Reference Tracks in Mastering | Are You Listening? | S2 Ep2
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- čas přidán 23. 07. 2024
- #areyoulistening #izotope #audiomastering #ozone
Track referencing is an invaluable mastering tool that allows you an objective opportunity to check whether your track is closing in on the ideal dynamics and vibe you’re going for. Follow along as iZotope Education Director and professional mastering engineer Jonathan Wyner guides you through best practices for using reference tracks in your next mastering session.
00:38 Referencing definition and overview
10:57 How to find good reference tracks for mastering
11:49 How to use mastering references
16:41 How to think about level and tone with mastering references
20:11 What to do first with mastering references
22:19 Signs of a great reference
Listen to our curated reference track playlist on Spotify: open.spotify.com/playlist/2CQ...
Get caught up on essential mastering skills with season 1: izo.to/2ExRcw4
Demo Ozone free for 10 days: izo.to/36P580C - Hudba
What are your go-to reference tracks? Let us know in the comments!
I liked the references that Dave Pensado shared years ago here: czcams.com/video/_5PK8Wa8suQ/video.html
Please supply us with reference track for Bollywood pop songs
czcams.com/video/IHIy2DcgHKY/video.html : i find this one amusing.
Even tho Im a hip hop artist I've been referencing with halseys "graveyard" halseys mixes are seriously 🔥🔥🔥 I gotta start looking up songs similar to mine tho
Basically the whole Green Day stuff. Most likely from the Album "Warning" and "American Idiot".
I never comment on videos on CZcams, but thank you Izotope. Not only for the educational knowledge, but the courtesy of making this public and not charging for it. Mad respect.
This man and this YT series is straight up downloading decades of wisdom into our brains, I love it!
Jon Hopkins is someone that I constantly go to for reference tracks. Whether it’s in mixing or mastering. Emerald Rush by him is a great example of a track that I think is mixed and mastered immaculately. It’s song song that you can get lost in
agree, Hopkins is like 20 years ahead of everybody else.
After months of poking around, I've found my new guru. So well done, perfectly paced. Thank you.
Not only did I learn so much about what a reference track is and how to use it in mastering, but I really appreciated and enjoyed Jonathan's calming and instructive delivery. That and the example track set the right tone for my Saturday morning :-)
A pleasure as always listening to Jonathan Wyner sharing his mastering gems.
God bless this dude, he teaches so much! (More than my music teacher will do in an entire year haahhahaha)
Thank you IZotope, and tank you Jonathan for the awesome video. Looking forward for the next one!
I could watch this guy's videos all day long. Excellent, excellent job. Thank you!
This is a really great series. So glad I have stared following it. Thank you.
Love these videos, thank y'all so much! Learning a ton.
EXCELLENT video. I really enjoy these! The only comment that I have is that I would love to have seen more modern rock, indie, alt rock in the spotify playlist of your favorite mastering reference tracks (I only count two tracks....but LOTS of electronic music). My go-tos in that category include basically anything done by Dave Collins....Soundgarden Superunknown, Weezer Rattitude, The Police Synchronicity, etc. Thanks again for the content!
One of my favorite References is "Come as You Are" by Eric Benét. The background vocals clarity is amazing
Insightful stuff Jonathan, thank you!
20:14 This is such a great idea, to source a reference track on the monitors. I've been doing this for 20 years now with great results. Some people thought I was crazy for doing this.. until they heard the end results.
Rope by the Foo Fighters the clarity and sense of depth an openness but still has a rawness and edginess about it thank you for your insight
This is great! Im going to use your words wisely and share this to friends! Im also going to send you a track i recently made. Thank you again for this video, it was very helpful!
Thank you so much. This was really helpful and clarified for me, that I cannot reference to MP3s. When I heard the Comodores' 'United' album, I thought that it was very well mastered and I do use tracks from that as reference. However, I do find that, all though I am an R&B/Soul songwriter, I cannot always use that album for referencing. This in the main, I believe, is because I only use about five instruments: Vocals, Guitar, Bass, Drums and Keys, with the guitar being my main instrument. It is hard to find R&B/Soul music that uses a lot of guitars, if any at all, which makes my mixes useless most of the time.
Thank you! Best wideo about mastering. Thank you!
What a valuable content. This is gold, listen carefully.
Thanks, just bought an subscribtion to tidal in stead of spotify. And im surprised it actually sound cleaner and wider. I will just record that in to my reference session in reaper and use it in parallel project while mixing
Toy Matinee Last Plane Out is a great reference track. The sound, the performance and arrangement are amazing.
Thanks for this video and thanks for sharing the Spotify playlist with us! very helpful!
My go-to reference track for pop is the New Rules by Dua Lipa. The bass on this one is controlled beautifully. This is also a track that will reveal if there's a bass issue in your room. There's a bass sweep somewhere at the beginning of the song that would have to stay at the same level if your room is well acoustically treated.
For underground electronic sound I like to use See Mi Yah by Rhythm & Sound. Fantastically balanced mix and master. Not the loudest master, but again - well balanced!
One thing I noticed though, when using Tonal Balance is that a lot of hip-hop tracks I like and use for referencing does not follow TB's suggestion curve. One being A Lot by 21 Savage. I wonder if anyone else experienced the same thing?
rhythm & sound forever
Great info!
For rock, I typically use LynchMob- Wicked Sensation (Max Norman produced)
And Queensryche-Empire
For alternative stuff, I use Police-Synchronicity or Amanda Marshall-Tuesday’s Child
Amazing video! Thank you so so much. I'm learning so much
Neat with codec preview. I was thinking about rendering to low bitrate MP3 but it's much more convenient when the plugin already can do that on the fly.
The Storm - Tedeschi Trucks Band. This band, song, mix, and mater are all incredible
Thank you Jonathan Wyner
This is a great series!
Great stuff Jonathan. Thanks for sharing. =)
Thank You! Great Tutorial!
great vid!
This is a great primer on CODEC distortion, Jonathan!
this is the best demo song on this series so far I recon
i love this steve martins brother guy !
My go to reference track would have to be Deadmau5 feat. Chris James - The Veldt, mainly because it was my favorite track for a very long time and probably the first lossless audio file I ripped from a CD. I would take that track with me to test out any studio headphones, surround sound systems, even tested it in those teen years helping friends choose/set up big woofers for their cars, basically any audio equipment I was interested in so I know how it sounds on everything and hopefully how that translates on my studio set up :)
These are so good.
I honestly
excellent. thanks jonathan.
I think some of the Michael Jackson masters are great. From Thriller, Dangerous is especially a favorite and hallmark album and even later stuff. He always had exceptional talent and gear working on his material so those tracks are high fidelity if you find them in the right format. They are like a window into the rich sounds of the equipment and production techniques in the 80's and 90's with a very talented artist that blended genres.
Rammstein "Deutschland"-Super Work!
fantastic job
Really helpful as usual!! Just wondering, where does everybody find and download reference tracks to put inside their projects??
very nice, thanks!
I really like the song used in this video!!!
Cool video. Loved the tip about tuning your ears to refmixes
While setting up.
My references, I keep coming back to them a lot,
During the years and over different speakers....
Circus by Britney Spears especially for the low end.
Must be dreaming by Froufrou, that is Imogene Heap
The main thing by RoxyMusic mixed by Bob Clearmountain
I just started a new ref playlist on youtube for myself.
Every time i hear something that sounds great, i add that
To that playlist and sometimes that is just an intro to a tedtalk
But with a great mix :-)
Thanks, Jonathan, for great mastering lectures! I would recommend to listen to Antonio Farao Trio - Domi album (2011). It is a great example of how to mix and master a jazz trio.
Jonathan Wyner could explain 'War & Peace' to a class of 3rd Graders and have them understand it! He's that great of a teacher.
Great video into mastering, with your tempered knowledge; someday I may reach the level of mastery of a mastering engineer. By the way, I love your shirt. 😃
Great! Thanks!:)
Great video! Is there a Classical curve in Tonal Balance Control 2? I’m not seeing it on my list, but I see it in this video.
Thank you for this episode. Leave House by Caribou, any track on the new FKA Twigs album (Magdalene) and Kothek by Klaus Grobe
8:42 Actually, I know people who find the sound of these artifacts "pleasant". A friend once told me that he likes to listen to one song from youtube more than in lossless. These artifacts are a kind of "exciter". A similar phenomenon can be observed with bad AD (analog to digital) converters, people listen to music at an increased sampling rate and they like it much more than the standard 44.1, the thing is that they hear intermodulation distortion which their hearing interprets as "brighter high frequencies".
I was thinking the MP3 codec actually sounded better it was louder and punchier imo
I did a a blind test with a room full of friends (not musicians/producers) and most went for the Mp3 🤪over the wav
There's a theory (possibly with no factual basis) that TikTok's encoder adds some magic dust that excites the brains of under-15s, but that is either undetectable or annoying to fully-functioning adults.
Loving the series Jonathan. Might I suggest you add Paranoid Android, Weird Fishes & Nude by Radiohead to your list. Cheers.
6:00 nice
This is another fantastic, incredibly valuable video from Jonathan Wyner. I have been watching all of these videos lately and I would have to say that these are, on the whole, the very best resources for mastering that are available (for free!) on CZcams. Jonathan's "philosophy" of mastering, as exemplified here, is so well-rounded, informative and truthful. It's an additional bonus that it is communicated with such empathy, grace and humility--making it rather addictive content for anyone that is passionate about the mastering process yet is still eager for improvement..
Just to add to the reference list, I think many of Pat Metheny's records, especially since "Still Life Talking", are great for music that is in that, perhaps rather unique, jazz/instrumental realm. In general, these recordings are so detailed and perfected, top to bottom, that the musical art itself is extremely optimized for listeners by these incredible captures, mixes and masters. The EMC stuff is also great, perhaps in other ways, but the "modern" Pat records clearly set a benchmark for acoustic, instrumentally-based music, in general, that represents a body of work very worthy of aspiring to, almost regardless of what genre you may tend to be involved in as an engineer. The essential ideal of engineering, mixing and mastering should be to make the artwork being worked on communicate or translate to the listener with maximum artistic/aesthetic integrity and emotional wallop. On these diverse recordings, I would argue that this has been achieved with incredible success. As an aside, it's terribly sad to lose Lyle Mays recently. What a singular talent--that will be sorely missed.
Jon is izotope mvp
I work on classical music exclusively. I own Ozone 9 Advanced and notice that in every Ozone tutorial I see that references Tonal Balance Control there is a Classical preset and an Orchestral preset. In my installation I only see Orchestral. Does anyone know if the Classical preset was removed, or perhaps replaced by the Orchestral preset? It may be that the creators of the tutorials have had previous versions of Tonal Balance Control and so have presets from the previous versions.
That big warm light is blinding for side shots.
where can one find the spotify artist/son list of references that Jonathan Wyner uses?
Ixora by Copeland they made 2 different versions of the same album and if you play them in sync on an 8 speaker sound system preferably you get there 3rd version of the record.
What's the name of the song that you're mastering in the video?? I really like it!
Thanks
Great
Anyone could suggest some good references for piano recordings ? Both felted or "standard" ? :)
still confused (as many others) about this Tone Balance control...as you put it, it would tell how the frequencies are distributed in the spectrum...but on a previous explanation I understood it was to determine the balance of instruments...meaning that a guitar or equivalent sounding items may needs to be accentuated in the mix (not by altering the EQ of the mix itself) ,meaning that if e sound track consists of just drums and bass we still be able to get informed on their Tonal Balance...would be nice to get some clarifications please.
Thank you, ;-)
great
What about all those "remastered" version of albums that are flooding the market recently.
I have a Remastered CD of a record from 1991. The volume has been changed and I think a tone slightly as well. Unfortunately I can't get my hands on the original pressing at the moment...
Do you think the remastered versions make a good reference tracks?
I need a desk like that. But yeah...im listening . lol
Robbie Robertson - Go Back To Your Woods
Liz Wright - Salt
EDM: Black Coffee - Inkodlo Kamashimane & The Beat of Indlamu
Liquid bloom tracks for reference in psychill genre
Great tips, I have a question
when I use reference songs from ITunes, is it better to purchase a song then import into ozone or just stream song direct from ITunes I have a few cds to however sometimes I stream when I can’t find something. I‘m also owner of ozone 9
Hi! The best reference material is CD quality or higher WAV, AIFF, or FLAC files. It is generally not a great idea to listen to an MP3 or iTunes compressed AAC as your reference file since there will be missing audio data. That said, you can import most types of lossless files from your iTunes folder into Ozone's reference section. While you can stream it from iTunes while Ozone is open, you won't have the ability to gain match via iTunes whereas Ozone you can match the level of your reference to your master.
@@iZotopeOfficial Ok Thanks
Jonathan and Izotope, What service do you reccomend buying good refs from?
The Spotify list has been spammed. Can we get the original somewhere?
I mostly do metal, but I'm not a fan of a "modern" metal production or masters. Something from the mid-late 90s or early 2000s is generally quite decent. Either that or I just go for the yardstick and using something off of Metallica's Black Album, which to me still sounds incredible, and retains all the dynamics and dark vibes that the genre needs.
Ledisi Christmas Album, also Janita Seasons of Life album
Do some use ref tracks in BOTH the mix and mastering stages?
You should, IMHO)
Future Sound Of London : ISDN album ambient but brilliant sounding record
Boris Blank &Malina :covergrnce album excellent master
Miles Davis&John Lee Hooker :The HotspotSoundrack
I dont know why , but i love this grandpa
hey jonathan..please listen to eric johnson...manhatten!
In the Waiting Line by Zero 7
Where do you find an unprocessed reference track?
This song is great, beautiful full sound and spacing. The Mommyheads last few albums have been amazingly produced, they really fill your head.
czcams.com/video/L5QDbS53u6k/video.html
Also Andy Shauf's last few albums, especially his latest - The Party.
It's incredible how a well mixed (and mastered) song just feels right - it connects with your emotions like a well made piece of art. Sadly, we usually notice the badly done stuff more and don't praise the good!
Thank you so much for these last couple of series of videos. I love the way you teach, it makes so much sense and makes me feel like I can create quality work even though I am not a pro. Izotope is a great place for your skills because their products do the same for me, they simplify really difficult tasks an make my music sound great. Thanks again!
What's the name of the song used in this video?
Small Victory by Transviolet
@@donsmith1563 thanks bro 🙏
Yeah mp3 @ 128kbps is pretty shitty but any modern decent lossy codec (and using one of the better encoders available like lame for mp3 or qaac for mac, etc...) at +224kbps is pretty damn good FOR LISTENING PURPOSES.
Sure when you filter difference out between a lossy an lossless version and then also gain that output so it's more audible it will sound horrible, but that's not really fair. That's not how your brain will perceive it, which is the whole point of good lossy codecs, they only take out what your ears/brain will notice the least.
With a good codec and using high quality settings even audio engineers don't hear the difference at +256kbps in A-B tests.
But, yeah, never ever use lossy compression in production material... only use it for listening of a FINISHED track and keep the lossless version in case you want to remaster/remix/edit it.
I've been buying references from Qobuz.com lately. They offer 44.1 16 Bit lossless files including wav and even 24 Bit high res files.
What platform is ever gonna be streaming music in 24 bit hi res atm. I don't think any of them even use wavs
Frances "I care"
Top Mastering reference I use are
Gone - Great good fine ok
Shes American - The 1975
Daddy - Coldplay
Wont Look Back - Josh Groban
the cut at the end of mp3s ive referencesdhas caused me a lot of wrong decisions..
Fleetwood Mac - Rumours is the penultimate reference album. Perfect example
That shirt though!?
In Rainbows (Weird Fishes) - Radiohead, Absent Sounds (Label This Love/Fog) - From Indian Lakes
9:35 don't feel surprised if you can't hear any diffrence. Because you're already listenning to 128kbps audio on CZcams.
It's a little bit odd that there are such volume differences between the voiceover and the featured music in a video about mastering...
question... how old is everyone watching?
Thanks for explaining mastering so well. There are a lot of great tips in this video!