Ok, ripped the blog entry title from a Depeche Mode song.. sue me!

Stuck at home today with "digestive distress" so I decided to make good use of my trapped-at-home time. I fired up Tracktion, loaded my mastering project, and went to it with a will!

Pass 1: adjusting song start/end times so that each track moved neatly into the next, almost as if one long composition with different sections. This took about an hour because I had to go back and check every track for time position and make sure the flow was smooth and even.

Pass 2: EQ. Now THIS one was a pain, but thanks to having each tune on its own track I could easily adjust a songs spectrum in isolation AND in the final output. This took about 45 minutes.

Pass 3: Volume Leveling. OMG, two hours of listening over and over and using Voxengo SPAN to make sure nothing peaked too high and having to add volume curves here and there and listening over and over after adjustments and then listening to the entire freaking album FROM THE START to make sure everything was as close to perfect as I could get it. Brain.. hurts..

Pass 4: Export the entire album as 24-bit/96KHz WAV file. 15 minutes. Just. To. Render. It. lots of coffee died for the cause here.

FINAL PASS: In to Sound Forge, normalized to -1.20 Db, then a last tweak with HarmoniEQ (Voxengo again) to give it a touch more bass drone, then.. listen.. all.. over.. again.

I think S1gns is a demigod.. my brain hurts, my ears are tired, I want to go outside and scream, and this is ONLY TEN TRACKS! S1gns did 88 freaking tracks and lived to tell!!! :eek: I'd have shot myself at track 20...!

So, half way through the last listen for today, and I can say that this is as good as it gets until I rest my ears. "Ear Fatigue" is a real thing, apparently. :( The one good thing is that, even after listening to my tracks over and over and OVER AND OVER, I still like each of them! Either I did a good job or I'm seriously delusional...

I'll do liner notes tomorrow night. I want to make sure the Dedication and Thanks To get in there, and a gear list for gear porn fanatics (heh). Guess I need a bio, and some words about how this album came about. Will render out a PDF!

Yep, while this wasn't as easy or enjoyable as I dreamed, like having a kid, it was more labor than I wanted but I like the final result!

Now to find some trusted folks to test-listen. It's 100% me at this point and I really, REALLY need some outside critiquing...