A couple of post mastering Questions

[Jack Hawk]

Working on cleaning up some tunes I released awhile ago and had a question or two. I remixed and mastered some tracks. After the export I decided to change the tempo and imported the finished track, sped it up, and exported again. Would/should I remaster the altered track. I am not sure what the ramifications are. I did note that even though the tracks were mastered with a limiter, when I exported the finished track, after modifying the tempo, if was showing over the -.1 limit I set prior to mastering. I did the tempo mods in another DAW, but wouldn't think it should matter once it's mastered and exported to a wav. am I missing something here? I'll admit I'm in over my head on some of this and learning as I go. Thanks for any and all help.

Jackson

[Blogospherianman]

4 hours ago, Jack Hawk said:

Working on cleaning up some tunes I released awhile ago and had a question or two. I remixed and mastered some tracks. After the export I decided to change the tempo and imported the finished track, sped it up, and exported again. Would/should I remaster the altered track. I am not sure what the ramifications are. I did note that even though the tracks were mastered with a limiter, when I exported the finished track, after modifying the tempo, if was showing over the -.1 limit I set prior to mastering. I did the tempo mods in another DAW, but wouldn't think it should matter once it's mastered and exported to a wav. am I missing something here? I'll admit I'm in over my head on some of this and learning as I go. Thanks for any and all help.

Jackson

When you shift the pitch or alter the tempo it can alter the dbs.  It’s best to lower the dbs first, process, then raise it back up and reset the ceiling.  
For example if I get a track and someone needs it in a different key I’ll lower the track by 3db BEFORE processing, then Transpose or Change tempos, then I use a limiter like L2 to raise it back up 3dbs (By lowering the threshold) and set the out to say -0.2 Ceiling.  
You can turn off the dithering if it already has been dithered.

[CJ Jacobson]

14 hours ago, Jack Hawk said:

when I exported the finished track, after modifying the tempo, if was showing over the -.1 limit I set prior to mastering.

Is this inner sample peaking or peak dB?

After a mix is mastered. It is dithered down to 16bit and exported to 44.1kHz is most cases. When you import it back into a DAW, it will import to your import settings and most are 24 or 32 bit and what ever sample rate you have configured. This can cause your levels to fluctuate.

This is why the mastering is the last stage of music production. 

My advise is to go back to the un-mastered mix to do your tempo changes, pitch shifting and what not and then master it. 

[Jack Hawk]

Thank you both for the response. I learned a few things. CJ, It would be the peak. I wouldn't normally work this way, but had completed the tracks, and then decided to go back and alter. In the future I'll go back and export an unmastered wav file to work on.

Thank you both

Jackson

[Blogospherianman]

13 hours ago, CJ Jacobson said:

Is this inner sample peaking or peak dB?

After a mix is mastered. It is dithered down to 16bit and exported to 44.1kHz is most cases. When you import it back into a DAW, it will import to your import settings and most are 24 or 32 bit and what ever sample rate you have configured. This can cause your levels to fluctuate.

This is why the mastering is the last stage of music production. 

My advise is to go back to the un-mastered mix to do your tempo changes, pitch shifting and what not and then master it. 

Definitely agree if you have access to the un-mastered version you should use that. Otherwise giving yourself some head room  before  processing can surely keep everything kosher.