Anyone interested in a mastering showdown?

[miroslav]

There's a huge advantage to objectivism. I'll only partially - disagree isn't even the right word - Let's just say that when I first listen to a project (and I only get that "first listen" once) I react to it and let it shape the outcome also.

..............

NOW LET'S BE CLEAR that I'm not telling people to not work on your own mixes. I'm just saying that sometimes it's advantageous to detach and let the talents of others add to your own.

I've been bogged down with a studio upgrade/reconfiguration the last couple of months...so I had not listened to any of the stuff I was working on in over two months, until this weekend.
As soon as I heard a few of my songs, they sounded different than I remembered them, and it seemed I could hear things that I don't remember being like that.
It's mainly due to having "fresh ears" again, whereas two months ago, I was listening to some of those songs over, and over, and over.

One of my approaches these days is to do that anyway.
I'll track a bunch of songs...then I come back to mixing them....then I come back and do some mastering touches. That way, I can clear my head and get the sounds out of my head so I can hear them fresh again.

 

[bouldersoundguy]

I master a lot of my own mixes, but I do it away from the tracking/mixing studio and generally with some time between. I often start mastering a song well before it's done, doing it on intermediate mixes as I go. This has the advantage that I can use what I learn to make the mix more mastering friendly. I wouldn't recommend this in most cases, but it works well for me.

One reason it works, I think, is that I've been mastering since long before I knew what mastering was. By age thirteen I had a 5-band per channel eq and a couple of years later I got ten bands. I was always trying to "make it better". Then I discovered bootleg recordings and my compulsion to make them better found me sitting for hours with a pair of cassette decks and my eq. As a result my mastering instincts are pretty free of attachment to the song or mix.

 

[RedStone]

So one of the challenges then is for small time folks (I'm talking people who are recording stuff at home with low budget equipment) to have access to a workflow of reasonably objective ears that will essentially keep their hobby in tact with some degree of satisfaction. I suppose for people like myself, I'm not touring or even really trying to promote my music. I do want it to sound good and competitive and all of that. But I'm more or less doing it for the joy of doing it and learning.

Open Formus can really be a catch 22 for home recording artists seeking advice because you will have everyone giving advice regardless of skill level and monitoring conditions. So what I'm guessing is that the best advice is often the advice to get a specialist.

That "letting go factor" is certainly huge. And I'm sure it's probably frustrating for Professionals to see hacks like me trying to do what they do.

But I wanted to speak to that for a second. For me as far as Mastering other people's work goes, I have a policy: Because I'm essentially a mastering newb with limited gear/resources, If I do work for someone and in the end they aren't at all happy with what I've done I just won't charge them. I am pretty upfront with people who contact me - I can make their stuff sound better and can get them competitive loudness, but I'm not a miracle worker and I'm new to this. If they are looking for Pro Mastering and they can afford it, I encourage them to go elsewhere. I actually have Massive Mastering Linked off of my website as a recommenced professional facility.