Do you master your own work?

[jdstamper]

Doing most instrumental cues (not Top 40 vocal songs) ...

First I try to get a good mix with solid levels, always watching the master bus to leave some headroom, say 3 to 6 DB, and often more than that.

As a final step I apply some mastering plug-ins on the master bus. I usually just put on some master limiting to bring the levels up to something comparable to my A/B reference tracks. So the final level is very dependent on what I selected as my A/B references. That way my mix should be comparable to some kind of genre-standard mix.

I also finalize the EQ settings at this stage but if something is out of whack, I prefer to adjust EQ on the individual tracks instead of the whole mix. It may take longer this way but I believe its the best practice. If that's not effective, then maybe a frequency is building up from several tracks and I might apply a touch of EQ on the master bus.

Someday I'd like to work with Ozone or other mastering plug-ins but so far I haven't made that investment because I'm doing OK without it

Jim

[nicotina]

David,

One thing you need to know, and I didn't see anyone else really explain it above. This confused me for a long time- most of what is called "Mastering" is from the record/cd/album world, where you have to make sure the songs on an album are all consistent in volume, dynamics/compression and a bunch of other things. But we don't need any of that stuff in Taxi, because we pitch songs individually. It doesn't matter if your song matches any of your previous songs. That's why you don't need a Mastering Engineer and can do DIY. All you need to do is get your latest tune to Broadcast quality, which is a tiny part of what Mastering Engineers do. The other responses above explain how to do that.

People will keep calling it "Mastering" out of habit, but it has a different meaning in Taxi context.

Vince

[Len911]

People will keep calling it "Mastering" out of habit, but it has a different meaning in Taxi context.

Vince

true. I think the term "mastering" has come to mean any processing done to the final stereo mix, whether it is one song or an album, and sometimes for various media like cd, vinyl, tape...

[ernstinen]

Ya know, everyone's got their own opinion. Here's mine: I used to master for clients. 99% of the time, I would tell them that they had to REMIX their song. Mastering is a completely different topic than mixing, and any good, honest engineer would DENY the $$$ you could make by mastering a lousy mix.

I wouldn't worry so much about mastering after listening to 100's of terrible mixes... Sure, I lost a lot of money by being honest. I could be rich by USING people. But if you're an artist (and mixing/mastering is an ART), a computer (or a living, breathing mastering engineer) can NOT fix a terrible mix. Learn to MIX first. Mastering is the last, final step. A crappy mix being mastered is a waste of money, and time... I just REFUSE to take people's cash to make a buck. But maybe that's just me... That's why I'm poor. I just won't be dishonest. It's good Karma.

Ern

[mojobone]

People will keep calling it "Mastering" out of habit, but it has a different meaning in Taxi context.

Vince

true. I think the term "mastering" has come to mean any processing done to the final stereo mix, whether it is one song or an album, and sometimes for various media like cd, vinyl, tape...

Yeah but there are plenty of folks that use 'mix glue' bus compression and EQ, phase manipulation and brickwall limiting on their 2-mix and don't call it mastering; lines are blurring, but I doubt I'd call it 'mastering' without another set of ears/speakers involved, so maybe let's call it loudness optimization, because you don't want your track to get dinged for not enough level, even if you were told to let the client take care of that in post-but tread lightly and leave some headroom.

[PhilRey]

Ya know, everyone's got their own opinion. Here's mine: I used to master for clients. 99% of the time, I would tell them that they had to REMIX their song. Mastering is a completely different topic than mixing, and any good, honest engineer would DENY the $$$ you could make by mastering a lousy mix.

I wouldn't worry so much about mastering after listening to 100's of terrible mixes... Sure, I lost a lot of money by being honest. I could be rich by USING people. But if you're an artist (and mixing/mastering is an ART), a computer (or a living, breathing mastering engineer) can NOT fix a terrible mix. Learn to MIX first. Mastering is the last, final step. A crappy mix being mastered is a waste of money, and time... I just REFUSE to take people's cash to make a buck. But maybe that's just me... That's why I'm poor. I just won't be dishonest. It's good Karma.

Ern

I definitely agree with this. I would even go a little bit further saying, learn to write/play "technicaly good music" first ! So many tracks have issues with their mix due to bad writing - or bad playing - A bad track is a bad track. No mixing genious will save it.

To answer the question I'm also mastering my tracks. Clearly not as well as a professional would do, but well enough to license music... (and very simply.. EQ, compression, Limiter...). BUT if i had the money (I will !) I wouldn't do it myself but would rather hire someone like Ern to do it

Cheers - Phil

[mojobone]

Yes, the writing and arrangement have a huge bearing on the mix, and if the mix isn't tighter than a skeeter's tweeter, master processing will likely make things worse. When you only have the two-mix, it's all a balancing act; you don't have the luxury of re-balancing the bass vs the kick drum and if they don't swing together, your track is toast. The only advantage to the do it yourself approach to optimization is that you do have access to the multitracks and can make those adjustments if necessary. If you're chasing your tail at the mix stage, re-visit the arrangement; if there's trouble with the optimization phase, attend to the mix.

If I know I'll be using mix buss processing, I slap it on there before I begin the mix, cuz I know it's gonna change the tonal balance, and why do the work twice?

[SawtoothPorter]

I have had some good luck with LANDR in the past couple of weeks. It is an on demand algorithm based mastering service. If you pay by the month it is $14 per month.

It could be a gimmick but it makes me feel better and has a few good habit establishing features. It has made me ensure I don't have clipping on any track because it will SLAM them and it'll sound like garbage and it makes me leave 4-6 db of head room. My mixes are coming out clearer and that may just because I don't say f-it and upload it to taxi but I have to THINK about what landr is going to do to the track. I wind up with louder, clearer, and more well balanced mixes.

You can try two tracks for free. Love to hear others opinions as well.

[ernstinen]

it will SLAM them.
You can try two tracks for free. Love to hear others opinions as well.

"Slamming" (extreme limiting) is an unmusical way of mastering. "Slamming" (or "brickwalling") are terrible ways of mastering, and I know most record companies demand that for pop/rock... There's more subtle ways of doing it. If you don't know what music sounds like (while you give it up to a computer program), you are not a musician. You're a robot. Is that what you WANT?... "Slamming" is NEVER used by orchestral music mastering engineers.

There is no comparison from a hard rock track (SLAM it!), to a gentle acoustic track, to an orchestral track. No program can figure that out.

Use your ears. They are the most precious instruments on the planet.

My 2 cents,

Ern

[SawtoothPorter]

As a professional machine learning engineer and data scientist for my day job let me say that "robots" can always do it better than humans

Humans just need to teach them how in the right ways.

Volume was one of my problems and LANDR helps me fix that. Simple fix for me.

What I was saying about slamming is I DON'T want it so I have to protect my tracks prior to running them through. If I follow all my precautions it allows for a subtle GLUE+AIR+DIMENSION+VOLUME.

Not going for brick wall which is why I have to leave headroom and focus on balance AS IF I was handing it to a mastering engineer.

All good points Ern. I can't argue with any of them (except robots being inferior to humans).