..recorded a song, now what makes biggest difference: mixing or mastering?

[earworm]

i'm real curious about this,
i can record OK stuff in my room here, just nice enough for demo stuff,
but now a band approached me and they want higher quality than the stuff i 'produce' now... i told them to go look for a real studio but they want to do a test anyway, so now i wonder;
if i record everything pretty clean, don't try to be too experimental and stuff,
then i could send my mix to a guy who does mixdowns,
or i could mix it all down my way, and send it to a mastering house,

which one of the two options will give the biggest difference?

i dont master the music i record, i tell the band that i did the mixdown, and thats it...

so this summer i'd like to do the test, i'm gonna record one song 'for serious', gonna try to do it better than all the demo stuff ive been doing,
and then i'd love to get my stuff treated by someone else...but what would be the fattest solution ?

thanks in advance

[giraffe]

good band+good sounding equipment=easy tracking
bad band+crap=welcome to hell

mastering can make crap listenable (allong with making good sound awsome)
but i think (is just me!!!) mix is a little more important.

are you confident in your tracking? if yes than you at least might as well do that much.

then just see how the rough's sound, at that point you'll probably be able to tell if you should hand it over or not.

[mixandmaster]

Mixing makes more of a difference to the overall feel of the project.

[Janesaid2me]

I think each step is progressivly less important...ie...tracking...being the most...if it sounds like crap to start...its never gonna sound good....get all the parts down in high quality and perfect...then you move to mixing...that needs to be done "right" ie either to your taste or similar to some industry standard cd....now mastering i say is last because most average people dont know how to master...and is often left off alost of demos...since most younger bands dont have the money to have a cd or demo really mastered....therefore you can get away without that...but mastering in the end is important to really polish everything off...thats my take...im sure others totally dissagree....

[Massive Master]

I go with my sig...

[ecktronic]

A mix has to be a good mix to sound good after mastering. So i would say that the mix is more important thatn the master. You canny polish a shite as they say!
A really good mixing engineer should be able to get a great sounding mix with good sources, and then the mastering engineer will do the finishing touches to make the song sound really good.

[wishtheend]

Question.
Once everything is tracked? How do you prepare it for someone else either mix or master in a different location? I'm going to be doing a recording in Cubase with the Firepod and think a different set of ears would prove better results.

[Massive Master]

If you export your tracks as WAV files that all start at the start and end at the end (so they're all the same length, and just named or numbered "track1.wav, track2.wav, etc.), that will allow anyone on almost any platform to open, modify and mix it.

If you find someone using Cubase, you can just export it.

[Teacher]

mixing is much more important....i'd send it to a good mixer and ask him to make it competively loud...most Good mixers don't NEED mastering its more a want...

[wishtheend]

Originally Posted by Massive Master

If you export your tracks as WAV files that all start at the start and end at the end (so they're all the same length, and just named or numbered "track1.wav, track2.wav, etc.), that will allow anyone on almost any platform to open, modify and mix it.

If you find someone using Cubase, you can just export it.

That's what I was guessing. I should make sure to do it pre any sort of effect (compression, eq'ing) right? Another quick question, with overdubs, for say guitar, would it be suitable to force them down to one track as long as there aren't multiple things going at once?

[giraffe]

aiff is better than wav

once in a while, someone will find a wav to be a problem, but i've never seen a program that won't use aiff

[mixandmaster]

Originally Posted by wishtheend

Question.
Once everything is tracked? How do you prepare it for someone else either mix or master in a different location? I'm going to be doing a recording in Cubase with the Firepod and think a different set of ears would prove better results.

What Massive said.

[Chris Shaeffer]

Holy crap- you'll get so much more out of sending your tracks to a good mixer. Period. End of story. Don't even concider mising your project and then having it mastered.

I can't stress this enough- from what you've said about your own mixing skills I'm CERTAIN the band's album will benefit FAR more from a skilled mixing engineer and no mastering than an unskilled mix and any amoung of mastering.

And you'll look like a hero. Tracking the music takes the most time so you're saving the band a ton of money. Mixing will still cost a bit, but a good mixer can take reasonably well recorded tracks and make them sound fantastic. Don't lie about it, though- that's pretty wrong. If you didn't do the mix don't take credit for it.

Have fun,
Chris

[sile2001]

I see mastering as being like the finish on a car. A car without a finish on it will get you from point A to point B, but unless it's got a nice finish, it will just be plain and won't have that glitter and sparkle that catches people's eye.

And no, I really didn't have anything else to say...I just like dropping into conversations, making analogies, and then leaving.

[Massive Master]

BTW, I'm a fan of having someone else mix tracks if you don't have a very clear direction (and good monitoring).

Jay (Farview) does a lot of work like that lately - Bands either record there and mix at home, or record at home and mix at his facility.

Just got in a job that (unknown to me at the time) BlueBear mixed a few tracks on also. Very nice.

Someone else's (experienced) ear can do a lot sometimes...

[NYMorningstar]

Originally Posted by earworm

which one of the two options will give the biggest difference?

...and then i'd love to get my stuff treated by someone else...but what would be the fattest solution ?

You might want to consider a third option. Like Massive Master says, "The most important step in your final production master is what you did before you ever pressed the "RECORD" button for the first time."

You might want to consider having the person that you choose to do the mixing, to also do the tracking. It will be a great learning experience for you to watch the project develop from the start and even though you'd be paying for it, the investment in your education is priceless.

[geet73]

I'm mixing some stuff for a kid in the next town over right now. He's "running a studio"... but he blows nuts. The guitars are out of tune, the drums are all horribly muffled, there's one oh and a hihat mic(why not just two ohs?), the floor tom mic clips every other hit, and one of the songs doesnt even have a floor tom track. He set it up wrong, apparantly.

This is hell for me. I can't do much with them and I feel bad for the band.. but whatever... he's paying me. I can tell you that they're sounding infinitely better than what he was doing.

If you can at least track well, then definitely just send it to someone to mix. Whoever mixes it can "master" it themselves. Not a true mastering job, just a quick one to get to the point of raising the volume and whatever else they want to do.

[stanjanssen]

What is mixing and what is mastering exactly? I'm confused, sorry....

[ecktronic]

Originally Posted by stanjanssen

What is mixing and what is mastering exactly? I'm confused, sorry....

Mixing is the process of applying effects to the seperate recorded tracks (and getting the levels right) to get them to sit well together as if one rather than sounding like lots of tracks sitting beside each other kinda.

Mastering is the process of taking the stereo bounce of the mix and applying effects to make it sounds better, (and boost the volume).

PS: Very simplified version of explanation.