Submitting with the deadline looming... mix/mastering issues

[gushtone]

Hey all,

Taxi member for over a year but new to the forums. Question for you all. I was working to the wee hours here on the East coast last night to get a submission in under the wire. As I would normally do I printed 4 or 5 mixes with some tweaks (vox up a db, bass down a db, etc) to see which versions opened up best on other speaker/headphones etc. Then I had to quickly choose one and submit it without having had time to put any quick and dirty mastering polish on it.

In your experience, do Taxi screeners and supervisors (time allowing on their deadline) typically take a tune for it's worth and appropriateness for the listing and maybe come back to the writer for a tweak on the mix or for a mastering pass? Just curious. It's hard to put out broadcast ready stuff on a deadline, especially since I only recently moved behind the desk to record and mix my own stuff. Learning fast and furious and having fun doing it.

Anyway, just curious, as although I am quite happy with the initial production, I know a coupe of small level tweaks, maybe an eq tweak or two and a mastering pass would make this particular tune all the better.

Thanks in advance for your input, and I look forward to getting to know you all here on the Taxi forums.

Peace...

[mojobone]

In a nutshell, no. Stuff like that will get mentioned if your listing includes a critique, but barring ad agencies, nobody will ask for revisions and eleven times out of ten, the listing party needs your music to be usable immediately, if not sooner, even if they took their sweet time contacting you. If you scraped through under the wire you may be able to replace your initial upload with a new and hopefully improved version, but which version a screener will hear just depends on the luck of the draw and the number of submissions, so it's a matter of 'probably can't hurt, but may not help'.

[gushtone]

Thanks for the input. I mistakenly posted this in FAQ as well due to new forum user error. So apologies. The mix is solid but I only threw a mastering compressor on the main x bus on the final mixes. It's definitely solid, but good to know I need to always leave time for polish and perfection in my mixes, as well as a mastering pass.

Thanks again!

Peace...

[hummingbird]

Don't forget you can upload a mix to meet the deadline and then upload a better mix a few hours later. Of course you might then have no idea which version a screener listened to... but since the deadlines are usually midnight, I'm relatively sure that screeners in LA might not be working in the middle of the night.