio compression gives a much different movement. Had a lot of pumping and releasing. Might be interesting for ambient.

As far as -14lufs, that sounds like a solid plan. Tried to do ambient once, and it was way too quiet so put soft clipping and it lost the subtleties and softness so said “f**k it” and turned it into an electro track with in-your-face pads lol.

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Sorry, should have been clearer. When I say in your face, I don't mean aggressive. There are plenty of drone type tracks and even older pieces from many years ago that use liberal amounts of compression on certain channels. The end result can still be pretty dynamic.

That aside, I opted for a very conservative chain. On the master bus, I added an instance of Magnetite with only a 2db input gain, just to glue the sounds together. There was no compression in the mix. The rest was just turning up the volume on the mixer enough to stay under -6db on the loudest parts. This kept the piece loud enough, but not in your face at all. Still plenty of dynamics without the quiet parts being so quiet you have to turn them up.

Steve

Tj Shredder wrote: Mon Oct 28, 2019 7:06 am In your face is the opposite of ambient. Ambient is all around, its subtle. But genre naming is strange, the most mainstream 4 to the flour can be labeled experimental while its the opposite as well. No idea why... Well the most sugar loaded cereals are also marketed as healthy...
Mixcraft 8 Recording Studio : Reason 10

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audiobot202 wrote: Wed Oct 30, 2019 12:33 am
The rest was just turning up the volume on the mixer enough to stay under -6db on the loudest parts. This kept the piece loud enough, but not in your face at all. Still plenty of dynamics without the quiet parts being so quiet you have to turn them up.
Is there any reason you’re aiming for -6db (peak I’m assuming, as -6LUFS/RMS is too loud) as a standard baseline? -6db peak doesn’t mean much without knowing how loud the loudest parts are and how loud the entire song is (dynamic range.) You can have two songs both hitting -6db but one is -20LUFS and another is smashed to -5LUFS. -6db is a general guide for headroom when people are sending out their mixes to be mastered. This gives the engineer headroom to do some work. Peak levels alone hitting -6db doesn’t mean much without the whole picture in mind. Sorry if this is not what you meant.

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I mastered one of my pieces at -18 dB back in 1988. I printed an „intentionally soft“ warning on the cover. Because in comparison to the other pieces it should be played very soft. It depends on the context... Nowadays I would publish ambient music as app. It should never repeat and never end and thus there ain‘t no mastering in the classical sense...

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The main goal of mastering ambient music would be to bring a collection of recordings to a more consistent level/spectrum so they belong together.

Line up the tracks and gently use EQ to bring them into the same tonal space without messing up their individual characters.

Pick a reference level (no more than -14 LUFS) and bring the tracks to around that level. Listen especially to how the low-end is matched over the tracks. A little compression/limiting/saturation to tame wayward peaks is probably ok, but if those processors are having to work hard then consider if the music needs more headroom and a lower target volume.

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imrae wrote: Wed Oct 30, 2019 7:45 am
Pick a reference level (no more than -14 LUFS) and bring the tracks to around that level. Listen especially to how the low-end is matched over the tracks. A little compression/limiting/saturation to tame wayward peaks is probably ok, but if those processors are having to work hard then consider if the music needs more headroom and a lower target volume.
By “no more than -14 LUFS” do you mean louder or quieter? For Spotify/streaming, I would aim to make it -14 LUFS, or louder (by a tiny bit.). If it’s quieter, streaming services will apply a limiter, and increase volume. Shouldn’t be too much of a problem if it’s a bit quieter but realize streaming services will either A, turn your volume down to hit -14LUFS, or B, apply limiter and crank it up to -14, which might change the sound a bit. There are exception although. If I recall correctly, Spotify will make everything -14LUFS, but if an album is played from beginning to end, each song will retain some of it’s original volume settings relative to each other, such as track 1 being 1db louder than track 2. They will normalize the whole album to -14LUFS, but if any of those tracks are played in a random playlist, it’ll get put to -14LUFS.

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Stop chasing the numbers! Every track is different and has it's own loudness potential so it's ridiculous to talk about choosing a number first and then cranking everything to fit that. Sign of the times...

Master each track, have a listen to the whole album, drop the loudness of the ones that sound too loud, increase the loudness of the ones that sound too quiet (as long as you can do it transparently). It really is that simple. It could end up anywhere from -8 LUFS integrated (such as a bassy drone album), or -20 LUFS integrated for a very dynamic album, and both could have exactly the same amount of limiting applied.

As I said above, it's kinda genre independent too, you just make it sound good. ;)

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Hermetech Mastering wrote: Wed Oct 30, 2019 2:05 pm Stop chasing the numbers! Every track is different and has it's own loudness potential so it's ridiculous to talk about choosing a number first and then cranking everything to fit that. Sign of the times...
Agreed! I mentioned -14 as a non-crazy starting point (maybe a bit loud if anything) but from there one should iterate.

Do people really listen to non-level-matched shuffles of ambient music? Isn't that what Mixcloud DJs are for?

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Alternatively, you could use Replay Gain in your media player, and avoid using such high-brow terms as mastering, LUFT, et cetera. You know what you're doing is not really mastering, so why fool yourself?

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