The Power of Mastering with Jeff Graves - Music Production Podcast #430

podcast
Written By Brian Funk

Jeff Graves is the founder and creator of LuvLang Studios, an online mastering service. LuvLang gives users interactive control and feedback over the mastering process. 

Jeff and I spoke about how mastering can transform a mix. Jeff shared his story of his experience working in studios and learning about mastering, and how LuvLang Studios was created. 

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Episode Transcript:

Brian Funk (00:00.864)

Welcome aboard. Here we are. It's I'm doing great. It's nice to have you here today. And thanks for taking the time and we've been chatting a bit about this. I can see you are extremely excited about Love Lang Studio. So it's always nice to have somebody that's enthusiastic and is coming from a passionate place. You are a lifelong musician yourself. So it seems like everything you're doing here is comes from that perspective.

Jeff Graves (00:03.898)

How you doing, Brian?

Jeff Graves (00:08.141)

Good to be here, man.

Jeff Graves (00:16.195)

Yes I am.

Brian Funk (00:30.094)

Like you were this you were the prospective client in your past that you're providing for now.

Jeff Graves (00:36.623)

Absolutely. I was the guy with the bag of money going, can you do it? Is this enough?

Brian Funk (00:41.687)

Yeah.

I wanted to ask you a little bit about how you got into or curious about mastering itself because as you mentioned earlier, we were kinda talking about our early studio days and going in and we recorded with a guy that had eight app machines and we got to the end and then it was like, Well now you have to master We're like, What? And it was like, Well it'll be it'll make sure all the tracks are the same, they sound good everywhere and it'll

Fit in with the other C Ds in your five disc changer. It won't be too loud, too quiet or anything.

Jeff Graves (01:16.474)

And we're like, do we really need that? That's well, it's gonna be in about another thousand dollars. I think that's about what they were charging back in the day. And that was like for 10 songs. It was like, okay. So, you know, it was about hundred bucks a song. And yeah, you know, there was no reports.

Brian Funk (01:28.288)

It was a little bit of a surprise cost. Yeah.

Jeff Graves (01:31.555)

A little bit, know, after, yeah, I after, you know, and again, I remember the mixing, was like, well, how long are we gonna, you know, and it's like, well, I mean, you can spend two hours, you spend three hours, spend, you know, and we would sit there, and this was obviously before, you know, the digital days, so I mean, you know, we were like helping move faders at times, you know. And again, you know, how long do you, you know, and it's like, some songs would take longer to mix, and I don't know, now that I'm older, I'm thinking, well, were they bleeding the clock, you know, I don't know, but yeah, I mean, some songs,

Brian Funk (01:48.354)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:59.926)

It was also a performance, you know, like y you your mix was a performance. We didn't have all the automation and I mean on a lot of my old recordings when I finally got my own stuff, I would have a notebook with at thirty seconds I gotta move this up and pull this down and sometimes there was a guitar on the track that had the tambourine on it 'cause I'm trying to save space. So yeah. It was performance. So you got involved.

Jeff Graves (02:02.489)

Yeah!

Jeff Graves (02:14.936)

Absolutely.

Jeff Graves (02:19.608)

Right,

Jeff Graves (02:25.914)

Yeah, know, so, you know, just just really getting down to the wire of like, OK, you know, what is mastering? So I got older and such, you know, and obviously we all have our own dollars today. Right. So, you know, you have that idea and you want to pick up the acoustic and you know, you would record a track and you're like, you know, I'm going to go ahead and put a little bass line to that, you know, then pretty soon you put a little percussion, you know, pretty soon you get kind of a nice little gem. Right. You know, this little demo that you've been kind of working on and might add a little piano or strings or whatever. And it just really it's starting to come alive. Right.

And then so you start mixing it putting that compression you start getting stuff and you're really throwing in that EQ and you know you're throwing in some you know you know pre on the vocals and you know all this cool stuff to you know plugins and you get this just great sound and then you play it in your car and you're like

man, this does not sound like what it sounded like in my studio, you know? And so that was just the real break of, know what, I want to process because I record, I record for other people and I want to have that finished product that I can kind of master for them, even if it's not perfect, but at least kind of give them a general master. And then that just really drove me down this road where I just wasn't happy with it. And I kept just tweaking it and tweaking it to

Finally, I just was like, need to do this step by step by step just to make sure that I have all the right components. I mean, I have SSL, I have Neve, I have really prominent EQs. I have the best of the best in my online platform. And that was really hard to do because it's all online. It's all web-based. So that was another hurdle. But again, it's...

It's done and with all the mechanisms and stuff that I have in place, it's the best platform out there right now. I I put it up against anything, literally, and welcome. And yeah, that's it.

Brian Funk (04:25.963)

So just to so people understand, in case they didn't catch that, so you've got this online mastering service. So it's a website where people can upload their music. which have been popping up a bit here and there. It seems like every time I upload a song somewhere they wanna know if I want a little master to it or something. And it's just kinda if you hit yes, something happens and it sounds different somehow and

Jeff Graves (04:36.186)

www.loveling.studio

Brian Funk (04:55.177)

I've never been able to make any sense of what exactly is going on and why some things sound okay, some things sound really weird. so I've ki I've kinda just stopped clicking. Yeah, let's see how that sounds. but you're given a lot more than that. You've got much more on your platform that makes it more of an interactive experience.

Jeff Graves (05:11.3)

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Graves (05:19.066)

Yes, and I do have three different tiers. know, we talked a little earlier, you know, the first tier is just a 16 bit MP3. Your second tier is 24 bit. Doesn't give you all the goodies, but gives you some. And then the studio version is giving you the 24 bit. You know, you can change your bit depth. can...

You can change a lot of different things too. So that flagship is probably for more people that hey, we worked really hard on this song. We want this to be radio ready. And I built this platform to where I do have things in place that I'm referencing your track to find out what genre, to find out what your total peaks are. There's a lot going on where a lot of these other platforms just weren't doing. And then I would find out that the user would suffer.

thing they weren't giving you any sort of certificate that was a bother so with mine I'm telling you exactly what I'm doing I'm giving you a certificate showing you what your song came in at and then what we did to make it sound better I think that's important you know and again hopefully we can educate people on just the process of mastering so they know when they hit another platform they go wait this doesn't sound as good as Love Lang you know and again they're only doing possibly six to

to eight processes, I think is usually what these platforms are doing. I'm giving you the option to do 24. So obviously it's a lot heavier. It's a lot more in depth. It's the real thing, you know? And my whole goal was to try to mock Sterling sound mastering. I that was my goal, you know? And I don't think you can really...

100 % reach that goal, right? Because as an engineer you need to have ears, you know? It almost needs to be done by a person, know, a master engineer. So I wanted to give people that option too, Brian. Like, hey listen, you I know we can get really close and hey, you know, the studio tier sounds really good.

Jeff Graves (07:28.504)

But I want to do an album and I'd like to have an engineer kind of go through these just so the whole album's cohesive, etc. Now, I do have that option on the online to where you can upload a reference track and then that reference track can basically be your reference for all 10 or 12 songs. You want to do one reference track for each song, you can do that as well. So there's just so many different options. Now, do you really need those reference tracks? It's going to zero you in a little bit more.

but honestly if you know how to work an EQ, you have ears yourself, you're probably gonna do okay, right? I don't know your ears, but I'm hoping that you would do okay. And then at that point, you could possibly master that, it, listen to it, and then maybe make some other changes, right? This is just part of that process where I wanna make it simple for people, and when they get a finished product,

It sounds good on everything. And the big thing is that you're hitting that LUFS. It's hitting that peak of minus 14. Because if you're over that, they're going to cut it, which that's going to hurt your track. And if you're under it, they're going to have to push everything up.

that could be a bad thing too, right? And all of sudden you're hearing artifacts and stuff like that. So it's very important in the digital world that, you know, that there is some sort of platform that can really make it stupid proof. And that was really my goal.

Brian Funk (08:59.853)

Can you tell us a little bit about Luffs? This is another very misunderstood topic. Yeah.

Jeff Graves (09:04.736)

Absolutely. Absolutely. So LUFS, what is that? Right. So 17 BS 1770-4 is the standard. That's what I'm operating off of. I'm not going to get too digital. I'm not going to get too technical here because that's just dumb. So with that being said, to break it down, that's basically what Spotify and everybody's doing today. Right. So all my measurements are coming in at

the standard levels, right? Of what today's music is actually being played at. Now you do have an option, if you're going with Apple, it's minus 16. People might say, minus 16, that's gotta be louder. It's actually lower, okay? So minus 14 is actually louder. That's gonna be your Spotify, YouTube, Amazon, Tidal.

this and get done more. That's kind of the standard so to speak. Now Apple does minus 16. They've been doing that I believe since... I'm not gonna give a date because I might be wrong. But for a long time, right? Okay.

Brian Funk (10:08.47)

There was a time, yeah, where they sort of standardized that. Yeah. I remember that.

Jeff Graves (10:11.82)

And then Deether. Deether is a different platform and they kind of sit at minus 15. So they're right in between Spotify and Apple Music. So most people are doing that is measuring, you know, all your all it's basically the loudness of what people are going to hear your music at.

Brian Funk (10:23.552)

And what is what is that measuring exactly, Luffs? What

Jeff Graves (10:37.978)

Now it does require a little bit more than that, but I think that's probably the easiest for people to understand without getting too technical. But the LUFS is really where your track is going to land and where all your peaks are going to sit.

Brian Funk (10:55.754)

Mm. And I guess maybe the common thinking might be, okay, if I get that number as high as possible, my track will be as loud as possible, but then the streaming services come in or whatever platform you're using and they'll they'll adjust that.

Jeff Graves (11:08.942)

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Graves (11:15.546)

Correct, so you know it's obviously somebody that says, hey you know I mastered your track and oh it's you know okay and we're gonna put it all over Spotify and Amazon Music and maybe Tidal, I don't know. Okay cool, so we're gonna do minus 14 then because that's gonna be where you're gonna want it and I'll go ahead and master it for you and then I'll send you a couple, you know 30 minute, 30 second track, whatever.

a minute, whatever, send you a couple rough takes, let me know what you think of it, right? Then usually the guy will do some tweaks. That being said, with my platform, you can take it, upload that track, and we'll actually measure where your track's truly sitting at. So if it is over, let's say you're hitting minus 11, minus 12, you can let that guy know, hey, they're gonna crush this because we're a few

off, right? So I really want to kind of measure my song to really get it to minus 14. So we know exactly how it sounds and we know when it goes, you know, through their whole machine, so to speak, it's, it's gonna sound like we intended it to sound like. And I think a lot of people are mistaken by that.

Brian Funk (12:25.846)

Do you

Yeah. Do you recommend people aim for a certain luffs level in the mixing phase? Or is this more something that we can just work on once we're mastering?

Jeff Graves (12:39.768)

No, this is all mastering. Yeah, you know, I think at your mixing level, everybody's different, you know. Some guys, you know, save their ears, you know, which is good, because you get ear fatigue after a while, which we're all aware of.

You know and some guys you know be like came in you know yeah for the first hour or two You know but then towards that last 20 minutes I need to hit that DB of it because I need to make sure that everything's hitting and they can usually feel that right with their studio Monitors and they can kind of get a feel because this obviously isn't their first song they'd make so I think you get close to that box and What's really cool is that when you think you know hey? I think we got our master or our mix and it's complete you can just

literally upload it into Lovelang.Studio and get that measurement. Right. And then hear it and play that on the studio monitors and go, OK, this is exactly where it's going to sit when we play it for our people. Right. On our whatever, you know, on Tidal, whatever music platform. So I think this this definitely gives you a look inside that box of, OK, this is this is where we're at. And again, with the

certificate and everything, we're showing you exactly what we've done to your song. So we'll tell you exactly where was at and then where we put it. Which, yeah, a certificate showing you that is giving you that peace of mind that, when it goes through the machine to these other services, I'm not gonna get, my track's not gonna get squashed.

Brian Funk (14:19.616)

Well, I think that's an interesting part because and it's one of the first things on your site. you say we teach you why. I think some understanding of what's happening and where we're going. and I think that would probably even help people get revisions and give feedback so that they can get it more where they're looking for it to be, to have that understanding.

Jeff Graves (14:28.494)

very much.

Jeff Graves (14:45.76)

Absolutely. And I hear a lot of people that are doing that and they're way loud. They're normally a lot louder. So again, that's going to be an issue. And you know, if you're not really educated, like I wasn't, I wasn't educated. I'm like, it's fine. It's fine. You know, not really knowing.

And again, I'm ignorant upon it. So we don't need that, you know, but that I found out later. Wow.

This is probably the most important. And again, I just, you know, I think you live and you learn. And what I'm really hoping to do is just kind of educate those guys that are really proud of what they're creating in their home studio. And they're just like, man, I just need a platform that's going to give my song justice, right? I don't have $500 or, you know, $300 a song to send it off to Sterling or I think Apple Records is doing something.

to or there's all these different you platforms that hey you know we'll take your song it just seems like everybody wants your money and then it's just this black box and then when you get your stuff back you're like either you like it and then there's no certificate again you're still in the dark it's just this black box or they're like yep you're good to go well are you you don't know

So, but by creating this website, I thought, you know what, if I can educate people a little bit and we're all on the know, I think this is going to help them further. And hopefully I can gain their business. You know, like, hey, this is a guy that really spent the time to go through each, you know.

Jeff Graves (16:31.474)

layer of the mastering part so I'm not ruining their sound. I mean think that was the biggest thing and I'll tell you what if it didn't make my song sound better you know the tracks that I was uploading or my band I didn't use it. I looked for another EQ, looked for another gate or whatever you know and that was really really hard to really find the right

formula so to speak and then put it in the right chain order. There was just so much tweaking that I was pulling my hair out. mean three years was was not fun. Towards the last six months it was a lot of fun but yeah until then it was just maybe there a lot of coffee. There's a lot I mean I think I tried to give up a few times like this I don't know if this is even possible.

Brian Funk (17:11.488)

Hmm.

Hm. You start to hear it.

Jeff Graves (17:25.658)

There was a lot of mistakes, you know, and coming from somebody that writes code and trying to come up with that perfect sound when somebody uploads a track, I'm sure you can only imagine. But again, I was hitting hurdles. I was completing them. So I would start off on the next piece, right? Then I'd fall off again, you know. But again, just creating this process to where it was a sweet flow.

of 24 features that would actually attack your track if it thought it needed it. And I thought, well, how do you get software to behave like that?

That was the hardest. I don't want to give away all my secrets, but I definitely, definitely worked on that because that was the biggest thing to me because I knew I'm an audio guy. There's going to be audio guys are to go, man, you know that this is off. You know, your measurements off. You know, when I do this, it's, it's, you know, it's losing to 2.4 DB. And I was running into these issues. You know, okay, I'm losing. I'm losing a couple DB here. Where am I losing that from?

what and why is it taking that away? So again, just just constant constant testing, auditing, revisions, you name it, and just trying to get those pieces to line up. And then I would move on to the next layer. And there was probably at least three 400 layers. Just to be quite honest, I mean, it was it was a big fee. It was a little painful, man. I don't know if I would do it again. But

Brian Funk (18:59.987)

Yeah. Well sometimes when you don't know how bad it's gonna be you go through it if you

Jeff Graves (19:05.986)

man, was just like, know, it's just ever gonna, you know, and people are like, hey, you're still working on that. I'm like, man, it's not, it's not perfect, man. And it has to be perfect because this is the problem I'm running into. So if I can't perfect that, then who am I? Like, what am I doing? Right. And so I was sending it off to a lot of studios. Hey man, let me, let me master 30 seconds of your track, man. Can you give me some feedback? You know, people would send me feedback, you know.

Hey, you know, this is is really good, you know, and then I I would I would compare it to like other mastering, you know, like Sterling sound. That was my big thing. That was like that was that was that was like, man, if I can if I can get certain and I created this kind of harness is what they call it. And the harness is basically just a whole testing workflow atmosphere. And I would I would test these tracks on there. Basically, it would tell me where I'm coming up short from like Sterling.

sound.

And again, you're not going to get 100 % because you have human ears. But man, I got probably 97%. Like, there's that three, I think that's where it ended up. I think it was like 3 % that getting down to the algorithms and such, you know, that you weren't going to really tweak. And you got to be careful when you're tweaking too, because you want to tweak something that you really don't want tweaked, right? So it's just heavy, heavy, heavy balance.

And I'm just dying to really hear people go, hey, I've used a few platforms. I'm really ready to sink my teeth into something that somebody really cares about. I'm an audio guy, love to sing, love to play guitar, just instruments. I'll pick up a bass, I'll pick up a harmonica. It's fun.

Jeff Graves (20:58.778)

I learned the harmonica just through cover stuff, but you know, just having a new instrument, you know, and just being able to record something that sounds good. I feel like we have all these capabilities today with the DAWs and everything that everybody's using. It's just when you go play it in your car, you know, and it's like, wow, you know, and these guys are charging way too much, man, for what they're offering. I mean, they're seven or eight, you know, just different features that are going to make my song sound a little deeper. Those are doing, man, they're just kind of doing the smiley face with the

Brian Funk (21:12.383)

Yeah.

Jeff Graves (21:28.792)

EQ and that stuff just doesn't cut it in the real audio world you know and I think that that's that's just really right I'm hoping I'm really hoping to reach some people Brian

you know they'd say hey Jeff I have I have that same problem you know and yeah my site's free man so I just welcome people to upload your tracks have fun with it see where it's at if you're like wow you know I'm AB in this thing and it sounds three times better purchase a track purchase an mp3 you know take it take it easy you know the first track

Brian Funk (22:07.988)

Well it's nice to get the chance to play with it a little, you know, and get a sense of it. I think the only stuff I've seen is you know, you maybe get to hear part of what the track sounds like and then buy it or not. And that's it. then it doesn't leave you with much choice. But

Jeff Graves (22:12.324)

Definitely.

Jeff Graves (22:26.125)

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Graves (22:30.35)

So what I'm doing is I'm actually when you're completed.

Brian Funk (22:33.35)

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Graves (22:34.362)

with the mastering and you've tweaked and you got everything set, you're going to go ahead and export, right? So when you export, that's not going to charge you yet, you know, and that's probably, I should probably have something listed there because probably people are like, I'm scared to hit export, it's going to take money out of my account, you know, obviously, we don't have any of your credentials yet, right? So there's nothing to take out of it. When you hit export, what it's going to do is it's going to take you to this tier screen. And Brian, that's where that that the user has that option to go with tier one, which is the MP3 tier two, which

the 24 bit not all the bells and whistles and then tier three is 24 or if you want to change your bit depth or whatever you're wanting to do and then obviously it with all the bells and whistles so that's and what you can really do is just hear that well do you know I you know tier one and p3 we can all hear the difference there right well people like you know they're tier two and tier three they have that option to listen to the song that they've went ahead and mastered and they can a and b

just those two tiers and literally you just take your mouse hit play on that tier go to another tier hit play when you hit play on that second tier it's gonna automatically stop the first tier and start playing that that tier that you've selected so now you're getting that A and B A and B you keep doing that all day until you okay now I'm hearing I'm definitely hearing the difference I'm hearing it because you can hear it sometimes with certain tracks it's very subtle

But you can hear it and I've thrown many, many tracks in there and it's... You can hear the difference. It's just... can you? Do you have those audio ears to where you can... and I guess maybe somebody that's not an audio person... Man, I can really barely tell the difference.

somebody else are going, oh man you don't hear those highs. You don't hear those those highs just really peeking through like really cutting through to like you're getting more of a balanced sound and oh okay yeah yeah yeah and now when you just do tier two you don't get all that right because they're not not giving you the flagship but they're still giving you that 24 bit.

Jeff Graves (24:40.248)

And this is what I'm hoping people go, OK, no, I do hear the difference. And again, I'm just trying to hit everybody's budget, too. It's not about taking your money. My big thing is solving a problem. And hopefully, during that, Brian, I can educate these people a little bit of going, hey, you know what? I'm not a mastering engineer, but using this platform, I definitely know a little bit more about mastering because of all the selections I have to hit.

Brian Funk (25:06.686)

Hm. Yeah, that's it's a lot of a lot of options. Cool stuff. I'm I'm very interested in this. Yeah, good.

Jeff Graves (25:08.681)

We hope.

And it goes through, I'm sorry, it goes through the 24 steps and then I was just gonna add that you can obviously take some of those steps away. I think those are gonna be on the right panel and that's where you'll see if you kind of just go down, there'll be little toggle switches that you can just basically disassemble. And again, have fun with it. You're not gonna break anything, but have your ears do the work. I think that's the most important.

Brian Funk (25:40.351)

Hmm. You've got a cool study about loudness in twenty twenty six, and I think maybe we've all kind of heard about the loudness wars of the past. They seem to be thought of as something in the past anyway, where we were making everything louder and louder and louder. Music was getting more distorted, less dynamic. And there's some great videos online that you can see.

One that sticks out in my head is smells like teen spirit. And there's a certain remaster, I guess they did, where it's so loud that that opening guitar, it comes in and then when the drums come in it's just like as opposed to the original master where it's a bit quieter and then when the drums come in they're like boom boom boom boom like you know, much huger.

Jeff Graves (26:19.354)

Mmm.

Jeff Graves (26:24.638)

Jeff Graves (26:30.612)

Okay. Yeah, I have not heard that. So that's a remaster? that like what 25th anniversary or something? Or was it 30 years now? Okay.

Brian Funk (26:35.37)

It might not even be that long later. It might have been like 10, 15 years later. but kind of right when the I guess streaming started, there was all this competition that you wanted your song to be as loud as when you went on shuffle on your iPod. So it was kind of the wild west of people just making stuff super loud, but at the cost of the dynamics. And you've got

Jeff Graves (26:43.352)

Okay.

Jeff Graves (26:48.09)

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Graves (26:55.608)

Yeah, that's... Wow.

Jeff Graves (27:01.903)

Sure.

Brian Funk (27:03.248)

this blog post you wrote about the loudness in twenty twenty six and was pretty surprised to see it seems like it is still going on a bit where we're still fighting for all that loudness.

Jeff Graves (27:15.798)

Yeah, you know, I think we are and I think you I think you said it yourself real well, Brian dynamics, right? So when everything's just turned, you know, all the way and, you know, obviously it all started with, you know, the loudness wars and such, you know, we're

And they're like, we have to have some sort of cap, man, because everybody's just getting louder and louder, you know, and this was early, early days. And, you know, obviously you look at your whole region, it just looks like one full box, right? You're just like, wow, it's already breathing. There's already breathing. There's no dynamics, right? So, you know, with my platform, that was a huge struggle to really preserve the dynamics. And I think that is the

Brian Funk (27:44.404)

Just the sausage waveform. Yeah. All right.

Jeff Graves (28:01.852)

most important in mastering not just your loudness and it's I don't want to get too technical but you know what's minus 14 you know there's a lot to that right and with that you want your dynamics and everything to still have some room right and I just think that people lose that no no I just want to let you know well at the end of the day I think if they could hear the two differences they go okay

No, you're right. You're right. Yeah. Cause you want to feel a little bit, right? You want to feel that those buildups a little bit or those new breakdowns, you know? I just think that that's part of music. That's part of stuff that I grew up, you know, listening to albums and CDs where they just, they still had that mood, you know? And I think sometimes where everything's just so in your face, you kind of lose some of that emotion. So again, that's, that's something that I'm really proud of. it was one of the hardest things.

is really to maintain those dynamics that you're not squashing them. For sure.

Brian Funk (29:06.343)

It's a funny I guess it's like an irony of recorded music that it can only get so loud, right? Like you keep adding stuff and it just hits the ceiling where I mean in if we were in this room we could just keep turning stuff up. It'll just get louder and louder and louder. It doesn't matter. But

Jeff Graves (29:20.662)

Absolutely.

Brian Funk (29:26.011)

you have to sort of make these sacrifices knowing that if we can only get this loud and we want this section to be powerful, we kinda need to back it off on the part before. So the Smells Like Teen Spirit example is so good because that first guitar is just kind of scratchy. It's not the full blown distorted guitar yet. Comes in dirty and then those drums are are huge because that guitar gets to be small.

Jeff Graves (29:37.684)

There you go.

Brian Funk (29:53.716)

But when they remastered it to have that guitar, it's already at like the peak levels. There's nowhere else to go and everything sounds a bit wimpy when it comes in. It's

Jeff Graves (29:59.759)

Very true.

Jeff Graves (30:04.922)

Very true. And you know, when you're mixing a song, you're only gonna get so much of that thump and that full, I like to call it fullness, you know? That fullness to where it feels like a real song. Like when you're in your car and you're turning it up and you're like, man, it's one of my favorite songs. You want your song to sound like that.

Brian Funk (30:09.585)

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Graves (30:28.89)

So when people turn it up, doesn't sound like crap, it doesn't distort, it doesn't... That it sounds really, really good like the rest of your albums do. And I think doing that, that is mastering. And that is something that I was just completely unaware of. I thought it was the recording process. Oh, we're just not recording as good, you know? Our mix isn't as good. No. No, your recording, your mixing is great.

You're mastering. You're mastering is what takes you from a C level to an A level. Like literally, it should take your song from C level to A level. Like it should reach two different like, wow, I can hear the difference. Like it should be stupid proof. I mean, it really should because what you're doing is you're kind of maximizing all that and you're rounding, you're gluing everything together in hopefully a very measurable way.

So when you can A, B it, you listen to the A, which is the raw, you're not hearing all that glue. You're not hearing all that force and that fullness, right? That's what the mastering's doing. And that's what I'm really hoping to educate people when they just A and B their track. They're like, okay, this is really what true mastering is doing. And I will say that that platform,

whatever song you put in, you're gonna hear a difference. You're gonna hear a difference. Now, if it is mastered already, you're probably not gonna hear a whole lot of difference. And so it's very important to take something that's not mastered. So I always try to emphasize that.

Don't try to be put in master tracks. And another thing is that if people try to just put in, I like to call it a turd, Brian. Can't polish a turd, right? So if you just got this thing and you're like, hey man, I know it's kind of a turd, but I want to master it. It was just a little something. My levels were completely off, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But I'm going to load it. Go ahead, load it up into Lovelang.Studio and it will tell you, hey.

Brian Funk (32:21.321)

Right.

Jeff Graves (32:41.422)

bad recording and it will tell you why. Again, education, right? yeah, yeah. And it's going to tell you, you should really consider re-recording this for this reason. There's no headroom.

Brian Funk (32:45.235)

Hmm. it gives you that feedback on the mix. Hmm.

Jeff Graves (32:57.242)

for this reason and whatever these reasons are. You know it could be talking about peak values, it could be talking about all sorts of different things. My whole thing is that I didn't want to bury them with a bunch of technical stuff. I just wanted to get them into the ball of okay, okay so you're not... yeah I could but it's not going to do you any justice man. Again we're polishing a turd. So for me to be upfront and just take your money I could do that.

Would I feel, I be selling a service? Would I be educating that user? Would that user want to come back? These are the three things that I was like, man, I gotta nail all three of these. I don't care if you like the platform, if you like me, I just want you to go, hey, this guy's definitely got something going on here. And even if I don't purchase all the time, man, what a great reference thing just to upload my track to see where I'm at.

you can make something in your own room. I'm to go ahead and try to master it myself. Now granted, you don't have near the tools that I have in my platform, but let's just say you're trying to just get a mediocre master.

And you get that, and then you obviously want to upload that just to see what sort of target you're hitting. And then it will tell you, yeah, you're hitting, you could be hitting minus 11. That's going to be too loud, right? So you want to get it down to that minus 14. Then you might want to go ahead and remix it, right? So if you kind of know where you're at, you might want to, hey, let's turn some things down a little bit. Maybe let's try to add a little bit more dynamics. Just again, we could talk about that for days and days.

Mixing is obviously a very personal thing, but everybody has that vision. And I think if you have that vision, you're never ever, ever going to achieve that in a mix. And I always thought you could as a kid. We can hit you. We're just not spending enough time. don't have a great, we don't have an SSL board. We need a need board. That's what we need, right? Yeah, those are all great things. But at the end of the day, you have to master your track. And what sucks is

Brian Funk (34:59.173)

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Graves (35:07.866)

There's no place that you can walk in and go, hey, guys, I'm going to go down to the mastering store today. We just didn't have that luxury. And I thought, man, today we do have that luxury. And if I can give that 18, 20-year-old that peace of mind to keep going.

Because you can only get so far in a mix. Once you master that mix, Brian, we're, I mean, that's gonna, like I said, it's gonna take you from a C level to an A level. Wow. Now you're ready to pop that thing on somebody's PA, ready to play it in your car, you're ready to play it for your friends. Man, that sounds good. They don't know mastering, so they think it's all part of the recording. And I think that's kind of a nice thing. Just when you think your master's, oh, oh, I'm sorry, your mix.

Brian Funk (35:49.416)

Sure.

Jeff Graves (36:00.053)

Always tell people, get your mix to where it's, wow, this mix is so good. This is it. I wouldn't change anything. Then master it because it's going to blow you away once you master it.

I mean, it's going to just add all that glue and that's just something I was just not educated on, Brian. And that's why was really excited to really hope to reach some of your followers. to not try to really sell anything to them. Just educate. Just educate. Try to pop on the platform. I don't know who you are. I don't take any of your information. You do have to sign up with your email address. But past that, mean, until you want to purchase something, there's no credit card.

And I thought that's really keeping my true stance, man, and just really trying to give them those features that I've worked three years for without pissing people off.

Brian Funk (36:54.44)

Do you have any recommendations? yeah, you certainly can. Do you have any recommendations about how to prepare a mix for the master as far as like headroom or any kind of processing before it gets put out to whether it's on your platform or really anywhere for master?

Jeff Graves (36:56.248)

Which you can't, you know.

Jeff Graves (37:01.082)

Definitely.

Jeff Graves (37:13.554)

yeah, you know, I would say just when you're mixing something, you know, and you're, you know, somebody is, you know, they're, they're working with DB and they kind of know, a mix isn't going to really, hurt you, you know, because once you start mastering, that's going to start really putting everything in its place. and then that's what really makes it concrete. Right. So now this is, you know, masterings, the icing on the cake, as far as

You know, mixing, does matter. I mean, you obviously need to be in a studio where people are recording at nominal and there's headroom, right? Just all your basic 101 stuff. That's what's going to give you the best master. And that's probably the best answer I could give you with that question. Because people are, you know, we're constantly looking at our meters and we're, you know, to make sure that everything is sitting right in the...

Right, that's the mix. It's not the master So if you're just focusing on that mix focus on the mix make sure everything's sitting in the bed to where you really want it to sit and Then that's when you're ready for mastering. Hey guys, I think we're ready for mastering. Does this sound good to you? Yeah, man, maybe kick up that solo just about a Half a DB. Okay, you know, I mean this these are the final touches you're putting to your mix, right? You get to that point

hop on Lovelink.Studio, pop it in there and just A and B it. Okay, man? Because that's gonna give you that impression of, okay, this is what our song's gonna really sound like if we have it professionally mastered. It's not gonna squash it, it's not going to... Man, mastering can really mess up a song.

It's going to give you that fair handshake. I think that's equal to say. And on top of that, we're to give you a certificate showing exactly what we've done to your song when you're ready to actually purchase it. And that's just something no platform really does. It's just big black box. Hey, you've mastered. What do you think? Well, what'd you do? You're not going to tell me anything you did? And how do I know I'm sitting at minus 14 or minus 16?

Jeff Graves (39:30.074)

How do I know you didn't squash all my, you it's there's just so many answers that I think mastering people really look at to make sure that they don't do that to your track. So it does breathe and it does still have some dynamics. I just think a lot of these platforms that only have seven or eight processes that are dealing and you're dealing with a simple algorithm. There's no simple.

button to hit when you master and I think that's what really comes into effect with a lot of these platforms that are coming out today where if you listen to it compared to your mix, it's going to sound better, but you don't know what they did. You know, are they just giving you a smiley EQ kind of thing? Yeah, it's going to sound better. It's going to definitely sound better. You know that, Brian. goes, yeah, no, it definitely sounds better. But is it the better you're looking for? Right? Is that?

Brian Funk (40:13.456)

Mm.

Well, I I've put a lot of them I've actually felt they sound worse sometimes. just kinda and not really sure what it was thinking, where what the logic was and you can hear it it's maybe shrill or maybe now it's really heavy in the bass.

Jeff Graves (40:25.687)

Absolutely.

Jeff Graves (40:32.75)

Mm-hmm. Right.

Brian Funk (40:41.05)

I I haven't had the and you don't get the control. So that's always been the concern, with some of that stuff. You don't get the kind of hey, this is

Jeff Graves (40:46.298)

Mm-hmm.

And with the digital stuff, you're getting artifacts too. So you got to be careful because once you start really turning stuff up, you you could, you know, you're, you're getting, you can, you can be getting into some issues, right? You know, so again, just, just, just really measuring that mix and, and just giving, giving the song what it needs. Oh yeah.

Brian Funk (41:08.21)

Do you think there's a good l amount of headroom firm mix that you like to have? Like what do you do you I've I've hear lots of people say lots of different things, but do you have a recommended like amount or where it should be peaking?

Jeff Graves (41:20.492)

It really depends on the song. I mean, it really depends on the song, your genre, you know, what sort of feel are you going for? I would say definitely that's really where it's going to sit. And if you're dealing with a good audio engineer, he's going to give you that headroom and he's going to give you, everything's going to be measured correctly.

Brian Funk (41:41.458)

Well, suppose we have our home studio hero, you know, working on their mix. Yeah. Without the engineer.

Jeff Graves (41:46.297)

Home studio? Yeah, you know, I would, yeah, I think that's pretty 101, man. I you've got to be recording at nominal, right? So it's all, you know, getting a little engineering here, but you know, you're pretty, right? So you want to stage game, you know, you have to get your game staging correct, or else everything's downhill from there.

I that's 101, right? So once all that gain staging is done and everything is okay, well now you're tracking. So that's probably the most important is to make sure that everything is set correctly when you're tracking. Because the mixing and the mastering, all that is just extra layers, fluff if you will, to make your track record.

Brian Funk (42:25.271)

You're going in.

Brian Funk (42:30.823)

Well, I think even and probably a lot of people listening are some and are probably not recording anything. It might be working completely in the box. S you know, synths, VSTs, drum machines, where s a lot of that stuff is sorta taken care of already. So that you know, they don't they're not worried about recording the level of their drum machine because it's

Jeff Graves (42:45.402)

Okay.

Brian Funk (42:57.955)

it's an instrument within their DAW. which is nice and I think it gives people a nice starting point on a lot of their work. But what we do afterwards can sometimes be where we go wrong. are we running it into zero D B

Jeff Graves (43:00.388)

Right.

Jeff Graves (43:14.554)

Yeah, you know, I think even if you're laying a baseline, you know, if you're laying a baseline and you clip, you're going to notice that, right? You're probably going have to redo it. I kind of hit that. I hit that a little hard. You know, sometimes keys are a little sensitive, right? If you kind of hit it too hard or just whatever, you know, so I just think, yeah, if you're if you're measuring all that when you're tracking, whether you're, you know, and on a digital device or your

doing something through analog, you know. Your gain staging is gonna be meant and that's all part of the start of your recording. But I think people are pretty good with all that. I think the biggest reason for the mastering platform was when people get done with their mix, you know. And man, it just doesn't sound great everywhere. And where do I go? And do I have to go to Lander? Because I don't really like Lander.

You know, I want to be able to tweak or whatever, you know, that was me at least. I'm not putting any company down, get me wrong, but my whole frustration was man, I wish Lander would give me something I could tweak. They don't. It's like hit this, hit this or hit this and you're done. Like three options, that's it. Now you mean to tell me every piece of audio is going to fall under those three presets? No.

So now what you're doing is you're chaining me to a wall going, hey, we're not going to really give you a great master. We're just going to give you an OK one.

and we're not going to even tell you what we did to it.

Jeff Graves (44:57.578)

where do I sign up? Right, you know, so it's this was. Yeah. And again, you know, they were probably like, this is good enough, let's just sell it, you know, I wanted to really take people to that sterling song. And how do I master something that has quality, that really, really good quality? And like I said, the components and stuff I'm using SSL.

Brian Funk (44:59.239)

Yeah. I guess it's the AI making those decisions within those platforms. is

Jeff Graves (45:25.914)

Neve, I'm using really, really good stuff. Really, really good EQs, compression, that matters. All of that really, really does matter.

Brian Funk (45:36.177)

So when you say that, are is it running through like plug in versions of that stuff? It

Jeff Graves (45:43.318)

It's running through my 24-stage process.

Brian Funk (45:47.546)

And that's all

Jeff Graves (45:47.803)

So if you get on the site, you can actually see the 24 things that we do offer. I think they're listed there. I wasn't going to go through all 24, but again, just being very transparent, Brian, of what we're doing to their track or what we could do.

Brian Funk (45:52.155)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (45:57.148)

Yeah, yeah, they've then you got

Jeff Graves (46:05.926)

You as a teacher, I'm sure your students ask you a lot of questions. I was trying to kind of put all that out there just so if they did have a question, most of it was kind of answered. Well, this is what they're doing to my track. These are all good things. They can look those things up and figure out what they do. Educate yourself because those are 24 processes that no other platform in the world

Brian Funk (46:06.321)

Right.

Jeff Graves (46:33.59)

on a web based what could do. Like it's just not out, out, not out yet. And I think that was my biggest goal again was to really kind of put people in the saddle, you know, without even knowing.

Brian Funk (46:46.491)

Yeah, that's nice. Y when you've worked that hard already on something that's near and dear to you, it's nice to have that control.

Jeff Graves (46:54.394)

very passionate about it. love audio quality. I think that's really, that's really where I'm at is when you're done with the song, you know, does that, does it sound, I mean, I'm picky, man. I want my stuff to sound as clean and good as like an Adele record. I do. Why can't I achieve that? She can. Why can't I? And I think that was my whole why. There has to be a platform that we can go to that will make my song.

just sound like it was really mastered, not just masked with a bunch of EQs and such, you know, it's just like just a real high fidelity type master, you know. And, you know, I'm getting a lot of great feedback. I'm getting, things seem to be really going strong with the platform. And again, you know, just really trying to reach other audio musicians and people like yourself, you know, to really get your two sons, you know.

And would love to do a follow up. know, hey, Jeff, we've had 10 of our clients, know, hit your and we interviewed them all. We'd love to interview again. We have some questions. I think this thing will be around for a while. I'm really hoping to just gather more and more people that are really recording on their own that are like, wow, man, you really take my demo.

Brian Funk (47:59.511)

Mm.

Jeff Graves (48:12.962)

from demo to something I'm really proud of, man. And to me, that's hard, That makes my heart pump. That's music, right? And I think that's what we all try to create music for, for that finished process. This is it. When that finished process just isn't up to par, man, that's a kick in the head. Man, you spent all that time and this is all you got?

And then you think, well, where did I go wrong? What did I do? You know, I'm not an audio engineer then. Man, I went to the wrong studio. I knew we should have used this microphone on my guitar or my vocals. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You probably have everything good. It's just you're mastering, And your mastering could be the most important because when people listen to your track, does it sound great on everything they play it on? Because that's mastering. Anything else is joke.

Brian Funk (48:45.178)

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Graves (49:09.24)

Does it sound great on everything you play it on? And if people can say, man, it does, it does, well then your song's been mastered and it's been mastered correctly. Pat yourself on the back. You did not get ripped off from one of those other platforms, right?

Brian Funk (49:09.606)

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Graves (49:24.794)

Like you actually have something that you can go, hey, you know, yeah. And wow, these guys are so real, they even send me a certificate of what exactly they've done. Now, if I go to Sterling or I go to any LA mastering facility, they're going to do that as well, They're going to give me a certificate of what they've done, right? This is proof. This is our stamp. This is what your song came in at. This is what we did to bring it up to minus 14, et cetera, et cetera.

Brian Funk (49:54.519)

Hmm. It's very cool. You're empowering people to take their stuff to the finish line and be satisfied with it. So,

Jeff Graves (50:04.002)

And you know, I think in the long run, know, hopefully that keeps people recording more and more, right? I think you can only get so far with a mix, you know, and when you're kind of disappointed when you throw your car, your radio or something, you're just, I think it kind of takes a little bit of that drive. Why would I want to go ahead and mix another song or record? I think this is the best it's going to sound. And I'm not happy with that. I think that was me.

Brian Funk (50:08.667)

Yeah.

Jeff Graves (50:28.192)

I want something better, you know. All these other people are getting really, really great recordings. How do I do that? And, you know, we went to a professional studio. We paid quite a bit of money, you know. Real nice SSL board. All your, you know, neve pre's and just all the bells and whistles. We had all of it. It was great, you know. But once that mix was done, it just, it still didn't have that power.

You know, and that's just something you get from mastering that I was frustrated with and I thought, you know what? I'm going to have this mastered. I wasn't happy with it, but once I finished my product, I remastered those tracks and those tracks I think sound really, really good. You know, they're very full. So. Quite an accomplishment, you know, and hopefully some people feel the same way, you know, it keeps them recording. That's that's the ticket.

Brian Funk (51:18.456)

Super cool. Well Yeah. Well people can try for themselves, right? You've got the you got the lufts check that they can check out so they can see where their tracks sitting and you've got

samples they can hear they af as they're working and test them out. So no obligation, right? Which is really cool. lovelang dot studio. Love spelled L U V Lang dot studio. I'm glad we got a chance to talk and I I can see your excitement and passion for what you're doing and it's a very nice mission you have.

Jeff Graves (51:41.857)

Absolutely.

Jeff Graves (51:59.203)

Do know where the name came from?

Brian Funk (52:02.777)

No, I have no idea.

Jeff Graves (52:04.888)

So what do you think of lovelang.studio? What comes to mind? Anything? Just curious.

Brian Funk (52:10.438)

Well, love, you know, passion, of course. I no I don't know. I don't know.

Jeff Graves (52:21.69)

And I kind of wanted to be hidden, you know, but to me it's kind of, there you go. I mean, you know, it's the love for music, you know, and I think love, it's my love for music is really love laying, know, but I think music is a lot of people's language, you know, and I thought it was a really appropriate name because this is the final step for something that you hopefully love, hopefully you cherish.

Brian Funk (52:25.358)

Love language? Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Brian Funk (52:42.096)

Yeah.

Jeff Graves (52:50.658)

hopefully your song has meaning and meaning to other people. I mean, we can go on and on and on about that, right? And I just think that language of music, you know, it sits with a lot of people. And I think it comes from my experience of loving my music, but never really hitting that language of love, right? You know, just, there was always some obstacle that, well, maybe if you get signed with a major artist, yeah, they'll take care of all that.

Brian Funk (53:05.072)

Definitely.

Brian Funk (53:12.71)

Mm.

Jeff Graves (53:20.408)

not a major artist, man, but I got some really good ideas. My friends got some really good ideas, and man, we got some really good tracks. You want those to really blow up. You want them finished. You can't finish a song without mastering it correctly. And I think that that's really where the name kind of came from a little bit. So I was kind of curious if it was that obvious or not.

Brian Funk (53:44.643)

didn't strike me right away, but yeah, I I g I get it now. But I mean, yeah, it's

Jeff Graves (53:47.172)

That's good, that's good. Cause you wanna throw a bunch of love in there. Be like, what's he talking about? Love. He gonna get all lovey-dovey on us? What's going on?

Brian Funk (53:52.679)

No, it's it's a good thing 'cause I I don't think there's anybody that gets this far without a love for it. there's a lot of more sensible ways to make yourself miserable, right? But cool. We'll send people to lovelang.studio. thanks for taking the t time to talk, Jeff, and thank you to everyone for listening.

Jeff Graves (54:02.104)

Yeah, definitely. And I just thought man love language, right? Very true.

Very, very true.

Jeff Graves (54:19.342)

Hey Brian, I really appreciate the time and I'll tell you what if anybody would like to have any questions or you know they want to reach out to me personally Jeff at loveling so jeff at luvlang.studio

Brian Funk
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