Mastering dissapointment, or am I clueless

hi,
we had our bass player's friend, who's a real engineer, master a song for us to see if we wanted to use him for our CD.
We gave him one of our songs that had a variety of tempos & feels.
I got the CD of the song today and was a little shocked.

I was shocked because it didn't even sound like us. The low end totally dominated and was muddy, and all instruments and voices lacked detail and sounded =small=. Compared to my work.
I don't know.
Anyone have the patience to give these a quick listen and tell me if I'm clueless, or better off doing it my way?

I'm sorry these mp3's are so big, couldn't figure out how to cut them down. All you need to hear is the Intro+ Verse+Chorus to get the point.

="MeloMasterFriend" is this guy's job (sorry dude if you're on this board, its a matter of taste I guess)
="MeloMasterAlan" is my homebrew mastering

thanks alot..

(big play button is hi-fi stream, little play button is lo-fi stream, down arrow is download)

http://www.nowhereradio.com/artists/album.php?aid=2962&alid=1309

 

OK thanks

I'm bummed because he had all the gear to make a good master that the duplication company would need.
Now I need to get in to the whole Redbook error-free mess

I was =really= hoping his work would thrill us all

 

hi thanks guys-

this friend we had try a master for us was "free help"

we've gotten alot of offers from various friends and about 10% of the time they actually follow up, thats OK.

I'm going to keep my homebrew mastering the way it is. THe band liked it, our friends think it sounds professional (so -so compliment, they don't know any better)
But, we do have a real pro friend, the producer for a girl named Madeline Peyroux, who cranked all 11 songs with my mastering, in his pro space, and he said it sounded great with no deficieincies. Thats really all I need.

So I'm not really shopping for places to send our mixes to

thanks for all the ideas

 

got it

 

Yes this is my goal now. Just want it to pass the duplicators requirements.
The band liked what I did, and we're just making a 1000x for gigs and friends.
Our next CD alot of stuff will be different.

 

OK
despite all the article and demonstrations I've given to my band regarding the volume wars and crushing everything with compression/limiting, they seem to have forgotten everything.

One asked me today:
"When you transfer mix, can you raise overall volume (i.e., making it equivalent to something like recent Red Hot Chilli Peppers/U2 releases)?"

great.

If you can, can you see if my version in the link above,
is any quieter than the other guy's version? (using fancier gear than me). Mine is Master Alan, his is Master Friend.

thanks

/edit/
now have a new version up on this same link- called
"Melo Alan Rad Master" where I'm going straight from an EQ into a KJAERHUS Master Limiter. (No chain of 2 compressors im between the EQ and the Limiter like my original)
Is there too much obvious compression?

thanks

 

Cool ! Thanks for listening,
can you help me straighten one thing-

you said:

"The volume difference isn't as noticable as the expansion of the upper and lower frequencies on your friends master that I don't hear in yours. It makes you think its louder cause you are hearing more of it. "

you mean the Friend master has the expansion and mine doesn't , yes?

Just want to get that right ! I'm still on the fence about using him or not,
but if there's a sort of =largeness= his master has, compared to mine, it may sway my opnion

thanks again

 

hi, thanks

I listened to the Friend version on the system I use to judge things the most, my 1996 Honda, stock factory stereo and a portable cd player with the irritating cig lighter power source..
I know what pro stuff and my stuff sounds like in there, and its sort of my standard.

The expanded low end on the Friend version was massive and un-crankable in my car. Unlike mine or the pro CD's I listen to in there. Mine =used= to have out of control low end but I learned. His job sounded great off the mp3 on computer speakers though - so I'm planning on making distinct/separate masters for our mp3 soundclips on our website.

There was something in the Rad Alan version that I tried, which I =think= opened up the mix a bit (does it seem so?), as I mentioned above, which was to go straight from EQ to limiter, goosing the input volume on the EQ and the output volume on the EQ. Instead of the little compressor chain I had.

I'm starting to think our friend is actually going to be too busy to do this for us after all, I've learned just today.
I =can= do it myself...it won't be pro, but we're not trying to tour the world and go multi-platinum here
I've got a gillion resources for learning the stuff which I was trying to apply on my own first version, but the quality of my setup may be a factor.
Thanks