JPF Home Page Forums Southeast US Chapter Message Boards Tampa Chapter Message Board Excellent Article On Mastering

I use iZotope Ozone for my mastering of demos and my first CD. I had Bob Katz master my second CD.

With Ozone, I could make my stuff as loud as almost any currently released material by the major labels. But I have backed away from doing that. I simply didn't like the way things were sounding.

With Sound Forge, I'm able to measure the average signal level of a song. I used to shoot for about -11 to -12 db, which is where a lot of modern releases appear to be. 0 db would be clipping, the max you could go. But some modern stuff, such as Green Day's "American Idiot" CD, are sitting around -9 db for an average level. If you look at the waveforms for this CD, it is almost solid black across your screen, lacking the peaks and valleys most songs have. They are clipping almost every wave. And, to me, it sounds kinda constipated.

Meanwhile, when I look at a lot of classic records, they tended to sit around -15 to -18 db for average levels. This includes all the Beatles stuff, Bowie's "Ziggy Stardust," Heart records, Who, etc. This is all rather rocking stuff. Pink Floyd's "Dark Side Of The Moon," one of the biggest, if not biggest, selling records of all time, is around -21 db. These are all very radio competitive recordings.

So I've been mastering recently for around -14 to -17 db. To me, they sound better and have better dynamics. As for making them sound rocking, I think it has more to do with the arrangement and the emotion of the songs and performances rather than just how loud they are. Getting and capturing emotional performances is really the tricky part. I'm still working on that.