Dubstep Music Mastering – Part 3

Dubstep Music Mastering - Part 3

Low cut.

To increase headroom in your dubstep tracks, and get rid of ineffective and unwanted subsonic frequencies, apply a low cut around 20-30hz, if you don't have monitors that go that low then maybe leave it - you would not want to remove something you cant hear properly as you might take away something that you might want to have in.

Subtle shelfs.

Try to apply a gentle shelf EQ to get the smoothest boosts, another way is to use a wide parametric EQ. This will provide the most musical and dubstep like EQ boosts.

Killer dubstep tip: Multi band compression.

Aside from EQ you may want to experiment with multi-band compression for changing the timbre of you mix. For example you could compress the low end more to bring up its relative presence in the mix. This can have a cleaner result and means you could use less process, further enhancing your final output.

Boost it wide, cut it slim.

Generally speaking a smooth wide boost, coupled with surgical narrow cuts on problem frequencies will give the best overall result.

Go easy.

If you find your self adding more than around 5DB of EQ you will probably be better off to go back to the original dubstep mix and find the problem there. As a rule you should not need to be adding more than 4/5DB for your first 50 attempts. Only when you have a lot of experience should you consider using such a drastic measure.

Treble.

One common misconception is that the high end of a track is all above 12khz, however its actually much lower at around 2khz. One good power tip when learning about frequency ranges is to run a commercial finished dubstep track through a high pass filter, turn up your speakers and slowly move the fader down, letting through more low frequencies. This will show you were you start to hear the punch, knock, bass etc and build a easy picture in your head of what applies to what dubstep frequency range.

Careful with using multi band compression.

Although multi band compression can have a amazing and dramatic effect on a poorly balanced dubstep mix, it can also wreak havoc with a good dubstep mix. If you feel your final mix is well balanced then a single band mastering compressor is likely to have a better result.

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