Exported project as a wave than i reimported to master for the first time ever in reason and wow!!

[mreese80]

I know a lot of you do this but i never have in reason. I set my levels on a project i was working on. Than I exported it to a wav with 16 bit dithering. I probably should have exported as 24 bit. I imported the wav back into reason. Next i normalized the track. Than i applied my mastering chain that i use. Exported than and got the best mix ever from reason. I know this is nothing new for you guys but for me in reason it's a first. This is the method I am going to use from now on. I'm probably gonna remaster a few old projects i've made this way also. Reason really is powerful once you get the hang of everything.

[Benedict]

I must say that I have been wondering about doing this as I tend to Finalize each song as I go in the Song file and I started to think that in the old days I had to record from hardware, pop in Sound Forge and Master things there. That really set me on two discrete actions which handling it inside the Song doesn't create the same sense of discretion.

[mreese80]

I must say that I have been wondering about doing this as I tend to Finalize each song as I go in the Song file and I started to think that in the old days I had to record from hardware, pop in Sound Forge and Master things there. That really set me on two discrete actions which handling it inside the Song doesn't create the same sense of discretion.

I usually master my project in reason after i have arranged it the way i want it. Tonight was the first i exported/imported the wave file for mastering. I always read on this forum how some people normalize the audio. Well i tried a method and got a good result. It was very powerful, full and loud. I also did my eq'ing different. I didn't cut no more than 100-125 hz on all tracks. I think now that's why my mixes were sounding slightly than before. I may have been over doing it. Give it a try man. I'm gonna try this on another track i've made and see if i get a good result again. I hope this wasn't a one time thing lol

[SA Studio]

There's a reason people teach "get your mix down to a 2-channel stereo mix, and THEN master it". There's actually a good number of reasons.

First of all, one large historical reason for this comes down to DSP and processing. Before home recording requirements were as low as they are today, It was often common to want/need all the extra DSP room you could get. So you would kick out a 2-chan stereo mix and feel free to hurl your kitchen sink of DSP hungry Mastering effects.

Things have changed a bit.

However, one thing doesnt change: Wisely suggested protocol. And mastering a 2-chan mix is WSP for quite a few reasons. Most of all, something very important called "Getting shit done". Show me someone who always "Masters from stems" or "Masters from the mix stage' (same thing) and I'll show you someone with incomplete productions because they never pulled the trigger and commited to a 2-chan mix and moved the project forward. It's still sitting in limbo land.

"That really set me on two discrete actions which handling it inside the Song doesn't create the same sense of discretion."

Exactly. The more you commit to a 2-chan and master that in a separate process, the more work a person will get done. The seperate step brings things closer, invariably, to finality than just sitting in the mix phase for ever. I feel strongly about that one and always have.

[mreese80]

There's a reason people teach "get your mix down to a 2-channel stereo mix, and THEN master it". There's actually a good number of reasons.

First of all, one large historical reason for this comes down to DSP and processing. Before home recording requirements were as low as they are today, It was often common to want/need all the extra DSP room you could get. So you would kick out a 2-chan stereo mix and feel free to hurl your kitchen sink of DSP hungry Mastering effects.

Things have changed a bit.

However, one thing doesnt change: Wisely suggested protocol. And mastering a 2-chan mix is WSP for quite a few reasons. Most of all, something very important called "Getting shit done". Show me someone who always "Masters from stems" or "Masters from the mix stage' (same thing) and I'll show you someone with incomplete productions because they never pulled the trigger and commited to a 2-chan mix and moved the project forward. It's still sitting in limbo land.

"That really set me on two discrete actions which handling it inside the Song doesn't create the same sense of discretion."

Exactly. The more you commit to a 2-chan and master that in a separate process, the more work a person will get done. The seperate step brings things closer, invariably, to finality than just sitting in the mix phase for ever. I feel strongly about that one and always have.

So i'm on the right track doing it this way right?

[NekujaK]

Than I exported it to a wav with 16 bit dithering. I probably should have exported as 24 bit. I imported the wav back into reason.

You always want dithering to be the last step in the process, so save the dithering until you're ready to output your final mastered recording. And yes, it's best to master in 24-bit, which also avoids any premature dithering opportunities, since Reason only dithers when rendering down to 16-bits.

[mreese80]

Than I exported it to a wav with 16 bit dithering. I probably should have exported as 24 bit. I imported the wav back into reason.

You always want dithering to be the last step in the process, so save the dithering until you're ready to output your final mastered recording. And yes, it's best to master in 24-bit, which also avoids any premature dithering opportunities, since Reason only dithers when rendering down to 16-bits.

So you're saying get my mix levels right, than export the file as a wave without anything dithering. Than reimport the audio, apply the mastering chain to it than export that in 24 bit? Or do i export in 24 bit before reimporting?

[NekujaK]

So you're saying get my mix levels right, than export the file as a wave without anything dithering. Than reimport the audio, apply the mastering chain to it than export that in 24 bit? Or do i export in 24 bit before reimporting?

Get the mix levels right --> export to 24-bit WAV --> import and apply mastering --> export to 16-bit dithered

[mreese80]

So you're saying get my mix levels right, than export the file as a wave without anything dithering. Than reimport the audio, apply the mastering chain to it than export that in 24 bit? Or do i export in 24 bit before reimporting?

Get the mix levels right --> export to 24-bit WAV --> import and apply mastering --> export to 16-bit dithered

ok. so i was right earlier in the method i described but i shouldve exported to 24 bit like i thought. Thank you for the info. It's appreciated.

[NekujaK]

ok. so i was right earlier in the method i described but i shouldve exported to 24 bit like i thought. Thank you for the info. It's appreciated.

Yup. Also one other thing to keep in mind. If your mastering limiter has a dithering option and you enable it, then don't have Reason dither when exporting your final 16-bit master. Dithering should happen only once, either by the limiter (if it has this capability) or by Reason, but not both.

[Voyager]

What are the concrete benefits in exporting and re-importing in wave instead of master directly in Reason ?

[Ottostrom]

What are the concrete benefits in exporting and re-importing in wave instead of master directly in Reason ?

One of the benefits is that you don't give yourself the chance to get lost in endless level tweaking.

[NekujaK]

What are the concrete benefits in exporting and re-importing in wave instead of master directly in Reason ?

Other folks can probably answer this question more eloquently than me, but one thing I will mention is this... In the "old days", a mastering engineer typically worked on a collection of a songs that were meant to be together on an album. So an important part of the mastering process would be to ensure that all the songs were compatible in terms of loudness and overall frequency balancing. This was only possible after all the songs were mixed and ready for mastering, and could be brought up side-by-side in the mastering suite.

In terms of just an individual song, there's nothing necessarily wrong in having mastering effects sitting on the master bus, and essentially performing mixing and mastering simultaneously. I know some professional engineers who work this way.

[Voyager]

One of the benefits is that you don't give yourself the chance to get lost in endless level tweaking.

Except from a practical view i was wondering if there was any audio quality difference between both methods.

In terms of just an individual song, there's nothing necessarily wrong in having mastering effects sitting on the master bus, and essentially performing mixing and mastering simultaneously. I know some professional engineers who work this way.

For mixing an album it make sense. But since i only do singles, that's propably why i couldn't understand why use that approach. In the end it's about a practical point and not audio quality right ? Because i have the feeling that OP is clearly saying that his mix sound better while export and re-import to master but honestly can't see how this could happend in one way or another.

[Rason]

Normalize or not? I thought rather not..
I haven't seen anyone commenting on TS normalizing the track prior master.

[ejanuska]

I'm really curious if there is a technical difference between the export import method or just adding the mastering chain after mixdown.

[Karim]

What are the concrete benefits in exporting and re-importing in wave instead of master directly in Reason ?

save the cpu and focusing on master purpose IMO.

normally I do this task with stems mastering in Reason but I do multiple masters on Logic and S1 too. after one day I pick the best in blind mode [emoji4]

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[Karim]

There's a reason people teach "get your mix down to a 2-channel stereo mix, and THEN master it". There's actually a good number of reasons.

First of all, one large historical reason for this comes down to DSP and processing. Before home recording requirements were as low as they are today, It was often common to want/need all the extra DSP room you could get. So you would kick out a 2-chan stereo mix and feel free to hurl your kitchen sink of DSP hungry Mastering effects.

Things have changed a bit.

However, one thing doesnt change: Wisely suggested protocol. And mastering a 2-chan mix is WSP for quite a few reasons. Most of all, something very important called "Getting shit done". Show me someone who always "Masters from stems" or "Masters from the mix stage' (same thing) and I'll show you someone with incomplete productions because they never pulled the trigger and commited to a 2-chan mix and moved the project forward. It's still sitting in limbo land.

"That really set me on two discrete actions which handling it inside the Song doesn't create the same sense of discretion."

Exactly. The more you commit to a 2-chan and master that in a separate process, the more work a person will get done. The seperate step brings things closer, invariably, to finality than just sitting in the mix phase for ever. I feel strongly about that one and always have.

I quote every single word! "moving forward the project"is one mean ... but also I focus to give a colour to the master... and I like to separate this process so far the mixing stage (tho sometimes need back and adjust some wrong eq but is very rare...)

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[mcatalao]

You know, music is more than ever created out of context of a EP or CD. Rapid distribution sites like Distrokid allow you to create and distribute almost in the same day so a lot of people are distributing songs along without context.

Of course these releasess are mostly temporary and a lot of time these end up getting in a full ep or CD release and when you put them all together they are not quite coherent between themselves. But back in the "old CD days" you would master in context, and load a full mastering project with the whole tracks on it, a full 10 track project in wavelab for example.

That's why on my projects i usually master in context and always in a mastering project.

[mreese80]

ok. so i was right earlier in the method i described but i shouldve exported to 24 bit like i thought. Thank you for the info. It's appreciated.

Yup. Also one other thing to keep in mind. If your mastering limiter has a dithering option and you enable it, then don't have Reason dither when exporting your final 16-bit master. Dithering should happen only once, either by the limiter (if it has this capability) or by Reason, but not both.

I have another question sir. When i reimport the audio file for mastering, is it okay if i normalize the audio before applying my mastering chain? I got a good result when i did this. I just want to make sure i'm doing things right regardless of it sounding right or not.

[C//AZM]

What are the concrete benefits in exporting and re-importing in wave instead of master directly in Reason ?

One of the benefits is that you don't give yourself the chance to get lost in endless level tweaking.

Yes make a commitment. Give yourself a time limit.
My experience has always been that my ears, on the same monitor set will have the same possible deficiencies. It's nothing really severe but I always like to have someone I know and trust to do my mastering when it's on a project that's important. And I always master his mixes.
That way, it passes a sort of quality control by having another set of ears/room/monitors. This goes double on songs which I also did the track because my hihats are way more important than the lead singer, even if I intellectualize that they're not...(you know what I'm saying).
Also, it has always my choice to NOT master EPs or Cd projects that I've mixed. I've done it enough times and the result doesn't suck but I like the result better with a different mastering engineer.

[C//AZM]

ok. so i was right earlier in the method i described but i shouldve exported to 24 bit like i thought. Thank you for the info. It's appreciated.

Yup. Also one other thing to keep in mind. If your mastering limiter has a dithering option and you enable it, then don't have Reason dither when exporting your final 16-bit master. Dithering should happen only once, either by the limiter (if it has this capability) or by Reason, but not both.

I have another question sir. When i reimport the audio file for mastering, is it okay if i normalize the audio before applying my mastering chain? I got a good result when i did this. I just want to make sure i'm doing things right regardless of it sounding right or not.

I hardly ever normalize unless something has gone off the deep end. My opinion is that normalization doesn't add quality. If most of your song is pretty even in respect to the loudest parts, it's best to not normalize because most of what you want will be handled in mastering stage. If you intend to add compression, limiting eq and whatever in the mastering stage, you've already taken the song to Peak at something close to 0 dBFS in the loudest parts, which leaves no headroom for safe processing during mastering.

Normalizing used to be a no no because it's such a destructive process with unnecessary rounding off numbers and the like just to bring levels up which you can do easily enough by raising a fader, or better yet, doing so through compression which -when done correctly- will lower the peaks and increase the overall volume perception...or volume reality. But it's not so bad today with 32bit floating point processing.

[mreese80]

ok. so i was right earlier in the method i described but i shouldve exported to 24 bit like i thought. Thank you for the info. It's appreciated.

Yup. Also one other thing to keep in mind. If your mastering limiter has a dithering option and you enable it, then don't have Reason dither when exporting your final 16-bit master. Dithering should happen only once, either by the limiter (if it has this capability) or by Reason, but not both.

I have another question sir. When i reimport the audio file for mastering, is it okay if i normalize the audio before applying my mastering chain? I got a good result when i did this. I just want to make sure i'm doing things right regardless of it sounding right or not.

I hardly ever normalize unless something has gone off the deep end. My opinion is that normalization doesn't add quality. If most of your song is pretty even in respect to the loudest parts, it's best to not normalize because most of what you want will be handled in mastering stage. If you intend to add compression, limiting eq and whatever in the mastering stage, you've already taken the song to Peak at something close to 0 dBFS in the loudest parts, which leaves no headroom for safe processing during mastering.

Normalizing used to be a no no because it's such a destructive process with unnecessary rounding off numbers and the like just to bring levels up which you can do easily enough by raising a fader, or better yet, doing so through compression which -when done correctly- will lower the peaks and increase the overall volume perception...or volume reality. But it's not so bad today with 32bit floating point processing.

That make's sense. I've seen people say they normalized the audio as well before mastering. But what you said makes sense. Thank you

[C//AZM]

I'm sure someone can give you some compelling reasons why you SHOULD normalize. Just wait a few mins lol.

[mreese80]

I'm sure someone can give you some compelling reasons why you SHOULD normalize. Just wait a few mins lol.

You're right about that lol. Someone always has a objective perspective on things lol.