Free Instant Mastering - LANDR.com

chrisj1602

Not sure if this has been posted before.  They offer free mp3 mastering as well as paid subscriptions.

www.landr.com

guitarfishbay

I've heard of this before, but never tried it.  I'm very dubious to be honest!  Have you tried it?

Fuzzdog

I threw a few varied tracks at LANDR when it came out - I was very, very sceptical, but ended up being very, very surprised, even with the free low quality versions.

I've heard a lot worse mastering from human beings who received money to do it, put it that way.  It's not perfect, and I'd rather either tweak the mastering myself or pay someone awesome to do it, but feed it a reasonably balanced mix and it's pretty damn good. 

chrisj1602

I tried one demo from my old band and didn't hear that much of an improvement, but then I tried another demo that I felt was mixed a bit quiet and weak sounding and the difference was massive, a huge improvement.

digitalscream

Just tried a couple of my writing demos (really basic - two guitars, bass and drums) on the free version, and it really brought them alive. I'm actually pretty impressed...might give the pro version a try when our album's back from the mixing dude. The free version does seem to over-compress a bit (I noticed a tiny bit of pulsing), but given that you can vary the intensity on the pro version that's probably easily solved.

digitalscream

OK, some comparisons for those of you who are curious but haven't tried it out yet:

Assassins (unmastered)

Assassins (mastered from MP3)

Bled (unmastered)

Bled (mastered from MP3)

Note that these aren't the absolute final mixes; they'll still be tweaked a bit. Don't judge too harshly

I think it does a pretty good job of it; in fact, it's entirely possible we'll be signing up and using it for the album (depending on how all the other tracks come out).

guitarfishbay

@digitalscream the mastered links aren't working for me

digitalscream

Fixed - sorry about that.

guitarfishbay

Ok I'll check them out properly when I get home.

I guess I could also do an A/B/C with my mix, a pro master, and the LANDR master.  I don't really like the guitar tones on my recent mixes though, but I guess that isn't the point here!

chrisj1602

digitalscream said:

OK, some comparisons for those of you who are curious but haven't tried it out yet:

Assassins (unmastered)

Assassins (mastered from MP3)

Bled (unmastered)

Bled (mastered from MP3)

Note that these aren't the absolute final mixes; they'll still be tweaked a bit. Don't judge too harshly

I think it does a pretty good job of it; in fact, it's entirely possible we'll be signing up and using it for the album (depending on how all the other tracks come out).

They sound great.

Branshen

It's hard to make an unbiased decision because the louder track will always sound better. 

digitalscream

Branshen said:

It's hard to make an unbiased decision because the louder track will always sound better. 

True, but that's kind of the point. It's still possible to make a decision based on preference, although I get what you're saying...our drummer's going to run it through his mastering suite when we get the final mixes, and we can do a proper comparison.

Cirrus

Mastering is part technical and part artistic. The two go hand in hand here. Example: If a track is dull compared to the rest of an album, a mastering engineer might well make it brighter so it sounds better and fits in with the rest of the tracks.

But what if the track is supposed to sound dull in a deliberate artistic decision on the part of the production team? A human mastering engineer will be able to use his intuition based on what they hear and what the mixer tells him their intentions were. An automated program can't do that, it's only got one definition of right.

digitalscream

Well, yes - however, if you need that kind of detail, you wouldn't be looking at this in the first place

The pro version does have some scope tweakability, but it's not going to be right for every situation..

PVO_Dave

Thought I'd have a go with this, was messing around with a track from my old band, I re-recorded the guitar parts and chucked through LANDR, weird volume artefact at the start aside, I think it sounds pretty good, I'm running it though again, see the volume thing is still there.

Before:

Choking My Ambitions (Non master)

After:

Choking My Ambitions (LANDR)

Moe_Zambeek

PVO_Dave - the first 10 seconds had me worried there

PVO_Dave

Moe_Zambeek said:

PVO_Dave - the first 10 seconds had me worried there

Hopefully you didn't turn it up too much