Hip Hop Mastering

I am unable to stress enough the advantage of having your home recorded Rap songs Mastered by some other Mastering Engineer that specializes in the Hip Hop genre. The end result will no doubt be better when done by a trained ear with an acoustically tuned environment & Mastering specific gear. With that said, it is possible for you to achieve usable leads to your home Hip Hop recording studio & the purpose of this article is to help you achieve those results using the recording gear/software that you already own. If you're recording on Digidesign Protools software you'll be able to use the plug ins that came with the program. Most similar programs should have comparable processing extensions so consult your user manual for those.

Mixtape Mastering

You will start your mastering session with a two track stereo mixture of your song preferably with the master level peaking at about -3db never striking the red on the meter. This mix should already be sounding the way you want while needing a boost in volume & maybe a couple EQ tweaks to make it translate well to various sound systems/sources.



Starting with the EQ make alterations in the lows, mids, & highs, according to any notes that you taken after listening to your mix on several different types of sound sources for example earbuds, a car system, a bookshelf stereo, a mono clock radio, laptop speakers etc. Your ultimate goal is for your master to end up sounding good on all the different systems where of course on larger systems with sub woofers you will have more bass & on laptop speakers & earbuds you will see little or no sub bass. The key is to have a master that also retains clarity on all these sources. When you pay attention to your mix on these sources listen for frequency issues that tend to show up on multiple sound sources as these are the first things you should work on with the EQ. You should try trial & error to find the frequencies and remember it is always better to fix by cutting the offensive sounds then by boosting other frequencies to pay for them. Remember that any EQ tweaks that you perform on the stereo mix will affect the whole song so guarantee the adjustments are actually fixing the issue without causing a bigger one out of another area.



The next phase in your home Hip Hop Mastering session after you are happy with the EQ results will be adding a Compressor towards the track. This will be used to give the song an even level sound making the track level consistent from beginning to end. The Compressor will also aid in boosting the perceived volume of the song. Below is really a set of Compressor settings which i have come to use on Rap tracks as a starting point when putting together an audio lesson Master.



gain 3.5 db



threshold -22.6 db



ratio 3.00:1



attack 11 ms



release 50 ms



knee 80



(These are compressor start off positions which I have found are a good starting point for Hip Hop recordings where the mix has been peaked at -3db)



The following device in line after the Compressor is a Limiter, which is kind of like a Compressor on steroids, the Limiter is going to be used to max the volume of the mix & produce a master that is as loud as any commercially released Rap track.



The Limiter settings shown here are settings that I have found to be a good starting point achieving a loud though not distorted final master of the Home studio recorded Hip Hop track



3.5 gain



threshold 17.6 db



attack 1.0 ms



release 20 ms

Mixtape Mastering

(These are Limiter start off positions which I have found are a good starting point for Hip Hop recordings in which the mix has been peaked at -3db)



You will need to do A/B listening comparisons between your working master & a commercially released Rap track that is similar in style to your song. You will need your master to become as loud as the commercially released song and translate well on all of the different sound systems/sources.



Just as you will need to do with a mix, after completing your song master save it & let it rest alone for a day or two then come back to it with fresh ears and you may have a different perspective on it & finds things to fix that may have been missed earlier. when you feel your song master is comparable to the commercially released song you're done mastering your new song.



There are many different specialty programs & software extensions that are designed for Mastering however this information is geared toward those that want to master their songs using the options that are already present on their recording software or workstation. Also remember that Pro Mastering houses will furnish you with a master CD that'll be verified to be error free as well as contain special encoding that'll be the master you would like to give to a CD replication/duplication plant to get mass produced CD's. It is really an important feature though it seems in the music business more & more artists are bypassing the price of getting CD's made & instead having download only releases.



The info in this article should give you a path to follow when attempting to master your Rap songs in your own home studio. There aren't any rules set in stone though trial & error have helped to formulate the mastering procedure given above.

Mixtape Mastering