Question for mastering an album via online AI mastering

Have an urge to learn, or a calling to teach? Want to share some useful Youtube videos? Do it here!
User avatar
Hazel
Posts: 76
Joined: 29 Sep 2016

21 Feb 2022

I have a few albums worth of material that I'd like to get out the door soon. They of course need to be finalized first, and I know someone is going to say right away that I should be having them properly mastered professionally, unfortunately the money does not exist to make this happen, as well as them likely being put up for free download anyway. Sometime back I trialed a free month of the AI mastering app Cloudbounce, and honestly the results were not bad for the couple of tracks I used it for. At the very least, probably as well as I could do mastering it myself, maybe better, tough call, given I only used it on a couple of songs. I've done my own amateur mastering within Reason on a couple of previous albums worth of material and had, I suppose, ok results, although it was a huge pain, especially trying to arrange all the tracks where I wanted them, as Reason only allows you to zoom out a very small amount, so an hour project is a huge headache to do.
That said, I'm very much considering just paying for the one month fee for Cloudbounce, and just getting all of it quickly finalized in one evening. I'm wondering if anyone has experience with using that app for mastering for an album. I see that it does appear to have the option, as you can upload multiple tracks at once to do them together, although they would still need to be edited beyond that, either before or after, to make the exact layout for the tracks to have the right spaces between them, and or, cross-fades in appropriate spots.
So, I guess I'm looking for any experience with using their app this way, and the best way to go into it planning for an album? also with that in mind, re-editing in Reason... when you export, then bring the wav file back in the program for editing, maybe even possibly doing it again...is there any quality loss from the file from the exporting/re-importing going on?

User avatar
integerpoet
Posts: 832
Joined: 30 Dec 2020
Location: East Bay, California
Contact:

21 Feb 2022

I am no mastering genius, but it sounds to me as if you are considering spending more money to try this service than you would to try one that would give you vastly more control — in addition to presets and "one button" analysis:
Attachments
suite.png
suite.png (38.33 KiB) Viewed 6476 times

PhillipOrdonez
Posts: 3732
Joined: 20 Oct 2017
Location: Norway
Contact:

21 Feb 2022

That's a good suggestion, integerpoet.

User avatar
integerpoet
Posts: 832
Joined: 30 Dec 2020
Location: East Bay, California
Contact:

21 Feb 2022

PhillipOrdonez wrote:
21 Feb 2022
That's a good suggestion, integerpoet.
Maybe? "Vastly more control" might actually be a downside for the original poster, and I get that.

Still, if all you do is press the automatic analysis button and/or jump around trying presets, Ozone is a pretty good thing.

My question is whether the monthly fee for that package can actually be purchased monthly or if that's an amortized annual fee.

PhillipOrdonez
Posts: 3732
Joined: 20 Oct 2017
Location: Norway
Contact:

21 Feb 2022

integerpoet wrote:
21 Feb 2022
PhillipOrdonez wrote:
21 Feb 2022
That's a good suggestion, integerpoet.
Maybe? "Vastly more control" might actually be a downside for the original poster, and I get that.

Still, if all you do is press the automatic analysis button and/or jump around trying presets, Ozone is a pretty good thing.

My question is whether the monthly fee for that package can actually be purchased monthly or if that's an amortized annual fee.
The automatic service they are considering is probably going to do the same thing as ozone anyway. If they can do month to month, it is certainly a way better value.

User avatar
Hazel
Posts: 76
Joined: 29 Sep 2016

21 Feb 2022

I've used Ozone before, that's not really the issue. I'm more asking advice on mastering for 'album'. I've done it before in Reason alone, but it's a gigantic pain, as you can't even zoom out far enough to even have all the tracks on one screen at once. Short of acquiring and installing an entirely different DAW to accomplish this easier I'm wondering if I'd be better off just using an AI mastering for album. I mean, I suppose I'm still going to have to lay out all of the tracks in another program (possibly Reason) eventually anyway in order to cut the tracks right, so I can have proper spaces between, or possibly crossfades, but it would still be much faster. Which leads me to the second question... Does multiple occurrences of exporting wav from, and importing back into Reason as wav, repeat, etc. etc. degrade the final file. For example, if you were to bring a wav file song into a channel in reason, then render export entire song into another wav file, (apart from possibly extra silence at the end) would you have essentially the very same audio wav file once again?

User avatar
raymondh
Posts: 1776
Joined: 15 Jan 2015

22 Feb 2022

Ozone as a standalone app does make for a fast workflow for mixing an Album!

Another consideration is determining where mixing stops and mastering starts.

The quality of results you will get -- whether it be an AI service, an AI plugin (my new favourite = Sonible) or Ozone -- will be heavily influenced by the quality of the mixing in your tracks. Ideally, the mastering is not much more than limiting and leveling so your album flows together.

If you expect your mastering solution to also provide EQ, tonality adjustments, lots of compression etc, then you may still get a great result, but it won't be as good as if you'd done the best you can with your mixing.

User avatar
Hazel
Posts: 76
Joined: 29 Sep 2016

22 Feb 2022

I've only used Ozone as a vst in Reason. I'll have to check out standalone sometime. I wasn't aware they had an album output option. Thanks for the replies everyone.

User avatar
tomusurp
Posts: 248
Joined: 30 Jan 2022
Location: USA
Contact:

24 Feb 2022

Hazel wrote:
21 Feb 2022
I have a few albums worth of material that I'd like to get out the door soon. They of course need to be finalized first, and I know someone is going to say right away that I should be having them properly mastered professionally, unfortunately the money does not exist to make this happen, as well as them likely being put up for free download anyway. Sometime back I trialed a free month of the AI mastering app Cloudbounce, and honestly the results were not bad for the couple of tracks I used it for. At the very least, probably as well as I could do mastering it myself, maybe better, tough call, given I only used it on a couple of songs. I've done my own amateur mastering within Reason on a couple of previous albums worth of material and had, I suppose, ok results, although it was a huge pain, especially trying to arrange all the tracks where I wanted them, as Reason only allows you to zoom out a very small amount, so an hour project is a huge headache to do.
That said, I'm very much considering just paying for the one month fee for Cloudbounce, and just getting all of it quickly finalized in one evening. I'm wondering if anyone has experience with using that app for mastering for an album. I see that it does appear to have the option, as you can upload multiple tracks at once to do them together, although they would still need to be edited beyond that, either before or after, to make the exact layout for the tracks to have the right spaces between them, and or, cross-fades in appropriate spots.
So, I guess I'm looking for any experience with using their app this way, and the best way to go into it planning for an album? also with that in mind, re-editing in Reason... when you export, then bring the wav file back in the program for editing, maybe even possibly doing it again...is there any quality loss from the file from the exporting/re-importing going on?
I mean cloudbounce has a below average rating on trustpilot. Although I'm pretty sure some AI mastering companies have a solid algorithm which applies specific equalization and limiting, but it really does come down to the mixing. As a music producer and audio engineer myself, for me mastering is just icing on the cake. Moreso meant to squeeze out that extra DB and glue a few things together.

You may want to look into SPIRE which is only available on iPhone. It's basically an iPhone recording studio made by iZotope which you can import music and also record vocals over beats using the iPhone built-in mic. For a monthly subscription it can master your songs. I use iZotope products from time to time in certain mixing and mastering areas and do vouch they are reputable company with many years in the game and great sound tools and quality.

My other questions are how much is your budget and how many songs is it?
"The hottest in the matrix"
My music:
https://www.youtube.com/c/TomUsurp
https://www.tomusurp.com


:reason: :re: :refill: :rt:

User avatar
raymondh
Posts: 1776
Joined: 15 Jan 2015

24 Feb 2022

Hazel wrote:
22 Feb 2022
I've only used Ozone as a vst in Reason. I'll have to check out standalone sometime. I wasn't aware they had an album output option. Thanks for the replies everyone.
Yeah you can load in multiple tracks on their own 'tab's, each with different settings and mastering modules, and then very easy to flick between them to check for sonic differences, levels etc. Then you can 'export all' when you're ready and it creates the individual tracks with track # etc.

Not as flexible as putting the tracks linearly into a DAW (where you might like continuous mix, crossfades etc) but a lot easier and faster.

User avatar
Hazel
Posts: 76
Joined: 29 Sep 2016

24 Feb 2022

Tomeo55 wrote:
24 Feb 2022
Hazel wrote:
21 Feb 2022
I have a few albums worth of material that I'd like to get out the door soon. They of course need to be finalized first, and I know someone is going to say right away that I should be having them properly mastered professionally, unfortunately the money does not exist to make this happen, as well as them likely being put up for free download anyway. Sometime back I trialed a free month of the AI mastering app Cloudbounce, and honestly the results were not bad for the couple of tracks I used it for. At the very least, probably as well as I could do mastering it myself, maybe better, tough call, given I only used it on a couple of songs. I've done my own amateur mastering within Reason on a couple of previous albums worth of material and had, I suppose, ok results, although it was a huge pain, especially trying to arrange all the tracks where I wanted them, as Reason only allows you to zoom out a very small amount, so an hour project is a huge headache to do.
That said, I'm very much considering just paying for the one month fee for Cloudbounce, and just getting all of it quickly finalized in one evening. I'm wondering if anyone has experience with using that app for mastering for an album. I see that it does appear to have the option, as you can upload multiple tracks at once to do them together, although they would still need to be edited beyond that, either before or after, to make the exact layout for the tracks to have the right spaces between them, and or, cross-fades in appropriate spots.
So, I guess I'm looking for any experience with using their app this way, and the best way to go into it planning for an album? also with that in mind, re-editing in Reason... when you export, then bring the wav file back in the program for editing, maybe even possibly doing it again...is there any quality loss from the file from the exporting/re-importing going on?
I mean cloudbounce has a below average rating on trustpilot. Although I'm pretty sure some AI mastering companies have a solid algorithm which applies specific equalization and limiting, but it really does come down to the mixing. As a music producer and audio engineer myself, for me mastering is just icing on the cake. Moreso meant to squeeze out that extra DB and glue a few things together.

You may want to look into SPIRE which is only available on iPhone. It's basically an iPhone recording studio made by iZotope which you can import music and also record vocals over beats using the iPhone built-in mic. For a monthly subscription it can master your songs. I use iZotope products from time to time in certain mixing and mastering areas and do vouch they are reputable company with many years in the game and great sound tools and quality.

My other questions are how much is your budget and how many songs is it?
Well, I don't have an Iphone anyway and basically don't have any intention of buying one in the foreseeable future. That aside, I suppose those review don't look so good on that site. I've just seen it pop up on a rundown of sites like that and they apparently liked, but who really knows. - Budget, well...none really. As cheap as I can get away with, that's why I considered Cloudbounce, as it looks like you can just pay 20$ for a month, so I suppose I could just do everything for just the one month and be done with it, which seems like a pretty good deal. - Second question, how many tracks?...well, on the low end, 37 if I just count what I have decided goes together in albums/eps and whatnot, 56 if I put other stuff together by then.

User avatar
Hazel
Posts: 76
Joined: 29 Sep 2016

24 Feb 2022

raymondh wrote:
24 Feb 2022
Hazel wrote:
22 Feb 2022
I've only used Ozone as a vst in Reason. I'll have to check out standalone sometime. I wasn't aware they had an album output option. Thanks for the replies everyone.
Yeah you can load in multiple tracks on their own 'tab's, each with different settings and mastering modules, and then very easy to flick between them to check for sonic differences, levels etc. Then you can 'export all' when you're ready and it creates the individual tracks with track # etc.

Not as flexible as putting the tracks linearly into a DAW (where you might like continuous mix, crossfades etc) but a lot easier and faster.
Interesting, maybe I might give that a shot. I can always bring all the finalized tracks back into reason and layout for the spaces and whatnot afterward. Which sort of leads back into what I was wondering before if exporting files out of reason and reimporting and then exporting again losses any quality? I also wonder now if Reason could actually even just handle multiple instances of the full Ozone (one per song in one huge album project), or if it would even work like that? One of my projects is going to have like probably 15 track, so that might be too much...dunno yet.

User avatar
Hazel
Posts: 76
Joined: 29 Sep 2016

24 Feb 2022

raymondh wrote:
24 Feb 2022
Hazel wrote:
22 Feb 2022
I've only used Ozone as a vst in Reason. I'll have to check out standalone sometime. I wasn't aware they had an album output option. Thanks for the replies everyone.
Yeah you can load in multiple tracks on their own 'tab's, each with different settings and mastering modules, and then very easy to flick between them to check for sonic differences, levels etc. Then you can 'export all' when you're ready and it creates the individual tracks with track # etc.

Not as flexible as putting the tracks linearly into a DAW (where you might like continuous mix, crossfades etc) but a lot easier and faster.
Actually, after briefly playing around with the standalone Ozone program with just a few tracks, I found the tabs system does make it pretty convenient to flip back and forth between. I might just give this a whirl and see how it turns out. Probably just deal with the layout for spaces and crossfades or whatnot back in reason afterward I guess.

User avatar
selig
RE Developer
Posts: 11685
Joined: 15 Jan 2015
Location: The NorthWoods, CT, USA

24 Feb 2022

AFAIK, none of these approaches will master an ‘album’, they only master individual songs (could have misunderstood something though…). Mastering an album involves more than just making each song sound loud/good on it’s own, it is also about making the entire album cohesive and flow from track to track.
Selig Audio, LLC

User avatar
Hazel
Posts: 76
Joined: 29 Sep 2016

24 Feb 2022

selig wrote:
24 Feb 2022
AFAIK, none of these approaches will master an ‘album’, they only master individual songs (could have misunderstood something though…). Mastering an album involves more than just making each song sound loud/good on it’s own, it is also about making the entire album cohesive and flow from track to track.
I realize this and so have kind of wondered for a long time how someone approaches this, even at an amateur level, as in searching I've never really been able to find anyone really even talking about it much. Tons of articles and tutorials about workflow for doing stuff with single songs, but not much at all about the other. I also I get the feeling this maybe isn't something that Reason is designed to really handle properly, as it seems kind of difficult to compare different tracks very easily. The Ozone stand alone program does allow you to switch back and forth sort of quickly, so you can sort of compare, but then, like what was said above, you are missing a lot of what you want out of just doing it in the daw.

User avatar
ScuzzyEye
Moderator
Posts: 1402
Joined: 15 Jan 2015
Contact:

26 Feb 2022

Hazel wrote:
24 Feb 2022
I also I get the feeling this maybe isn't something that Reason is designed to really handle properly, as it seems kind of difficult to compare different tracks very easily. The Ozone stand alone program does allow you to switch back and forth sort of quickly, so you can sort of compare, but then, like what was said above, you are missing a lot of what you want out of just doing it in the daw.
The way an album master is done in DAW is to put each song on a different track, and stagger them so as one song ends the next starts. I think you've figured this out, by saying it takes a lot of screen space.

With that setup you can place individual mastering processing in each tracks insert section, and then a master, mastering chain on the master bus. :D

The problems with Reason starts with one, navigation. There's no quick shortcuts to zoom to a particular song's audio. That makes workflow slow. But the real problem comes with writing the audio to disk. Reason has no export region option other than export loop. That means you have to move the loop markers to each song's region and then export that loop. Then move the markers and do the next. You can use blocks to mark your sections, but there's still a lot of manual work to get the track length exports.

Tools better suited to the job:

Ozone standalone - Allows an entire album of songs to be loaded into one session, and can export each as the own tracks. It has per song mastering chains, but no global final master effects. It doesn't support Disc Description Protocol (DDP) that CD mastering houses use to get the inter-track spacing information. Less of an issue if you aren't making CDs, but very useful if you are.

HOFA CD-Burn.DDP.Master - That naturally leads to DDP.Master and DDP.Master Pro. This is the cheapest dedicated mastering tool I know for applying a mastering chain to both individual tracks and also a global master chain. You just supply your own VSTs. It can export multiple formats (in addition to the aforementioned DDP). It's a little clunky to use, and not all VSTs work perfectly.

Reaper - Is there anything Reaper can't do? If you want a more traditional DAW, and are comfortable setting up your own mastering template, Reaper can export DDP (and costs less than even the non-Pro DDP.Master). It's a DAW with multiple channels, so you get per-track inserts, and then the master. It allows marking of regions (start and end points for each song), and can export multiple tracks based on those regions. It really can do everything you need for mastering an album for both CD replication and online distribution (Wavpack). But it's not the most easy (or pretty) tool to use. That's the tradeoff with Reaper, it's inexpensive, it does just about anything you'd want for audio production, but it'll take some time to figure out how to do it.

Studio One Profession - This is what I'm using for mastering now. With Studio One 5.0 they added a "Project" mode. It allows for importing of multiple songs. That was OK, but the improvements with the recent 5.5 release made it perfect. The Professional edition, required for the Project mode, is this most expensive option here, but with a cross-grade offer from other DAWs, it's not bad. (You can also subscribe to Sphere, but I don't do Reason+, or any software subscriptions.) In Project mode each song is placed after the previous (but only using two rows so you don't to vertically scroll to see the next song, only horizontally). This allows for the easy creation of cross-fades (or spacing). Each song's region gets marked for export. Each song also can have its individual effect chain, then a global chain for all songs. Export options include a multitude of formats, including DDP, but not Wavpack (you'd have to zip the files up yourself).

That covers the tools I'm aware of (and have actually used). Probably most DAWs can do at least the basic load all your songs one after another. But the feature that makes that layout usable, region marking, and exporting based on those regions, isn't universal.

User avatar
ScuzzyEye
Moderator
Posts: 1402
Joined: 15 Jan 2015
Contact:

26 Feb 2022

Hazel wrote:
24 Feb 2022
I was wondering before if exporting files out of reason and reimporting and then exporting again losses any quality?
As long as you're not changing bit-depths or sampling rates down and up between exports and imports you aren't losing anything.

A few things to keep in mind:

Do your initial export at the highest settings you're ever going to use. For bit-depth this should be 24-bit from Reason, so it doesn't apply dither (more on this later), and depending on your working rate, 44.1 kHz sampling rate is probably perfectly fine. If you're using a lot of distortion effects, or older synths, and want to eliminate aliasing, higher might be better, but that's another discussion outside of this.

Dithering should a applied when you decrease the bit depth, and you shouldn't decrease the bit depth until the very last step. Reason uses 32-bit float internally, but only lets you export as 24-bit at most. That's actually fine. 32-bit floating point, below -0 dBfs, is the same as 24-bit. So that's not a decrease, and adding dither isn't needed. Also going back up to 32-bit float from 24-bit integer has no change in quality. So if you're using a tool that insists on applying dither to 24-bit, and this isn't your final step, select 32-bit float, and you should be able to avoid multiple dither passes.

Just stay away from MP3, AAC, or other lossy compressed format. Stick with .wav and you can move between as many programs as you need with no losses.

User avatar
ScuzzyEye
Moderator
Posts: 1402
Joined: 15 Jan 2015
Contact:

26 Feb 2022

Quick and dirty trick for exporting a song from Reason with no clipping, and guaranteed maximum use of dynamic range (some mastering engineers may not be happy with how these files look, but if you're doing the mastering yourself, working with an AI, or a human who you can actually have a conversation with about how your prepped the file, it'll be fine).

Instead of choosing "Export Song as Audio File...", use "Bounce Mixer Channels..." instead. Then unselect all the channels, and select Master Section instead (see below). Then enable Normalize and set the Bit depth to 24. This will create a folder with one file inside of it, instead of a stand alone file. So you'll have to collect and rename that file. But what it does is make Reason write a 32-bit floating point file to disk, and then on a second pass see what the loudest sample in the whole file (including if it's over 0 dBfs), and adjust the level of the entire song so that loudest sample is now exactly 0 dBfs.

Bounce Export.png
Bounce Export.png (77.74 KiB) Viewed 6278 times

User avatar
Hazel
Posts: 76
Joined: 29 Sep 2016

27 Feb 2022

Thank you for your detailed suggestions and tips.

User avatar
selig
RE Developer
Posts: 11685
Joined: 15 Jan 2015
Location: The NorthWoods, CT, USA

28 Feb 2022

ScuzzyEye wrote:
26 Feb 2022
The problems with Reason starts with one, navigation. There's no quick shortcuts to zoom to a particular song's audio. That makes workflow slow. But the real problem comes with writing the audio to disk. Reason has no export region option other than export loop. That means you have to move the loop markers to each song's region and then export that loop. Then move the markers and do the next. You can use blocks to mark your sections, but there's still a lot of manual work to get the track length exports.
To the first ‘problem’, click on song/clip, “Shift - Z”
To the second, click on clip/song, “command - L”, export loop.
I don’t have any issue not being able to zoom out to see the entire album sequence, not sure what functionality is lost by not being able to do this?
Selig Audio, LLC

User avatar
ScuzzyEye
Moderator
Posts: 1402
Joined: 15 Jan 2015
Contact:

28 Feb 2022

selig wrote:
28 Feb 2022
To the first ‘problem’, click on song/clip, “Shift - Z”
To the second, click on clip/song, “command - L”, export loop.
I don’t have any issue not being able to zoom out to see the entire album sequence, not sure what functionality is lost by not being able to do this?
The first one, great. I missed that shortcut back when I was trying to use Reason for mastering. The only reason I want to be able to zoom out all the way, is to be able to to select a different clip to zoom to as I"m jumping around. But mostly I'd be going next/previous song.

As for the second, it doesn't exactly solve the problem of export region not equaling the clip length. Basically silence before or after a song. But as I was typing this, I realized you can expand the imported audio's head and tail to add silence to it.

The one case that Reason doesn't handle well, is cross-fading between tracks on an album. Proper x-fades only work when clips are on the same track, but then you can't set per-song mastering chains. Having each song on it's own track, and setting a fade-out of the previous and a fade-in of the next will work if you get them overlapped in the right place. That will mess with setting the loop to the clip and exporting loop though. You won't get a series of songs that fade into each other. You'll get repeated audio if you're using the master out, and no x-fade if you're bouncing the clip. CD-Burn.DDP.Master, Reaper, and Studio One Projects all handle continuous play albums where one song fades into the next, but still can export each song as its own wave file, because song start and end aren't tied to imported audio start and end.

User avatar
selig
RE Developer
Posts: 11685
Joined: 15 Jan 2015
Location: The NorthWoods, CT, USA

28 Feb 2022

ScuzzyEye wrote:
28 Feb 2022
The one case that Reason doesn't handle well, is cross-fading between tracks on an album. Proper x-fades only work when clips are on the same track, but then you can't set per-song mastering chains. Having each song on it's own track, and setting a fade-out of the previous and a fade-in of the next will work if you get them overlapped in the right place. That will mess with setting the loop to the clip and exporting loop though. You won't get a series of songs that fade into each other. You'll get repeated audio if you're using the master out, and no x-fade if you're bouncing the clip. CD-Burn.DDP.Master, Reaper, and Studio One Projects all handle continuous play albums where one song fades into the next, but still can export each song as its own wave file, because song start and end aren't tied to imported audio start and end.
Indeed, but that style of album is always a bit tricky since it only ever sounds 100% "right" if played top to bottom. Probably why Prince did the one song ID trick on LoveSexy… ;)
In those cases I would do the same thing I used to do in Pro Tools, using Blocks in Reason instead of Markers in Pro Tools. With Blocks in place for each song, you just click on a block, hit Command-L, and export loop. Same as before but now you click on a block instead of an audio clip. This is actually WAY easier since you just scroll across the top and select/export/repeat.
I also use this method when doing 'library' tracks were you need to generate 6-10 versions of each song. So I just use Blocks for each 'version' in the timeline, select/loop/export as before. Very handy, actually!
Selig Audio, LLC

User avatar
ScuzzyEye
Moderator
Posts: 1402
Joined: 15 Jan 2015
Contact:

28 Feb 2022

selig wrote:
28 Feb 2022
Indeed, but that style of album is always a bit tricky since it only ever sounds 100% "right" if played top to bottom. Probably why Prince did the one song ID trick on LoveSexy… ;)
In those cases I would do the same thing I used to do in Pro Tools, using Blocks in Reason instead of Markers in Pro Tools. With Blocks in place for each song, you just click on a block, hit Command-L, and export loop. Same as before but now you click on a block instead of an audio clip. This is actually WAY easier since you just scroll across the top and select/export/repeat.
I also use this method when doing 'library' tracks were you need to generate 6-10 versions of each song. So I just use Blocks for each 'version' in the timeline, select/loop/export as before. Very handy, actually!
That style of album has also fallen out of style since people stopped buying albums and listening to individual tracks. Way back in the late '90s when I started ripping CDs and building a library of songs I could play randomly I discovered how much I disliked songs that started with the end of another song.

I did mention the Block trick for marking song regions outside of the imported audio. One drawback to that is if the songs are different tempos (which almost always going to be the case). You're going to have to automate the tempo of the mastering project to each part of the project matches the underlying song. Because blocks can only be exact quarter notes in length. Even then with the tempo set, you may not be able to get the exact start and end points that you want. (Or maybe you could set the tempo to something like 600 bpm to get really fine grained quarter notes.)

User avatar
raymondh
Posts: 1776
Joined: 15 Jan 2015

01 Mar 2022

On the continuous mix / cross fades between tracks approach, Reason is quite capable at doing that.

I used Reason to master an album I made from discrete tracks where I wanted overlapping transitions. To do this;
- A few tracks I went back in and extended the intro riffs and outros, so I had more to work with
- In a few cases I needed to create 'bridging tracks - small arrangements that would create transitions where the two main tracks were either in a different key or different tempos.
- I used Selig Gain to automate the fades. I use Selig Gain a lot for level automation, super handy.

In case any interest, I'll repost the "continuous mix" album on the Music forum rather than polluting this thread.

User avatar
ScuzzyEye
Moderator
Posts: 1402
Joined: 15 Jan 2015
Contact:

01 Mar 2022

raymondh wrote:
01 Mar 2022
Did you use just one audio track and overlap the songs to create the cross-fades, or did you put each song on a different audio track for each song?

It can definitely be done, either way in fact, just it isn't as easy or as obvious (when using the one track per song) to create the cross-fade points as it is in dedicated mastering tools that are set up from the start to do this.

Post Reply
  • Information
  • Who is online

    Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 9 guests