Let's be honest - many tutorials out there just aren't very good to begin with. What i mean is, some of those creators don't gatekeep, they just don't know any better.

We still need that "don't use busses (except drums)" video!!! Thanks

You are one of, if not the least gatekeeping audio engineers on KZfaq. And that is exactly why I watch so many more of your videos than even people like Warren Huart, Dave Pensado and Ian Shepherd.

I have mixed feelings about the comment. It seems like the commenter expects people to post a checklist or "just do this" kind of video to learn mastering in one fell swoop. That isn't possible any more than it's possible to learn to play guitar in an hour. There really isn't any gatekeeping that I've ever seen online for learning basically anything - just people who honestly say that you're going to have to actually do it, make the mistakes, put out bad work, and progressively get better as you try more and more things. That's not gatekeeping. That's just reality. A lot of the specifics were things that I just plain never think about. I own Slick EQ M, and I do use it's one-knob FM curve. Occasionally. In my monitor path. It's a nice alternative to a dim button SOME of the time (other times, you need to feel/hear what something will sound like on quiet speakers). But when I'm EQing a master - literally never. Either I'm going to hear it and create that curve or I'm going to hear something else and create another curve. I grok crest factor, but I don't measure it. I use low-distortion monitoring at a level that lets me hear and feel it. Meters are a "sanity check" and to help explain something you hear but can't quite put your finger on IMHO. MEs absolutely do talk about "band selective compression". You've done it, explained it, and made videos about it in several different contexts to achieve different goals. We also talk about when to use a vari-mu...or any other style of compressor. Yes, it boils down to "when it sounds good". Frankly, with modern production techniques, it's pretty freaking low on the list of things that really matter. I think the funniest thing about people hungering or all these specifics is that they're relatively easy after you get your monitoring sorted out and almost irrelevant without that step. Or, at least, the path to understanding them becomes much more clear when you can really hear what you're doing. You still have to put in the time to analyze and play, but once you start getting really accurate feedback on the results of your "play time", all of these things start to fall into place. Somehow, those videos don't seem to do as well as techniques that seem like a "silver bullet". There is a silver bullet for Mastering. And it's finding monitors (the whole playback system from the DAW to your ears) that let you hear everything you need to hear.

Thanks so much for not holding back. I do appreciate it.

Every time I'm in another person's car...the music they listen to is literally in the frequency range of 200-8k, and all you can hear properly is the vocals, gtr and snare drum. And they are totally fine with it!

People without proper monitoring setup and room and without the ability to crank up their speakers to solid 85 even 90dB are complaining about gatekeeping because they don't hear the difference. When you have a proper monitoring setup it's just obvious and you don't need to believe anyone in a KZfaq video saying "it's sounds better now/always do it/never do that" when you can judge it for yourself right away. On the other hand I see a lot of guys believing blindly in everything that's said by audio youtubers and it's also sad because most probably they can't hear the difference or judge properly on their monitoring setup to know if they're being told something useful or if there's some real BS going on in the video. EDIT I would advise to go to a real, big mastering studio space with great room treatment and some huge ATCs to hear what it's all about. You'll be shocked how much you couldn't hear on your setup. That was my experience when I did that and I've changed my monitoring setup 2 times since then and worked on new techniques of checking my mixes

I think band-selective compression is great - when I need it. Every compressor I use in mastering can do some form of band/frequency selective compression (Kotelnikov GE, DS1 MK3, or Unisum), and I can often make use of it to dial in the compressor to get exactly the movement I'm after instead of really close to the movement I'm after. That said, like any tool you have to learn how to use it and it's very easy to have too much of a good thing and get weird results or forget that you should also consider dynamic EQ or multiband compression. I would say my preference, in order, is for dynamic eq > frequency selective compression > multiband compression, but even that is oversimplifying as I use those different tools for different things. Like Nick is saying, you won't use all these regularly without working on a lot of material.

Great video!!! You are gate keeping 😂 you’re using your ears and not sharing 😂. Give me your ears! That comment is meant to mislead and deceive, where one is weak it’s better to create diverging. I say this because there’s no real perspective nor challenge, just rhetoric. I’m liking this kind of engagement, people can’t fool experience, and experience can see ahead through the BS. Being smart is not required but hands on and practice is!

Despite the value of KZfaq as an educational platform, there are some things better and more efficiently taught through mentorship and experience. Medicine is still largely taught through an extended period of didactics to establish a foundation followed by an APPRENTICESHIP in the form of residency. There is good reason that this hasn’t changed. I don’t think that audio engineering is much different. We can talk about Fletcher-Munson curves and theoreticals but, as you are saying, through experience, those things become intuition.

There is only one secret to success` Putting in the time to gain the experience.

I think because a lot of mastering educational content - including yours - is done on good mixes, we never get to see the problem solving aspect of it and the more exotic solutions, especially when we don't have access to stems. If there was a video series on that then people would see there is no ONE trick, just creativity, problem solving skills, ability to detect problems, knowledge of your listenning environment, knowledge of your tools etc... etc... People also tend to confuse a lot of the knowledge that actually applies while mixing and producing with the knowledge that needs to be applied at mastering cause guess what ? you have a lot more power on how your final result is going to translate and how clean and cohesive it sounds when you're designing the individual tones for each instrument and then when you can process every track separately compared to working on a stereo export. And lastly the FM Curve has to be the less useful bit of audio knowledge to mastering ever, you turn you speaker down, hear how it sounds, turn your speakers up, see how it sounds, we don't need a graph we can experience it directly.

I agree, following too much of the Fletcher Munson curve is dangerous rarely lead to good balanced master. I think it's a good thing to keep it in mind, especially when checking the master at low volume and see if it's grooving with all the important element can still be heard and noticeable. Well according to Fletcher Munson rule, both low and high end will appear quieter balance wise as how our ear isnt sensitive to those area at low volume. I always check that just to make sure the song sounds okay at different listening volume. Still, how one chose to work is totally subjective and open since there is no one definite correct way to do IMO. TDR SlickEQ M has this EL Curve option at the center of the plugin and can sometimes be useful to those that like to work in a quieter environment. Quieter as in below the suggested SPL. I saw a video from Dan Worrall about how to properly use it, but forgot the details because I don't really do that.

Dave Pensado mentions mixing around the fletcher munson curve in a mixwiththemasters video, but rather than having a mysterious plugin for that or whatever, what he means is basically "keeping the curve/how people perceive sound in mind while mixing" Theres really no secret besides keeping in mind how the human ear perceives certain frequencies

Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us in a such a broad spectrum. I really enjoy and appreciate your channel! Don't gatekeep Info from now on you've been busted :D

what ME's are holding back. A good room. a trained ear and experience. you can watch this channel all day and get absolutely nowhere. I can watch a basketball player everyday and know all the rules but that doesn't mean I'm gonna be good at playing the game if I don't train properly.

KZfaq is a great place to learn lots of things, but I feel it sometimes allows people to see learning as a passive consumption rather than something you have to actively seek. Like if you just watch the right videos in the right order you'll be the world's greatest engineer. Learning comes from having these questions when you watch those videos and then going off to do your own research now that you have the words to articulate what you want to know. Go to a forum, read some books, delve into manuals and technical standards. Another thing is that 80% of everything I've learnt from things like youtube tutorials isnt what the video set out to teach, but by picking up on the dozen things the engineer says or does without thinking because it's so ingrained. It's not knowledge they're gatekeeping, it's the stuff thats so foundational after years of practice that they don't need to question it

I use curves, as a guideline. You still need to be able to discern what to remove, what to enhance. A bad mix can be fixed, unless it has too much compression, if it is mostly uncompressed it can be fixed mostly with EQ, that's all it should take. On another note, you can hand your mix to 10 different good mastering engineers, get 10 great results and all of them will be different. So, there is no "key", there is a trained engineer.

instinct + experience = intuition.

When I was young there was no KZfaq to watch, studios were out of question if you didn’t had a lot of money or were extremely talented. I think there is a lot of good information about tracking, mixing and mastering on KZfaq available. Of course there is a lot of b.s. too but if you really want to get confused then I suggest you go and watch some hocus-pocus talk a lot and say nothing videos about acoustic treatment for your low-end 😂

You are truly not gate keeping the core knowledge in mastering. You are actualy passionate about sharing it and it shows. People love to think there is some miracle knowledge they have no access to in mastering, keeping their work average at best, when mastering is a quality control step. They refuse to aknowledge that their relationship with their monitoring system/room is not ideal yet, and don't understand it. It's hard to get mastering level monitoring, it's hard to tune your ears to develop reflexes to fix things with stock plugins and take projects to next level. It's hard and it's not sexy, not as sexy as Fletcher Munson magic curve or Vari-Mu stardust. You summed it right when saying you have to listen to music in same environement for hundreds and thousands of hours to develop this feel about what needs to be done, and that is why you humbly said in previous video if you started a mastering studio in 2024 you would stay in the box. You don't sell that analog "magic" or "special tricks" mentality even though your have access to manley's and dangerous AD+ etc...

To whom it concerns, Fletcher and Munson curve is changing to “phon” measurements, do your due diligence, it’s a rabbit hole and many organizations involved. The old curve still works for me.

These points sound like they should be considered by the creator of the music.

I gotta say reading about fletcher Munson I don't think has ever helped me. I had a 6 month period where all my bass was way too loud because of what I thought FM was telling me to do

Another thing about Fletcher munson curve is it's an Average of all humans (tested). What sounds "good" to any one human may not fit that curve very tightly. Besides, it's not even about what sounds good, it's about the average human perception of equal loudness across the spectrum and music can sound kinda boring when EVERYTHING is the exact same loudness all the time. Contrast and juxtaposition is what music is all about. We ofc don't want wildly differing levels in diferant areas of the spectrum (unless it's a classical peice etc.), but we want what sounds good, not what sounds exactly equally as loud at all points. Imagine the kick drum being as quiet as the swelling background pad, you would barely hear it, or a triangle ting as loud as the snare in a dance track 😮. I mean you might want that, but just as an example. 😂 Also mood plays a big part. A dark and moody track may have a completely diferant freqency responce than a light fluffy happy track.

Watching youtube tutorial and expect to find all the knowledge about sound engineering is the same as expecting to be able to build a bridge after watching a few free tutoriels. "The bridge I built collapsed because the engineers keep gate keeping their knowledge"

Ouch, my ears

I think what this comment is implying as far as the Fletcher munson curve is that if one learns how the FM curve affects our perceived loudness. Then we can manipulate eq in different ways to take advantage of it. AKA louder masters with eq vs limiting and clipping. or in the commentors case of doing a reverse curve probably for too transient rich mixes. and then once you learn the curve well. it might bring insight on how to eq better. maybe..so instead of a cookie cutter use reverse munson curve always in said circumstance. you do it and see how if shifts mixes than are too transient rich and then learn about it. Just my thought i could be wrong.

I think writing down day/month in a video makes it much less successful because many people think that's another strange video from an unknown channel

no offense to this commenter but im guessing hes part of the 99% that cant mix lol ive seen a few people make posts/comments like this also - Am I the only one who just read a whole bunch of nothing? He starts talking about mastering "gate keepers" and how we use a curve LOL then goes ahead to blame 99% of people not knowing how to mix ( which I cant aruge and argee 100%).Does he not realize he answered his own quesiton? Make your mix sound better and now your master will follow. Your Mix will 1000% determine how your master sounds - you want your Master to sound better - Learn to make your Mix Sound better DONT try to figure out how to Fix everything in MASTERING !!! Why would a mastering engineer tell you secrets on how to mix your track better for free lol what hes describing is if all things considered- should be fixed in the MIX. Im guesing he is trying to do everything him self with limietd experince - If he was using a professional engneer he would prob get tips on hey try and do this/ fix this in the mix like i do with my clients so he just wants everything for FREE? go figure !

It’s eye opening how many believe mixing and/or mastering is nothing more than a couple clever tricks, or there’s a secret plugin that unlocks professional results. I understand to a degree, given KZfaq is inundated with channels offering quick tips and plugin chains for trap vocals or similar, because it gets views, and becomes a catch 22. They keep miking that content because people consume it. In reality, Tips and tricks are only useful when you have a solid foundation. Otherwise it’s still a shit mix, just with clever routing

Aint nobody using that complicated bs, treble is louder than bass their your done.