Topic: Help, my tapes suck....

[612]

What Bob Katz book/edition would people recommend? Thank you.

[Gutbucket]

(Bob Katz) Mastering Audio - The Art And The Science

I have the second edition, not sure if that's the latest. You can check his website.  There is a lot of good information in his articles and responses in the FAQ section on that site, much of the same basic information as in the book, just less in-depth.

[boojum]

^^^^ About Katz.  He is the current guru on the subject but if you are expecting a cook book explanation of how to make your recordings sound better you will not find it in this book.  It is useful, but I found it a difficult read.  I do not have a technical background.  Ask me something about US History.        Or COBOL  ROTFLMAO    It has some good info. though.

I find that I just have to open up the editor, load the project and I use SAM so in virtual mode I can do all sorts of stuff and do no damage.  I am getting better mixes now than before.  But I am doing it by experiment and peeping over other folks shoulders, like Gutbucket's, by reading this and other boards. 

I just finished the third mix of a local band's gig.  I had to bring the mono vocal track way forward into the mix which started robbing the mix of stereo info.  Where to strike the balance?  Ah, problems, problems, problems.  Ya just never are finished with a mix.  Ya just give up on it.   

[Gutbucket]

^^^^ About Katz.  He is the current guru on the subject but if you are expecting a cook book explanation of how to make your recordings sound better you will not find it in this book..

True.  That book is more of a liberal arts education than a trade school.

It's one of the more common books on mastering, but mostly does a good job of describing in depth what a mastering engineer does, why their role is very different from a recording or mixing engineer, what tools are used and why, how to set things up properly, etc. It helps explain why mastering is a complicated and nit-picky undertaking that perhaps shouldn't be done haphazardly without realizing how things translate out in the real word.  It's an overview to the concerns and processes.  It's not meant to be an instruction manual on what to do to make your recordings sound better.

[Patrick]

It's not meant to be an instruction manual on what to do to make your recordings sound better.

Correct. 

This book was used as a text for a digial audio mastering course that I took last semester.  It was a great resource if for no other reason that it got me really thinking about mastering and listening *very* critically to my recordings.  It also talked a lot about formats through the years and some techniques that were popular in the past.  Katz has a certain writing style that works well for some subjects and not so well for others;  I read his "Basics of Digital Audio" book and it was not very inspiring or helpful at all, whereas I really enjoyed "Mastering Audio."