I think I can hear it too. But it’s not clipping or anything, just some weird noise after the kickdrum if my hearing is right.
Here is original, the part in the snippet starts about 1:40
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/40253010/tallinn_subway_unmastered.mp3
I understand this “don’t have time” though. Because if you take 15 euros per track you must finish the track in like 15 minutes to actually make some money. If you spend more time on it you are already losing money.
I kind of like the one byMelograf a slightly bit more, it catches the orchestral epic mood a bit better. The XLmastering one is more brilliant at the high end, but also kind of harsh at the same time and almost too brilliant, also sounds quite cold over all, like a run over a frozen lake of crushed ice - so to speak 
I’ll try the Melograph too as it’s obviously not going to work out with XLMastering.
imho “online mastering” is a crock. I’d recommend spending the money on an engineer who allows you to attend the mastering session.
i say download ozone 5 and call it a day. you can master yourself. Hell some of the presets are like WOW THAT SOUNDS BETTER
It’s pretty much what you pay for is what you get. For 15 euros you only get 15 minutes of the mastering guys time. For more you get more and that probably dictates the quality of the service. But then again, everyone decides their budget of a track and let’s be honest a personal mastering guy who is going to ask you to his studio does not meet the budget of most tracks people throw around here.
It really depends on a situation. And there are plenty of guys who just want throw some polish on their tracks with minimal spending, so there definitely is a place for those conveyorbelt mastering services, whether one should use them or not is really a personal decision everyone should make themselves.
ok but that’s not mastering. That’s paying some douche with ozone and an internet connection to run a preset on your song.
Indeed, you get what you pay for.
and It’s true these are personal decisions but just be aware of reality.
Traditional mastering is typically something you do to a collection of music… not an individual song. Asking an engineer to master a single track would be like taking your car to the shop dealer and asking them to rotate one tire. They’ll gladly do it, but they also might tell you your headlight fluid needs changing.
If you pay an engineer to “master” your song the engineer already knows off the bat you’re a n00b so don’t be shocked when they tell you you’re wasting their time when you want corrections made!
Save your money and do it right. In the end your songs are chosen for a release that release (if it’s a quality one) will be sent for mastering, in which case they will need the original UNMASTERED song so they can do it right, the first time without wasting your time or causing extra expense.
My reasons of trying out those mastering places and stuff is currently purelt scientific. First of all, I usually “master” my own songs, I actually have Ozone and I can use it somehwat. I was just trying to see what professionals can do with my music, so I could maybe learn something from them. Have a reference sound for my own stuff.
Also I am looking for a reasonably priced mastering for an album I am working on. The online mastering services offer various levels of flexibility. Those cheap ones like XLMastering are obviously out of the question for any serious work. But I have mastered some releases before on similar services with relatively good results.
It really depends on the people behind the service. Not the definition of mastering service itself.
I gotcha, but think of what better information you’d get from a professional engineer who will let you attend the session. Even if you are on a budget - $100-$150 USD for 1 hour of a pro engineers time spent on 10 mins of music will be money better spent than spending 100 bucks to have 10 tracks “mastered” by some dude hiding behind a web site who doesn’t want you to know he’s just running your trax through presets.
Cadence,
Unless your track was recorded and mixed at 88.2khz there is nothing gained by rendering to 88.2khz. All you’d be accomplishing is adding resolution after the fact and doubling your file size in the process.
Just because you’ve added decimal points, “10.000000” is no more precise than saying “10” even though you’ve added zeros to it.
If we are talking about Renoise (or just computer) music here, it’s never actually “recorded” by definition. If you have studied DSP a bit, you are aware of the reasons behind oversampling. Now adding a professional downsampling, and you most likely will get a better sound than just rendering directly to 44.1kHz.
This holds true even if the recorder source material is 44.1, but you use digital effects like reverb or compressor on the track.
How big are the differences depends on a lot of factors. The reason why the cheap mastering services don’t care about them is because the files are bigger and if they spend a total of 15 minutes with your track, it’s not gonna matter anyway. And either way 88.2 isn’t enough anyway, you should use at least 4 times oversampling.
Also warning: If you want to use these high sample rates then you should get yourself an expensive sound card and do everything on high sample rate. Including tracking and mixing. Because most of the plugins are not really transparent to the samplerate. They behave differently on different sampling frequencies and thus can sound completely different. Doing everything at 44.1 and then rendering to 192 may end up with a bad surprise.
I was thinking the same but Waves not Ozone.
Actually had a producer friend of mine saying how he’s got himself the Waves package now and “can make his music sound professionally mastered with a few clicks of the mouse.” 
Okay, got result back from Melograf. One thing is sure that this version is not clipping or crackling anywhere. 
Also it sounds more transparent. XLMastering made my mids tighter, not sure I liked that, because there is some nice sound going on in there that gives the song it’s atmosphere. What ever the case, here is the version by melograf:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/40253010/tallinn_subway-tallinn_subway.mp3
Personally, I like how it sounds. I was just listening to some commercial music from iTunes, and once your piece started playing it sounded very similar. I wouldn’t notice any difference in the sound quality when your music started playing, if I didn’t consciously start your music. Having said that, it doesn’t necessary mean that it sounds the way you wanted it to sound. And that’s the main problem with online mastering, I think. The mastering person can make it sound “good”, but the definition of “good” is different to different people.
I like online mastering now that I tried it. I hear other people here saying that it is a waste of money, and the right way to do it is to go to a professional mastering studio and have some input in the mastering process. But this is not a viable option for people like me, who are just amateurs, struggling to squeeze in some time between work and other chores to compose some music. I set the bar for mastering pretty low: I just want it to sound loud enough so that people don’t have to crank up the volume like crazy, I want it to sound reasonably good on all kinds of speakers and headphones, and I want all the instruments to sound as clear as possible. I don’t have speakers for monitoring, I don’t know much about mastering process from technical point of view, and my tinnitus doesn’t help matters too Too often music mastered by myself sounded good only on my own computer, but when I listened to them on my iPad or in my car, it was terrible. Now that XLMastering mastered my music, it sounds reasonably well everywhere I listen to it, and this is the kind of service that is definitely worth 15 Euro to me.
Well for one thing I like the result. It’s really transparent as I said. I can still hear all the sounds as I intended, yet the levels are all correct now and it sounds professional. Also the guy from Melograf was apparently willing to do revisions or so it seemed from the email with the preview he sent. Also on the page it says that if you want specific sound then let him know. Don’t know how flexible the process is in reality, cause I didn’t try it out.
As for XLMastering, I won’t be using that service again. If he can’t hear a glitch which is so clearly there, I doubt both his skills as a mastering technician and the quality of his equipment. I checked with 3 different computers, many different players, 4 different headphones/speakers, even applied lowpass to bring the level down, reversed the stereo channels, played only one stereo channel, the crackling is still very much there, so it’s not just in my head.
I’d just like to say to people that unless you have gods ears I’d avoid self-mastering your own track for release. There’s a few reasons I say this.
-
You’re too damn close to it.
You’ve already sprayed your eq taste all over it and your eq taste may lack a bit of sparkle or you might dislike 500Hz or something, let some fresh ears have a go. -
You’re a biological machine
Which means your ears are, albeit only microscopically different to everyone elses so you may well have some frequency gaps. -
You don’t know everything
And while you may know better than the masterer in some areas there are others where you won’t.
There are two people I’ve always wanted to try because I’m a fan of their music (but haven’t quite gotten to the point where I’m satisfied enough with my music to justify it) -
Keith Kenniff (Goldmund, Helios, Mint Julep) : Unseen | Composer Keith Kenniff
Mike Wells (1/2 of Gridlock - the industrial/idm group, not the dnb guy) : http://www.mikewellsmastering.com/
Added benefit for renoise-ers is they’re both really good electronic musicians (in addition to just being good musicians), so they’re probably a bit more sensitive to your aesthetic.
Having been mastered by him I can vouch for what a phenomenal job he does. And it’s all analogue gear too.