AAMS works but it only improves on what you put it.

Fair enough, but if it ONLY IMPROVES than why do they give you so many different preset/impulse thingies. If none of them have the ability to make a mix worse, I question their ability to make a mix better. Does that make sense?

Brandon

I still think more emphasis should go into good mixing practice as it's there where all the problems can originate (and tracking) - eliminate or get skilled with them (and spend money on quality plugs there) and the 'mastering' should be more a technical formality than a hit-or-miss guessing game.

Then I'd pop it in harbal, notice (visually) some wild pockets (more so than mad peaks - I guess I am guilty of being over cautious in mixing and tend to cut far more than boost - or did), I'd drag the frequency up a touch, not always hearing wild changes as I went but overall it looked smoother. Then I'd switch the EQ out and it would hit me how BAD my actual pure mix sounded! It wasn't a volume issue but a tonality issue. Perhaps on my system something is creating this constant tone problem. However in harbal I pretty much improve my output by almost 100% everytime based on being able to adjust the entire track's frequency in different areas. Something I obviously find 'hard' to visualise on individual tracks while mixing (nor can I hear it during mixing).

Maybe I'm not explaining to well but basically the track with harbal on compared to off are night and day. The pure mixdown from Cubase is hollow, harsh in the high mids, lacking warmth and with a very metallic tone that really contrasts badly with the much more 'commercial' sounding harbal corrected mix. After that I export (at 32bits still) then 'master' in wavelab using mild plugs where needed. Harbal isn't my last stop by any means it just corrects bad frequencies.

I wonder why I can't hear them as bad (and they ARE bad) until I A/B during harbal? Why/how can a mix sound so good until you realise the frequency has holes and sounds fake, lifeless and distance once compared to a 'corrected' version? This is my #1 problem with mixing and hopefully it's something common and maybe someone reading this could point out what to look for during mixing that is causing this. I don't put anything harsh on the 2-buss during mixdown, and I don't hit my converters hard on tracking and keep levels around or down below -6 in general (adding gain/limiting as the final stage in 'mastering' later). Maybe it was all the cuts I was making, having had the 'make holes for instruments to not overlap in the eq' mantra drummed into me in the last 15 years of reading about mixing... maybe I overdo it? Well I guess it has to be an eq issue in mixing if it's an eq issue in harbal (rather than say booming bass or squished vocal compression which I don't have a problem with).

Anyway to AAMS. Having tried it on a 'decent' mix (corrected in harbal) it did quite well, I'd say it actually surpassed my self 'pretend mastered' master from wavelab in overall depth and involvement. However it wasn't perfect and did sound a tad overdone in some areas. Surely spending more time with the tool and disabling/toning down those components would help. I do like your advice on choosing the best mix for the album as the reference (either AAMS or manual) as I'd not read that before! And sure sometimes I have mixes that sound much better overall than others.

My point, finally, is that AAMS and Harbal can AT LEAST be used as references to 'getting close' to a better sound, even if it means going back into the mix as I often do after harballing and realising there's 'too much' wrong. I only want to have small adjustments (if any) and then I know I've got a good mix - same applies to AAMS. If it doesn't RUIN the mix, and makes mild changes at LEAST you can be more certain of your mixes, it acts as some kind of calibration that we outside of the 'pro industry loop' can rarely get. I would probably prefer to use AAMS as an advisor only, and fix 90% of what it makes 'better' back in the mix before rechecking. Ultimately though, Harbal is better for that for me as in my specific case it's more about just the frequency problems, not everything and the kitchen sink as in AAMS. Both tools need to be treated with caution though and used more as learning aids towards better mixing rather than one stop shops for 'great mastering' (which as Brandon pointed out is actually the wrong term anyway for what AAMS is doing - harbal is not an all in one mastering solution either but it doesn't really claim to be).

I can see the argument against a product like AAMS. But the ONLY argument that is justified is when comparing it to human intervention. That’s a big “DUH!” to me

Not to me. The other thing you need to compare AAMS to is non-human intervention (meaning no intervention at all). Especially after listening to 130+ mixes on http://forum.recordingreview.com/f110/ it's obvious that the mega mega mega huge problem many beginners have is their abuse of the 2bus/pretend mastering process. They would have been better off just tossing a brickwall limiter on the 2bus and make sure the mix sounds absolutely bad ass with no other 2bus processing.

When I get each song on an album to the point where I feel they can't be improved, that's the time to master. All that does, for me anyway, is give the tunes a similar vibe or maybe there is a slight problem that needs to be addressed throughout my mixes. The only other reason to do do real mastering (hiring a real mastering dude) is to get the checks and balances of an experienced set of ears listening in a different environment.

Brandon

But there is still a lot of value in the product. I think the product doesn't live up to the hype of "Auto Mastering". But it does indeed live up to taking a mix that is out of proportion in the frequencies and "shapes" it to something idealistic. From that point one can do further processing.

Imagine a rookie running a marathon and halfway through he stumbles. If there's someone there to pick him up and get him going its a good thing. And the fall itself would have taught him some kind of lesson for future runs.

So in that way you could say that many beginners and intermediates tend to fall into a trap in their mixes, thinking that they are moving in a good direction, only to find out later that their sounds are terrible. Doing a direct comparison to AAMS after the fact can wake you up and make you realize where you might have went wrong.

I personally took some of my earlier attempts at mastering, which only sounded good in certain speakers, and ran them through AAMS and chose what I thought was the correct reference. It always spit out a file that would play in anything, sounding the same everytime. It may have missed "something". At that point it was time to throw the file back into other processing, like Har-Bal and various other plugins.

I can see where many "Mastering Engineers" would want to clutch onto their reputations and the status quo. But in reality, that's NOT reality! There's a new way to do things that is in the reaches of the home user. For once a home user can pump out commercial quality music without the over-priced junk that studios claim is the best. Just think about the argument of Pro Tools over Whatever Else. As it turns out Pro Tools is not "the best". Nothing like that exists in this world. There are a lot of ways to do a single thing. And its up to the person to figure out how to get a result. But going with the flow of mainstream thinking is probably the most ignorant thing anyone can do. It just makes you a weakminded puppet of the popular.

Plugins will dominate the world in a way that will make studios shut down. And it goes to show that we dont need someone teeling us that we need to pay $200 or more an hour to get a demo.

MUHAW