Help please - be brutal.

[NancyJohnson]

Morning bonny lads...need a bit of help.

My band have recorded about 40 songs which are in mastering at the moment - we're pushing this up to Spotify etc as three albums, rather than going Sandanista! on yo'asses.  We've recorded this remotely, singer down on the coast near Littlehampton, me and the guitarist/producer live about five miles from each other and are recording in spare rooms.  We've kind of hit a wall with mastering, guitarist is obsessing with an odd few db here and there and all of us pitching is with stuff (strangely enough, I've not asked for the bass to be louder anywhere).

I'd be grateful if (should you have a minute or 120) if you could dip into the Dropbox link below and have a listen to the files LS1/LS2/LS3 Tracks in Sequence (these are all single track MP3s containing 12-13 songs each, each one is about 40 minutes long) and tell me how you think they sound; they're 320KBPS MP3s, so comparable with what you'd get on Spotify/Apple/Amazon.  If you want to do a bit of a comparison, there's a further file 'LS1 First 4 Tracks Mastered' that is the first four tracks of the Tracks In Sequence file remastered down a few db.

Be brutal.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/2c2m8jd6tf5imxt/AABWyNBPTfT8bsdBsPDMt_JQa/NEW_MIXES?dl=0&lst=&subfolder_nav_tracking=1

@hiram.k.hackenbacker @Al Krow and @Wolverinebass have been helpful previously, so just tagging them here.

Thanks
 

Edited March 15, 2021 by NancyJohnson

[Dad3353]

56 minutes ago, NancyJohnson said:

...Be brutal...

Brutal..? With my cloth ears, can't be anything but..! I listened to Lst 1, by skipping through, with headphones at first, then through my modest monitors. I then compared to the 'mastered' four tracks. With headphones, there's a serious lack of bass in the balance, but this is largely corrected through monitors. I'd assume, then, that the bass is in general EQ'ed rather towards the low end. The mastered versions are noticeably improved in relation one track to another, with a more regular dispersion of frequencies, better to listen to in general. Difficult to say how this will reflect on the whole list (there is quite some difference in level between the tracks of Lst 1...), but if the levels of the first four are maintained throughout, this disparity should disappear. I don't know how these will sound through car speakers; I'd guess that there would be a lack of bass there. The other instruments and vocals blend well, but the bass doesn't cut through on lesser systems.
I haven't listened to Lst 2 or 3 yet; not really much point without comparing to the mastered versions, though. The link is dead now; are you updating the files..?

[NancyJohnson]

8 minutes ago, Dad3353 said:

I haven't listened to Lst 2 or 3 yet; not really much point without comparing to the mastered versions, though. The link is dead now; are you updating the files..?

The producer must have taken the files down.  I'll update when I have a new one.

[Sibob]

Presumably the band sent reference recordings (ie recordings/albums you like the sound of) to the mastering engineer before they started?
If so then, if the engineer isn’t hitting those preferences, wrong engineer for you?

Mastering by committee is not likely to get you finished very soon....or at all haha.

Si