Mastering Using the Kronos

Discussion relating to the Korg Kronos Workstation.

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jeremykeys
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Re: Mastering Using the Kronos

Post by jeremykeys »

matthewmb wrote:I am trying to exclusively use my Kronos from start to finish when creating my next cd. I may not be using the Compressor correctly for my end result wave files are not at optimal loudness levels. Does anyone know how to use the Kronos Compressor without having to use an outside system for mastering.
I just play with it until it sounds the best it possibly can. The thing to realize though is that true professional mastering is not just done with compression. There will also be surgical EQing, limiting on specific frequencies, boosting on others, and a lot more than I ca tell you here.
That's because I don't know enough. However, I do know this. True mastering is done in as close to an acoustical perfect room as possible and it is usually done with seriously expensive equipment.

I usually find that when I'm doing my final mix which for me includes mastering as best as I can with the cheap gear that I own, I very often play a professionally recorded cd to use as a reference guide to see how I'm doing.
If music is the food of love, play on and play loud!
Gear: Kronos 73, Wavestation EX, Polysix, King Korg, Monotron and Monotron Duo, Minikorg, Moog Grandmother, my very old MiniKorg, 4 acoustic and 9 electric guitars, 1 Ibanez 5 string bass, a Steel guitar, a bunch of microphones, 2 pairs of studio monitors and other very cool toys, 1 wife and 4 cats and a lava lamp!
jeremykeys
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Post by jeremykeys »

Sorry. Back agin. After googling mastering, it seems like the only real way; according to what I found; to get a "pro" sound and feel to your music is to get it professionally mastered. I guess it all depends on how amazing you want it to sound but remember, we've all heard music that didn't really sound all that great but was mastered. Just sayin'"
If music is the food of love, play on and play loud!
Gear: Kronos 73, Wavestation EX, Polysix, King Korg, Monotron and Monotron Duo, Minikorg, Moog Grandmother, my very old MiniKorg, 4 acoustic and 9 electric guitars, 1 Ibanez 5 string bass, a Steel guitar, a bunch of microphones, 2 pairs of studio monitors and other very cool toys, 1 wife and 4 cats and a lava lamp!
ksi
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Post by ksi »

The Parameter Guide (E6) on page 893 includes a simple description on application of the Stereo Mastering Limiter effect. The described concept may be a starting point ...
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runningman67
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Post by runningman67 »

jeremykeys wrote:Sorry. Back agin. After googling mastering, it seems like the only real way; according to what I found; to get a "pro" sound and feel to your music is to get it professionally mastered. I guess it all depends on how amazing you want it to sound but remember, we've all heard music that didn't really sound all that great but was mastered. Just sayin'"
It's maybe subjective too. I'd rather listen to a busker play an acoustic guitar sat on a box on a rainy day than listen to an Eric Clapton solo mastered to death. :oops:
Zeroesque
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Post by Zeroesque »

There's a lot of good advice in here, and I don't really disagree with any of it. If you want an album to be mastered for commercial release, yes, even iTunes et al., I would suggest getting a real mastering house to do it. They have the experience of hundreds if not thousands of releases, not to mention the listening environment and gear to fully take advantage of that experience. Others have commented on this stuff plenty, so no need to go on about that.

If, however, you value fun and DIY over convenience and commercial sheen as I do, then I'll give my initial thoughts on mastering in the Kronos. I am not a mastering engineer, but after a fair amount of reading and a lot of listening, I did deliver both of my albums to the CD dupe plant by myself. Trust this, though: they would sound better if done by a pro.

First of all, the audio tools are in there. Are they replacing a System 6000 MKII or some unobtanium boutique analog gear? Probably not. But for audio correction, stereo and tonal balance, creative enhancement, leveling, and comparing tracks to make a cohesive album, there's no reason you can't do it in the Kronos' sequencer. I bet Bob Ludwig or Ted Jensen could get good results.

Here is one potential (though extremely full and possibly redundant) chain of processors that you might use on a particular track to get the most from it:

037: St. Tube PreAmp Modeling
010: Stereo Noise Reduction (or expansion, or even gating)
014: Stereo Exciter/Enhncr
100: Overb (or other reverb/ambience)
013: Stereo Master 3EQ (or para EQ, or even graphic EQ)
004: St.Multiband Compressor (possibly up to 3 instances for "finalizer-style" exp/comp/lim)
006: Multiband Limiter
008: Stereo Mastering Limiter

It's doubtful that you'd use all of these on a single track. The tools in the first half of this chain are definitely on the creative and very optional side of things. The processors at the end of the chain here are closer to the classic EQ + Compression combo that you'd expect to use on most tracks. Also, the order of effects is certainly not set in stone, though you'll probably find that some conventions make sense such as putting your peak limiter last, putting any reverb after your gating (in the event that you're using these), etc.

The basic audio objectives for mastering a track are to normalize your audio, correct any problem frequencies, and fill the meters a bit without crushing your musical dynamics. Then you'll want to make the tracks sound cohesive as an album...if you had a really bright track and a really dull track, you'd probably want to compromise somewhere in the middle on each of them. You'd also want tracks to be generally similar in levels so that you don't have people repeatedly reaching for the volume knob while listening to your album. You want your tracks to sound good on a large variety of playback devices, from cars to earbuds to home theaters; your listeners should be able to hear all your instruments and parts. This all has to be carefully balanced with your artistic goals for your album's flow and mood.

How do you get there? Listening. That's the key. Listen to your favorite albums on the same system that you record with and try to analyze why they sound that way. Read about and play with each of the effects above until you find how to get those sounds. Then listen to the result on several different playback systems. Realize that an engineer has put as much time into turning knobs and listening as you have practicing and playing.

As musicians we take years to develop our playing technique and rigs to get the best possible sound out of our particular instrument, often for playing solo (that's what most of us do most of the time). It takes some discipline to fit in with a band. It's another level of discipline to record and mix such that each instrument gets its own space, and the compromises on individual instruments become larger. When we get to mastering, this really is the bird's-eye view. Don't be the drummer that mixes and masters his own album with cannon drums that are louder than the singer, or the guitarist that likes the pants-flapping bass out of his 4x12 so much that you try to duplicate that on record at all costs, drowning virtually everything else.

But I digress...I said I wasn't gonna say all that stuff...

After you've gotten your tracks close to what you want by repeatedly burning CDs on your Kronos and comparing them to your favorite albums on various systems, you really do have a self-mastered album, and can give the CD to anyone to listen to. What you don't have is customized gaps between tracks, CD text, ISRC codes, a UPC symbol and all that other stuff that you might get from a professionally mastered CD and/or duplication facility. Do these things matter to you? Are you selling this commercially?

In summation, yes, you can do the audio portion of mastering within the Kronos; at least the tools themselves won't be the limiting factor... ;-)

One last bit of advice: if you are getting your stuff professionally mastered, don't do much of this stuff on the version you send to them. Just give your best mixes. You're only crippling their ability to enhance your material by processing -- especially compressing -- your main bus.
Last edited by Zeroesque on Wed Nov 20, 2013 8:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Zeroesque
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Post by Zeroesque »

That was kinda long-winded. Basically, if we (naively) break CD mastering into 3 parts:

1. Individual track audio editing/correction/enhancement
2. Track comparison and processing for cohesive album flow
3. Making a master CD with correct codes/text/gaps etc.

The Kronos has the tools to do the first two parts.

Check out my list of effects above and try to play with each of them on full tracks. Read manuals of the popular mastering plugins out there to get an idea of presets and such, and the basics of operation of each of these so you can apply them to the Kronos.

Oh, and have a great time doing it!
Last edited by Zeroesque on Wed Nov 20, 2013 8:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by TheWolf »

I have not yet »mastered« anything worthwhile myself. But I like to load the wav sound files of other people's music into a sound editor and look at the run of the overall amplitude envelope. If it resembles a straight line over larger parts, the song has very likely fallen victim to the so-called loudness war or has been sequenced with constant velocity per voice -- issues I would like to avoid when I come to the point where I have the opportunity to finally master some piece of my own music.
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Post by jeremykeys »

This is one of those times when I wished my memory was better, but a famous British producer from the fifties and sixties supposedly said, "If it sounds good, then it IS good."

Last name Meek? Perhaps?
If music is the food of love, play on and play loud!
Gear: Kronos 73, Wavestation EX, Polysix, King Korg, Monotron and Monotron Duo, Minikorg, Moog Grandmother, my very old MiniKorg, 4 acoustic and 9 electric guitars, 1 Ibanez 5 string bass, a Steel guitar, a bunch of microphones, 2 pairs of studio monitors and other very cool toys, 1 wife and 4 cats and a lava lamp!
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ed_f
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Post by ed_f »

jeremykeys wrote:This is one of those times when I wished my memory was better, but a famous British producer from the fifties and sixties supposedly said, "If it sounds good, then it IS good."

Last name Meek? Perhaps?

If I am not mistaken that was Duke Ellington.
jeremykeys
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Post by jeremykeys »

I was thinking of Joe Meek.

Funny thing here on a mastering thread. Tonight I started working on a song that my friend had recorded 15 years ago. It's just him and acoustic guitar but unfortunately the tracks are inseparable. It's already on a cd. He wants me to add something, slide guitar was his idea but I'm thinking piano.

As far as the mastering bit goes, his vocal has a bit of a harsh overtone I but when I try to EQ it out, the guitar suffers. This is because of the way it was recorded. A true mastering engineer in a proper studio could probably easily fix this but since I don't own good enough equipment, I can't and I DO know a fair bit about EQing.

The point? Mastering studios can do things that the home hobbyist in most cases can't.

But it all totally depends on what your needs and goals are.

Btw. I'm still going to try and make this work. No quitting allowed! That's for rehab! :wink:
If music is the food of love, play on and play loud!
Gear: Kronos 73, Wavestation EX, Polysix, King Korg, Monotron and Monotron Duo, Minikorg, Moog Grandmother, my very old MiniKorg, 4 acoustic and 9 electric guitars, 1 Ibanez 5 string bass, a Steel guitar, a bunch of microphones, 2 pairs of studio monitors and other very cool toys, 1 wife and 4 cats and a lava lamp!
Zeroesque
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Post by Zeroesque »

The vocals are the most important thing, so since you're adding instrumentation anyway, can you EQ the vocal to your satisfaction then maybe double that guitar part to bring it back to what you want?
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jeremykeys
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Post by jeremykeys »

Possibly but since he didn't play to a click or anything, it makes it difficult. It was recorded way back in 98 and I doubt the original files even exist. That and they are both panned straight up the middle. It's basically 2 mics, one on the voice and one on the guitar. I'm not even sure if it's really stereo.
If music is the food of love, play on and play loud!
Gear: Kronos 73, Wavestation EX, Polysix, King Korg, Monotron and Monotron Duo, Minikorg, Moog Grandmother, my very old MiniKorg, 4 acoustic and 9 electric guitars, 1 Ibanez 5 string bass, a Steel guitar, a bunch of microphones, 2 pairs of studio monitors and other very cool toys, 1 wife and 4 cats and a lava lamp!
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