Professionally mastered home recordings...

B

Blak Jak Balla

New member
I don't have a great understanding of how it all works, but is it even reasonable to expect that professional mastering can drastically improve the final quality of something recorded in a home studio?

Garbage in garbage out I would think. This stands to reason. But if you have reasonably decent home equipment and can record it fairly well, and you are lucky enough to be able to make a quality mix on your own, is it really worth having the final product professionally mastered?

What about professionally mixed? Does it make sense to do one without the other? I've heard that mastering can't fix a bad mix. Why not have them both done together?

Springsteen's "Nebraska" comes to mind...

Was it the mastering that made it sound professional?

I've heard "Nebraska" was recorded on a 4-track. How were they able to take something so seemingly amateur and turn it into something so classic?



Fire away!
 
One of my favorite albums was made in the artists apartment with an AT4033 as the vocal mic, good preamp and 2" tape machine (not sure what they used on guitars/drums). It's one of the best sounding recordings I've ever heard. They mixed & mastered at The Hanger I believe.
 
It might have been recorded on a 4-track, but I'm quite sure it wasn't mixed on one.... I mix client's home-recorded tracks all the time - regardless of the origin of the recording of the tracks, there's a big difference what a professional mix engineer can do with those tracks compared to the amateur hobbyist.
 
It all depends on how adept you are at tracking, and the quality of the recording space, instruments, equipment, etc.

As an engineer who does this stuff pretty regularly, I can tell you the most crucial point in the whole process -- and subsequently, the point where I really earn my money -- is in the tracking process.

Scratch that -- even more important is what happens before a single thing is tracked. Everything I do ... every decision I make before the actual tracking takes place will determine what I have to work, and will ultimately dictate the outcome of the final product. And the more responsibility I place on myself during that particular phase, the better/bigger/fuller/sweeter the final recording will sound.

Becoming a good tracking engineer is much more difficult, in my opinion, than becoming adept at mixing and/or mastering. Hell, anyone with a computer and a copy of Pro Tools can mix something. :D That was a joke. Anyway, my take on it is that if you don't give the mixing and mastering engineers a killer set of tracks to start off with, then you're ultimately going to be wasting a lot of money paying them to try and salvage your tracks.
 
chessrock said:
It all depends on how adept you are at tracking, and the quality of the recording space, instruments, equipment, etc.

As an engineer who does this stuff pretty regularly, I can tell you the most crucial point in the whole process -- and subsequently, the point where I really earn my money -- is in the tracking process.

Scratch that -- even more important is what happens before a single thing is tracked. Everything I do ... every decision I make before the actual tracking takes place will determine what I have to work, and will ultimately dictate the outcome of the final product. And the more responsibility I place on myself during that particular phase, the better/bigger/fuller/sweeter the final recording will sound.

Becoming a good tracking engineer is much more difficult, in my opinion, than becoming adept at mixing and/or mastering. Hell, anyone with a computer and a copy of Pro Tools can mix something. :D That was a joke. Anyway, my take on it is that if you don't give the mixing and mastering engineers a killer set of tracks to start off with, then you're ultimately going to be wasting a lot of money paying them to try and salvage your tracks.
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True as hell.
 
I think it is a much less of an issue when dealing with purely electronic music, as the acoustic space is eliminated. The rest is up to your sound programming and mixing skills... not to mention composition/arrangement.
 
This is probably a stupid question, but what about when you are recording a single acoustic instrument? It would seem that this would get down to the level where a home mixer/master amateur would have a reasonable shot.

Am I wrong about this simplifying the overall process?

I have to admit that If I have a number of tracks to bring together I would rather go with someone with the experience. I am still shocked at the long road I took to getting reasonable sounding tracks
 
Hey guys,

I'm in the mastering phase of my cd. It's a solo acoustic singer/songwriter record. Just my voice & my guitar. A friend of mine is a recently unemployed mastering engineer (the mastering house closed). He reluctantly agreed to take a crack at mastering this record on my gear in my room. I say reluctantly because

-the room sucks

-the gear aint great (digi001 and os9 plugs)

Nevertheless, as soon as he started fooling around with the plugs (eq, compression & limiting) it started to sound much better. The range of my voice and the range of the guitar were fighting each other for room. There were words that got swallowed up or lost. The instrument would overpower the voice or vice versa. Because this was tracked live, there was too much bleed between the tracks to compensate for this by mixing. This guy was able to sort all of this out. I was really impressed.


Well, shocked is more like it. Even my wife was impressed. She gave me the ultimate compliment when she heard it - "Is that you?"
 
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