Dear Michael,
With Mastering, I see exactly where you are coming from and what you want to achieve!
The work of mastering is harder than what we thought, and we fall so easily in some traps, while trying to achieve a more realistic recording. I went thru some difficult steps myself, that I might share with you, and that might help you.
For my humble advise/experience, you have to pay attention that too much hearing kill the ear. I experienced that with my precedent large work for +100 instruments and found that after a moment, the ear is compensing over harshness, over medium, over high and hiss...
I read some article of mastering experts, and I found that they use nearly a ration of 4mn of "great recording earing" for 1mn of "mastering session" to "clean"/"refresh" their ear, because they say by themself that a quick eq compensation made on the fly after long hearing of the same piece is less efficient than a long hearing of a perfect recording (reference) then a quick earing of your music (to be mastered) is enough to highlight what is wrong!
I made incredible mastering progress by taking more time to ear long pièces of music instead of doing quick A/B to apply quick changes in EQ. (I need to share my latest large orchestral works, that show such progress!
).
in your music, my first earing of your piece is :" ho gosh... something is wrong! too much harshness, too much muddyness... not enough presence/ too much diffuse sound..."...
and when I hear my first version of some of my work, I can see the same problem!
select your 2/3 best recording of the same orchestral configuration, and just ear them for a long time, before getting back to adjusting your mastering chain...
I hope my experience will help you!
best regards,
Posted: Sun May 18, 2014 7:53 pm
you got it...