Re mastering new mix for agent/library

[thekeizer]

I'm signing a song deal with an agent. They asked for an adjustment on the mix which I was happy to do.
This is for a song that is commercially released.
I often do my own producing and mixing but I don't do my own mastering.
Seeing as they asked for a change on the mix, my instinct is to take it back to my new mastering engineer and have him master the full mix and instrumental.

Is this necessary and/or expected?

Thank you.

[cosmicdolphin]

Seeing as they asked for a change on the mix, my instinct is to take it back to my new mastering engineer and have him master the full mix and instrumental.

Is this necessary and/or expected?

As ever...it depends

Getting a dedicated mastering engineer to master a commercial album release is probably a worthwhile investment but if you plan to submit a lot of music for Sync you really need to learn to do your own mastering.

The main reason is many libraries and Publishers send edit requests and it's not viable to have someone else have to re-master your tracks each you receive one. It will end up being cost prohibitive and slow down the whole process.

If you can already mix and produce then self mastering shouldn't be too much of a stretch for you. Most folk I know that produce a lot of sync tracks include the mastering chain within the same DAW session so it's not a separate process, it's a plugin or bunch of plugins that you switch on near the end of the mix process before bouncing the final version - Many of us use tools such as Ozone for example which has it's own AI mastering assistant that can get you 80-90% of the way there at the push of a button. The reason we do it this way is because of the situation you are in now, where slight changes need to be made. All we need to do is make the tweaks and hit bounce again to spit out a fully mixed and mastered track, and this goes for Alts Mixes as well when the library wants multiple versions and cutdowns. It's fairly typical to be asked for 6 or 7 versions of a track.

Some of the bigger / higher end libraries will master themselves and even have a mastering engineer on the staff so they ask for a pre-master. If it's a small one or two person boutique library this is unlikely to be the case but you can always ask them as they may have a mastering engineer they work with regularly. If it's a Sync Agent then they are unlikely to ahve anyone on hand.

The way I see it is you have a few options for this track :

1. Get it mastered by your engineer but risk them asking for more changes ( fairly likely in my experience )

2. Send them the new mix but tell them it's unmastered and you dont' want to pay for the mastering engineer until the mix is signed off ( and maybe ask if they have their own mastering in house )

3. Buy or get a trial of Ozone, and you can put the original master into it as a reference and ask it's AI Mastering Assistant to make the new mix to sound the same. If you are sending a lot of previously released music to a Sync Agent then this might come in useful as the new version can do AI stem re-balancing just from a stereo mix. i,e, if you got asked to turn the vocals or drums up a little for example it can do this really well without the need to re-mix it. This would not have been possible in years gone by without going back to the original mix..

4. Or use one of the many free online mastering sites to do a quick master that's good enough to get your new mix signed off before you use the pro engineer.

Hope that helps

Mark

[thekeizer]

Good advice. Thank you, sir.