Pete,
We seem to have a consensus so far, I guess it's my turn to come in and
muck it up. Kidding. No, actually I pretty much agree with everything that's been said. Brad, thanks so much for giving us the perspective from the other side of the FedEx envelope. It's excellent advice, and I'm glad to see that I print my mixes essentialy the way you recommend.
As far as adding anything, my first rule is to
not do
anything to the mix bus that would be considered mastering. I believe very much in giving the mastering engineer headroom to do their gig. I essentially emulate with plug-ins what many engineers do when mixing on analog consoles. I use an "analog" mix bus -> light compression (not limiting) -> some slight EQ -> a stereo widener -> print to 1/2" 2-track. Though in a slightly different order.
My current mix bus inserts are:
- AC1: To see why + how I use it, check out my first post in The Art of Pro Tools and the 11th post in "Spaciousness" in a PT mix (using the mix bus).
- Ren Comp: I use Waves Master Opto Soft preset as a starting point, and then adjust the threshold by ear, usually compressing a dB or two.
- Focusrite d2: I don't always use it, but it serves two purposes. One is to generally tweak the top end and contour the low end after the mix is done, the other is to compensate for any brightness that may be lost from the tape saturation effect.
- DaD Tape: I normally set it to Ideal Tape / 30ips / Noiseless and then adjust the input level to achieve the desired saturation. Often in the –2.6 dB area. Tape can really glue a mix together in a very nice way. I may not use it if the mix already sounds warm enough.
- DUY Wide: Check out the DUY Wide thread.
At this point some of the plug-ins have smoothed over the peaks and I now have more headroom on the mix bus than I did before. So, to optimize the mix output level I turn up the Input on DUY Wide until the mix peaks @ about -0.5 dB using the output meters on Wide. It has numerical peak indicators like the Waves plugs.
I do not use L1 or L2 on my final mixes. As I said above, that's limiting + I leave that to the pros. (OTOH, I do use L1 on individual tracks—very cool aggressive sound.)
Dither + 16 vs. 24 Bit?
I prefer
POWr Dither. But I use it only when printing
reference CD's exclusively for the client or label. I never print the final mix to anything but 24-bit. The fewer 16-bit copies of the mix around, the less chance the 16-bit will ever get used intentionally or un-intentionally @ mastering.
Printing Digital or Analog?
As you can tell from above, my preference is to print my mixes digitally + 24 bit. I then burn two CD-ROM's (Master + Safety) of the mixes. Usaully: Vocal +0, Vocal +0.5, Vocal +1, TV Mix (No Lead Vocal), + Instrumental. And there is the question of file type. This is probably different for every mastering engineer, but Ted Jensen @ Sterling Sound has told me that his preference is to get the files as AIFF. He can of course read any type, but I believe the AIFF's took one less step for him. Brad do you have a file type preference?
I do both major label work and some local/independent projects. Re: mastering for the local projects, I really don't like to go there no matter the budget, there are mastering engineers out there who would definitely do a better job than I who can meet their budget.
As an overall comment about mastering, I have great faith in mastering engineers. I've been fortunate enough to have many good experiences, where their work has made mine sound better. And whenever this happens I always make sure to let the client know that I thought the mastering engineer did a great job.
Great questions. Thanks.