Loopy Pro: Create music, your way.
What is Loopy Pro? — Loopy Pro is a powerful, flexible, and intuitive live looper, sampler, clip launcher and DAW for iPhone and iPad. At its core, it allows you to record and layer sounds in real-time to create complex musical arrangements. But it doesn’t stop there—Loopy Pro offers advanced tools to customize your workflow, build dynamic performance setups, and create a seamless connection between instruments, effects, and external gear.
Use it for live looping, sequencing, arranging, mixing, and much more. Whether you're a live performer, a producer, or just experimenting with sound, Loopy Pro helps you take control of your creative process.
Download on the App StoreLoopy Pro is your all-in-one musical toolkit. Try it for free today.
Mastering discussion
I’m going to take @Tarekith up on their offer to answer some mastering questions. There might be others here who have good knowledge and can chime in also.
Here’s my first question. Nearly all the mastering (and mixing for that matter) tutorials and videos I have seen tend to focus on the genres of rock, pop, hiphop, house, techno, etc. Very few deal with experimental music or sound design. How does a mastering engineer approach a very dynamic, experimental source where the usual givens re kick, bass, snares, hats, etc. don’t apply?
Comments
Oohhh! I have a question: how differently does one master for different levels of quality (e.g. FLAC 320kbps vs. AAC) volume (e.g., Spotify vs. Apple Music) medium (e.g., vinyl vs. digital) or are they the same master at different rendering, volume, etc.?
Usually in those kinds of situations I just hit the "Tarekith -14LUFS Mastering" preset and then go to the bank to collect my money.
HAHAHA!! 😂😂😂
In all honestly though I think most mastering engineers LOVE being able to work on something outside of the normal kinds of music they are known for, at the same time the same skills apply. You're still concerned about frequency balances, volume perception, dynamic impact (or lack of), etc.
I think (hope!) by the time someone gets to the point where they are considering mastering as a full time job they've worked on enough music to know what works and doesn't work in the majority of situations. And a lot of it for the more esoteric jobs just comes down to having those conversations with the artist too. Understanding where they are coming from, what they expect, what they listen to, etc.
The big thing I think a lot of people miss when it comes to professional mastering is that WE WORK FOR YOU. We do what you want, and if you don't know, we'll do our best to help guide you. But at the of the day you're paying me to help YOU achieve what you want out of your music, so the artist often has more control and input than many realize.
Love these discussions, keep them coming!
99.99% of the time it's the same mastering thoughts just focusing on a specific target loudness output later in the process. When I hear a song for the first time from a client, I don't care at all initially about what volume they want the master at per some specific outlet. I hear the issues I want to correct (or things I want to enhance) and I want to address those first. After that I'll work on making sure it meets the specific release requirements for any platform.
Vinyl is maybe the one outlier here, as you need to worry about things like channel separation and dynamics a little more. When I have to master for something intended for vinyl, I tell the artist I made a really great sounding dynamic master, but they should let the pressing plant engineer know to push the volume as much as they can based on the artist feedback. The cutting engineer knows better than I ever could how far to push the lathe. Though hopefully if you're paying for vinyl you're not wanting things squashed stupid loud anyway, digital is 100x better for that kind of thing.
Yes, good point about understanding who the customer is. I do like it when norms and rules get broken. Some of my favourite hiphop tracks have some oddity like a snare that is WAY too loud. But it works.
Here’s another one. If you could remaster any artist or album who or what would it be? And why?
i would say slower attacks and releases on the compressors , as well as "master as you go", create subgroups with clipping and limiting to make things loud, yet still maintaining dynamics on the master . i still tend to squash the hell out of ambient genres and make them as loud as possible.
Off the cuff I've always wanted to have a go at BT's "ESCM" album. I love a couple of songs on there and they were instrumental in my early electronic music years, but they are squashed to the point of no return and as I've gotten older that bugs me to no end.
If it was a legitimate offer I'd have a deeper think about it before answering, so if something better pops up I'll reply here with it.
For my EDM tracks, I use MagicDeathEyeStereo, BarkFilter's TripleBand, and TB Barricade, with the idea of bringing things up to a commercial level. For the wav file itself, I make sure the signal doesn't exceed -0.3dB. For SoundCloud, I normalise the wav to -3dB prior to uploading since SoundCloud's audio compression will make the audio sound shite due to clipping from lossy compression if the signal is too hot.
For my Ambient and Experimental pieces, I make sure to keep the signal of the pre-mastered final mix low enough so that it never hits the peak limiter (which is placed on the master chain right at the end as a precaution rather than as an active effect). You'll still want to even out the dynamics somewhat, so instead of a limiter, I usually place either some sort of subtle tape saturation, or a compressor with a low ratio, slow attack, and slow decay. Then you can take the final mastered audio into an audio editor like TwistedWave and normalise it to -3dB.
One plugin I really love for subtle tape saturation is FabFilter Saturn. You can push the saturation pretty far and then lower the dynamics knob to bring back in some dynamics. TB Reelbus is another winner if you're looking for subtle tape saturation and a universal plugin.
For compression, Korvpressor is great. Sure, it's a "hotdog" compressor and can easily suck out all of the dynamics of a piece if misused, but it's also capable of subtler compression too and seems to glue my Ambient pieces together well. I also like to lower the "mids" EQ knob in Korvpressor just ever so slightly to lower any muddy frequencies on the fly.
I know Gavinski used MagicDeathEyeStereo on his Ambient works, and that's also an amazing compressor. No matter the compressor, my trick is "low ratio, slow attack, slow release" on experiemental pieces.
And that's it for barebones mastering. A compressor or saturator with the output set to roughly -12dB, and a peak limiter with a threshold of 0dB only to catch any surprise peaks (usually of which there should be none lol).
Of course...😈 why stop there? Don't you want to explore and find out what magnificent textures and timbres exist in outer space? After the compressor and before the limiter, you can put any damn thing you want. I used to love placing Alteza on my mastering chain and getting some wild signals going messing with the pitch knobs of the feedback section during a live session. I still sometimes add a reverb to the mastering section...or not. Depends on my mood of the day. 🤷
For the past month and a half, I've lusted after the sound of manky magnetic tape. Boomers - "We've strived to improve audio quality over the years only for you youngins to desire cruddy audio quality?" Me - "Have you heard David Lynch's pieces?" ChowTape and DAW Cassette are amazing plugins that emulate this sound. You can use either one, or both at once if you're extra daring.
And why stop there? You can put Rymdigare, Motion EQ, Tardigrain, Phase Mutant, FilterStep, Bleass Granulizer, anything you desire on your Experimental master buss to bring about any texture and timbre you please. And if that's not enough, you can load any AUv3 and have Flux Pro manipulate anything you wish. Remember, this doesn't just apply to single mixer tracks. Go as berserk as you damn well please!
Okay, Ted Talk over, 😮💨 I'm spent.
I must have heard that album. Going to check back and have a listen.
OK. Next question
Mastering on the iPad. What’s missing? We have the surgical EQs, we have the vibey EQs, we have the compressors, limiters and saturators. We have the audio file editors although maybe not in desktop league. The iPad DAC is good. Full range headphones.
So what’s missing? Is the small screen the issue? Lack of a dedicated DAW like Wavelab for the track balancing across an album and the metadata and fades etc?
Primarily skill.
+100000000000
I don't think most people here appreciate the craft of mixing and mastering as skills just as difficult to master as playing an instrument. There is a reason pros don't do their own mastering.
I like this idea 👍
For me the drum subgroup is always hardest because of the snare. What kind of settings do you use to limit a bus with snare?. Is clipping a better solution?. I never use clipping to control peaks but maybe in the case of snares it’s a good option to shave off the very night peaks.
This is more in the Mixing rather than Mastering territory.
If your snare is clipping then bring down the overall levels of your mix.
A limiter prevents the clipping but it can only do
so much unless the clipping is desirable as a sound.
A good thing to try in regards to getting a drum sound
that is really present in the mix is to use parallel compression.
If your signals, on separate channels or
the Mastering Bus, are clipping too much
then you don't have enough headroom.
Many home producers make the mistake of trying
to get as much volume during the mixing as possible.
The loudness is achieved during the final Mastering process and
for a Mastering Engineer to get the best clarity, dynamics, signal
and headroom it's best to produce a final mix with 12db of headroom.
A final mix is the mix that the Mastering Engineer will work from.
This would be the Master Bus stereo mix and it could
also be the stems for the song or instrumental.
Experimental mastering for experimental music.
eg. Fake tape compression through one of these
Tbh, I gave up getting good mixing and mastering skills. My 55 years old ears just don‘t hear so well anymore. So I don‘t see a point in it to divert a substantial time and effort into this. I mix my tracks so that I am happy with how it sounds. Songs, I’d like to release I better have it mastered by a younger person.
In this scenario, let’s say you have the skills and you’re a working mastering engineer like @Tarekith . What’s missing from using an iPad to do your pro mastering for clients? I guess metering falls short as well. Didn’t think of that before.
All your questions answered…
https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/the-mastering-show/id1095931813
Start with the first episode.
The way I do it, it comes down to two things: tonal balance and loudness. So I mix to get the right tonal balance and then it usually just needs to be made a bit louder. I find that making it more complicated than that leads to nasty over processed sound. If the master needs more than a subtle eq and/or single compressor then the mix needs work.
Same for me
Thanks! I figured that should be the case all around, but wanted to confirm after reading and hearing more and more about the multitude of rendering requirements out there. And, yeah, everything you say about vinyl makes total sense.
Brilliant. Informative. Yet somehow he makes it dull as dishwater. The Steve Davis of mastering… 😆
Ouch,…that’s a dis.
Lololol…..
I think the biggest thing missing two fold:
> Experimental mastering for experimental music.
>
> eg. Fake tape compression through one of these
>
There's some $4 ones on Alibaba that sound much warmer, I would definitely go that route.
FWIW this is how I think most people should approach "mastering" their own music. Get the mix sorted, then just limit to get to the final loudness.
I’m a fellow Dagenham boy. I can laugh at these things 😀
I’m from Lewisham. Lolololol
Edit….
Wait a sec, you’re only ‘round the corner from me.
Well, we ended up moving from Peckham to Canada over a decade ago so a bit further these days 🙂
And presumably you know that the whole "Steve Davis is dull" thing was just a cynical ploy by Barry Hearne to create a "character" , in order to make more money and sell more Chas N dave records?
I DJ'd with Steve Davis a couple of years back and he has an incredible, eclectic record collection. He's more interesting (and fun) than all other snooker players combined
What a great thread! Will be commenting and ask questions, when I have the time to read previous posts in depth. Yummi