{"id":806,"date":"2021-05-31T20:36:50","date_gmt":"2021-06-01T04:36:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/prodigalsounds.com\/blog\/?p=806"},"modified":"2021-06-01T15:35:23","modified_gmt":"2021-06-01T23:35:23","slug":"mastering-in-cakewalk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prodigalsounds.com\/blog\/2021\/05\/31\/mastering-in-cakewalk\/","title":{"rendered":"Mastering in Cakewalk"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There’s more than one way<\/a> to skin a cat, and other folks<\/a> have talked about this before. The more, the merrier. Here’s how I constructed a project in Cakewalk to re-master a commercial CD. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Problem<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

I have a commercial CD release from 1986 that sounds horrible for several reasons: it was the Age of Digital Reverb and there’s too much of it. Also: it was the Age of Digital Recording, and CDs were new, and when Treble wasn’t something you required analog psycho-trickery<\/a> to extract from magnetic tape. It’s a very shrill mix. I am fond of the actual music, though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was “remastered” back in 2001 when the Loudness Wars<\/a> were in full swing, and the results were… over-compressed and also shrill. What to do? I still have the original CD release from 1986, fortunately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Plan<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Because this is a “re-master” and not a “master”, I’m going to treat all tracks the same way, using a common FX stack. I also want to be able easily to switch back and forth between “effected” and “un-effected” versions, for comparison purposes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When evaluating quality changes of audio, it is important to match effective loudness between the two. This is because our ears think “louder” = “better”. And that’s a problem, because one of the things I will be doing is raising the overall level of the music. The original CD from 1986 is mastered at a fairly low average level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, the plan is to temporarily reduce the volume of the mastering effect chain during the tweaking so that the measured loudness is the same. This will require obtaining a loudness measurement from both signal paths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Process<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

I open a new empty project, and import the audio tracks from the CD. Cakewalk will create a separate audio track for each of the CD tracks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next, I create four stereo busses. The first is named SPLITTER, and I need to set all of the imported audio tracks to direct their output to this bus:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Press Ctrl-A to select all tracks. Then hold down the Ctrl key, and set the Output <\/strong>of one of the tracks to SPLITTER. All highlight tracks will set their Output <\/strong>the same way. (The Ctrl- key creates a “quick group” documented here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other three buses are named MASTER FX, MASTERED, and ORIGINAL.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the SPLITTER bus, I create two Sends: One to MASTER FX, and the other to ORIGINAL. (Both sends’ levels are left at the default of 0 db.)
I set the Output <\/strong>of SPLITTER to “None”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I set the Output <\/strong>of MASTER FX to the MASTERED bus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now I have two duplicate signal paths. Both MASTERED and ORIGINAL continue to direct their Output <\/strong>to the default, a hardware output (called “12” on my system).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The only drawback to this configuration is that Cakewalk will warn us upon opening the project, that SPLITTER is identified as a “Silent Bus”. I prefer the symmetry of the two Sends, rather than using SPLITTER’s own Output, so I pay the price of dismissing this warning dialog. (Feel free to adapt as necessary.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next step is obvious: we add some FX plug-ins to the MASTER FX FX Bin<\/strong>. My tools of choice are from MeldaProduction:<\/p>\n\n\n\n