General tips for recording engineers from mastering engineers

  • Thread starter Thread starter Chris Jahn
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Chris Jahn

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To all you mastering engineers, what are the major do's and dont's for a mix you are about to master. What frequencies do people send out in mixes that make your job harder/easier and on what instruments do they usually occur. What's always to loud in a mix what's always to quiet? Any general guidelines would be great. Thanks
 
There aren't any generalities.

I suppose the low end is problematic more often than anything else in the better-sounding stuff... Evidence of tracking (way) too (freaking) hot in the "not-so-better" sounding stuff.

What makes it easier? Mixes done in better rooms with better monitoring (and obviously from engineers with good listening skills). Harder? Any of the opposite. Easier? Plenty of headroom (which is usually an indicator of a measure of care at every possible step). Harder? No headroom from the start (tracking too hot, mixing too hot, etc.).
 
+1 on what John said. Low end balance seems to be a common problem and is one of the harder ones for a mixer to get right on smaller near field monitors simply because they do not go down that low. Sibilance issues on vocals can sometimes also be a common problem.

In general leave a decent amount of head room in your mixes. Check them on a variety of speakers and headphones at very low and moderate volumes. Make sure that your happy with the balances and feel. Mastering can pull things together and give you that extra edge but the performance, recording and mix has to be solid from the get go.
 
Getting the bottom end right is tough for bedroom producers or those with smaller studios and am always getting mixes sent in too loud!
 
mix wise we have "only" 4 main core-problems:
(1) level problems
(2) frequency problems (e.g. wrong EQing or no EQing where it was needed)
(3) dynamic problems (e.g. wrong compression or no compression where it was needed)
(4) stereo problems (e.g. wrong panning, stereowidening)

------------
tips to avoid those problems:

general:
- acoustically tune your room
- get good headphones for crosschecking (i like sennheiser)
- get at least a 2nd pair of speakers, small logitech PC speakers are better than having only one speaker-set
- compare with references mixes, don't use the "loudest" ones, but the quietest ones you can find (so you can see more of the real "mix" due to less limiting during the mastering)
- try to get distance from your mixes, one or two weeks of distance gives sometimes a better view

(1)
- listen on various speaker systems / environments (car, kitchen, mp3 player)
- make level adjustments on small speakers at low volume
- listen in bands. throw in a multiband compressor which is doing nothing & just listen listen the each band and check if the levels for that frequency range is right
- use automation or multing to get the long term dynamics right

(2)
- listen on various speakers if possible
- learn to properly "read" frequency analyzer. check how it should *roughtly* look like from other productions. i'm using voxengo SPAN (freeware). set it to 1/3 octave and find the resonance points & sweet spots with your EQ. resonances are most of the time bad.

(3)
- most of the people have problems to really learn compression. it took me some years to fully understand how & when to use it. its hard to learn & hard to teach.
- stick on simple compressors, like LA2A, they will work ok on 90% of all material

(4)
- learn to properly "read" the correlation meter (check which values are ok from other productions)
- use headphones

last but not least: try to get as much feedback you can get & take it serious, even if it doesn't make sense on first sight.
 
I love these types of threads. It's so easy to see who I'd trust my mixes with and who I'd never send a mix to.
 
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