Question about Mastering

R

RushPfeiffer

New member
I'm curious, When you are mixing and then mastering a song. Do you put EQ and compression on every track separately in the mix? or do you just put EQ, compression, ect to the final product, laying the EQ and compression, limters and what not on the entire song rather than separate tracks.

I've applying compression, EQ and reverb to each separate track. But I've seen recently that alot of people put EQ and compression over the entire song after they are done mixing.

How is it supposed to be done?
 
Compressors and eqs on tracks would be part of mixing. Compressing or eqing the mix is a finalizing process that is often done in the mastering stage, but sometimes some bus processing is used during mixdown. You should definitely get the mix as complete as you can before trying master bus processing, or just leave it for mastering.
 
If your mix sounds the way you like it, then you shouldn't have to do anything in the mastering process. However, compression, EQ, etc., will be done as needed to get multiple songs in an album to sound homogenous. If you're just doing one song, you shouldn't need to mess with EQ and such except maybe a limiter to help get overall level up.

Also, caught your little statement about using reverb on each track. If you're mixing in the box, you might consider using a reverb plug just once and sending your individual tracks to it rather than putting reverb on each track. Reverb plug-ins typically use a lot of cpu resources, so you get some benefit from using them as sparingly as possible.
 
When Mixing it is normal to add FXs to the separate tracks. At Mastering the ME will probably use EQ, compression and other FXs on the stereo Mix.
If you are Mastering your own Mixes then don't be tempted to put EQ on the stereo output, as EQ should be done at the Mix stage when Mastering your own Mixes. This gives a better outcome in most cases.

G
 
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