mastering poorly mixed/tracked songs

[Label]

What are the symptoms of a song that cannot be fixed with mastering? I know ive worked on some that just have inherent flaws like muddy guitars or a lot of excess noise that I cant really fix.

Is this something im doing wrong, or should I not worry about these things and just try to make them sound as good as possible knowing it will never sound like a professional cd?

[TexRoadkill]

The symptoms? If it sounds like crap that would be the main one. Mastering doesn't fix anything. It can make something good sound a little better but if a mix is just plain bad than mastering wont really help.

The biggest enemies to home recordists are lack of experience and laziness. Practice will take care of the first problem and practicing some more will help overcome the second. There is no excuse for excessive noise because it can usually be tracked down and eliminated once you understand your signal path.

Cheap equipment can limit your ability to make recordings that are truly amazing but pretty good results can be obtained with anything if you are willing to spend the time to learn and try different things. If the track you just recorded doesn't sound quite right than do it again and again and again until it does sound right or you are to sick of it to do it anymore.

[Label]

Yeah, this I already know. Im not talking about doing my own material, but when im working on other people's projects. Ive run across a lot of songs that just dont sound very good plain and simple. So im sort of wondering how the "pros" approach these type of scenarios.

[littledog]

Originally posted by Label
What are the symptoms of a song that cannot be fixed with mastering? I know ive worked on some that just have inherent flaws like muddy guitars or a lot of excess noise that I cant really fix.

Is this something im doing wrong, or should I not worry about these things and just try to make them sound as good as possible knowing it will never sound like a professional cd?

It's pretty hard to evaluate how good a job you are doing mastering, because we don't know how good your room sounds, how good your playback system is, what hardware and software you are using, and most important, how good your ears and mastering skills are.

Originally posted by Label
So im sort of wondering how the "pros" approach these type of scenarios.

I'm not trying to be a smartass, but the way Pros approach mastering is to send their stuff to a pro mastering engineer.

My opinion is it's a lot easier to "fake" or "luck" your way through tracking and/or mixing with minimal equipment and skills than mastering. That's not in any way demeaning the skills of some of the brilliant trackers or mixers... only saying that it's easier to get borderline acceptable results in those areas as opposed to mastering.

[Sennheiser]

Who was doing the tracking?

I'm not making a judgement call here, but if it was you, you should have heard how the mix was going as the tracking was being done.

I'f it was not you, you have my sympathy. Not much will rescue a bad mix from bad tracking. No mastering will make a silk purse out of a sow's ear from a really bad recording.