master mixed down or not?

J

JasonBird

Average Member
i was wondering if there is a difference if you mix all your tracks down to a stereo file and then master or do it all in track form and then just export it? any differences? i've always done all of the mixing and everything while it was still in track form, and then when i was happy with it, just export it all. i read somewhere that the same person should not mix and master. makes perfect sense to me, so i'm considering having someone else master it for me after i mix it.
JasonBird
 
Mix it and render it to a stereo track. Don't add limiters or compression to the whole track. Take your entire CD (10-17 songs) to the Mastering House. Let them master it so that each track is the same volume, highlights the same freqs.

Don't do it yourself. Don't take them the unmixed tracks. Mixing and mastering are two different animals.
 
JasonBird said:
i've always done all of the mixing and everything while it was still in track form, and then when i was happy with it, just export it all. JasonBird
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What Rokket said.

But you are on the right track with "when I was happy with it, just export it all".

The idea is that you get everything sounding as good as you possibly can while going through the mixing process. (The corollary of that is that you don't use the mastering phase to fix things later).

It is a good idea to get someone independent (and professional) to do it. Fresh expert ears and a first class system is an advantage.

However, not every project requires this independent hearing. If it is important then it is wortwhile. If you are doing it for your own pleaure, well, then it's up to you.
 
cool, thanks

thanks both of you for the response. the stuff we do is mainly for our pleasure and to give cd's to friends and family, but at the same time we also want it to sound as professional as posible. How much does a mastering place charge? avg price per track or by the hour? i've had tracks before in the mp3 clinic have got good response from people that i think to have good ears and advice from. most of the issues that we have are of a performance type missed note or timing a little off here and there, but we're novices. always improving. if there is anybody that considers themselves adept at mastering, i have a song or two that maybe we could arrange some way to send you the file and they could use it for practicing, and also give me a chance to hear what different ears do to it....?
JasonBird
 
Jason, I don't want to open a can of worms here or get too technical about it or get side-tracked into another discussion about what "Mastering" really does. But I'm pretty sure that mastering is not going to do what you think it's going to do. I'm just going by the few hints you dropped about "performance" issues", "doing this for our pleasure", etc....

My guess is that you might be better off mixing the songs as well as you can and then slapping a limiter on them so that "friends and family" don't have to turn up their CD players when they play your CD, and saving your money.

I really hope someone chimes in because I don't want to re-hash this whole "mastering" discussion over and over again.
 
Rami,
i certainly don't want to cause a stir, can i request that you give me a link to a thread that will better explain it to me, i did the search thing and came up with some stuff but if you could provide me with a link to a very imformative thread, that'd be cool. as you mention, i have been mixing them the best that i can, and have acheived good reusts i think. what i'm trying to do is find out what someone else would do instead of me. in anticpation of finding someone that was willing to do it, i have mixed a 13 track song that is completely dry. exported it as a 192 mp3 file through sonar and was going to post it on Nowhere Radio for you guys to hear, then if someone wanted to i could send the wave file to them somehow and see what happens. Am i wasting my time?
JasonBird
 
JasonBird said:
Rami,
i certainly don't want to cause a stir, can i request that you give me a link to a thread that will better explain it to me, i did the search thing and came up with some stuff but if you could provide me with a link to a very imformative thread, that'd be cool. as you mention, i have been mixing them the best that i can, and have acheived good reusts i think. what i'm trying to do is find out what someone else would do instead of me. in anticpation of finding someone that was willing to do it, i have mixed a 13 track song that is completely dry. exported it as a 192 mp3 file through sonar and was going to post it on Nowhere Radio for you guys to hear, then if someone wanted to i could send the wave file to them somehow and see what happens. Am i wasting my time?
JasonBird
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Jason,
There isn't any one particular link that I can think of. But the subject comes up in various threads often. When you say "i have been mixing them the best that i can...................what i'm trying to do is find out what someone else would do instead of me", it leads me to believe you might be confusing "mixing" and "mastering" to a certain degree.

In mastering, nobody is going to do something "different" from what you're doing. They're simply going to take YOUR mix and "polish" it, for lack of a better term. Since you're sending them a 2-track final of your mix, they can't change individual levels, pan something differently, or add reverb to one instrument, etc....

Like I said, you'll probably not even notice a big difference other than volume (usually louder), and maybe a little more detail in the high and low end. I'm not suggesting that's all that mastering involves, I'm saying that's probably all you'll REALLY notice. Your mix will be exactly the same.

Also, when you say you mixed a song that is "completely dry", I don't know what you mean. You should mix the song exactly how you want it to sound. The only thing you shouldn't do is add any compression to the final mix.
 
Rami, first let me say thanks to you for posting. i think i know what you're saying, and i can clarify a few points for you. i probably am confusing the two things, or lumping them into one term. i've been at this for almost 10 years now, and have always done the mixing and mastering i would say. i mean i've never paid anyone to do it, or sent it out etc. i think i have a good grasp on what to accomplish during mixing, and i also add the effects, comp. eq etc to the mix and then i'll listen to it on lots of sources, get feedback from friends bandmembers etc. make the adjustments and i'm done. So now, in the last few weeks i'm reading that mixing and mastering should not be done by the same person. they are totaly seperate animals etc. i think i can understand that as well, which brought me to start this thread. if i'm mixing it, then i shouldn't master it? i definately will keep reading and researching the topic and ask questions.

by dry i meant that there are no effects on any of the tracks. no eq or reverb comp. etc .

Jasonbird
 
JasonBird said:
Rami, first let me say thanks to you for posting. i think i know what you're saying, and i can clarify a few points for you. i probably am confusing the two things, or lumping them into one term. i've been at this for almost 10 years now, and have always done the mixing and mastering i would say. i mean i've never paid anyone to do it, or sent it out etc. i think i have a good grasp on what to accomplish during mixing, and i also add the effects, comp. eq etc to the mix and then i'll listen to it on lots of sources, get feedback from friends bandmembers etc. make the adjustments and i'm done. So now, in the last few weeks i'm reading that mixing and mastering should not be done by the same person. they are totaly seperate animals etc. i think i can understand that as well, which brought me to start this thread. if i'm mixing it, then i shouldn't master it? i definately will keep reading and researching the topic and ask questions.

by dry i meant that there are no effects on any of the tracks. no eq or reverb comp. etc .

Jasonbird
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Jason, allow me to ask a potentially stupid question. when you say you're wondering if someone else should master your recordigns, what exactly are you imagining this other person doing to them?
 
not a stupid question at all. i'm imagining that they will eq it, add reverb, possibly a little compression to make it louder, maybe some phasing things to make wider,. not sure what else. I was thinking of this myself. not sure how long i can drag this thread out, but i have a confession to make. i've always been an Ozone user. since the very first version and recently upgraded to version three, and they acyually upgraded me to 4 since it was so recent. Massive Mastering John said that he didn't really like the program. i read through his points and would agree. So i'm at the point where i want to try and master it without Ozone and see if i can get good results, but if i'm mixing it, then i'm not supposed to maser it right? See where i'm going?
JasonBird
 
JasonBird said:
by dry i meant that there are no effects on any of the tracks. no eq or reverb comp. etc .
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That's what I was getting at with the whole "mixing instead of mastering". You SHOULD be doing all those things to the individual tracks (if you feel they need any of it of course). A mastering engineer is only going to get the 2 track master from you. How is he supposed to EQ, compress, or add effects to any individual instrument in that case? That's why I say that you're not going to hear a GREAT difference between an un-mastered and a mastered track. It will just sound more polished, louder and "tighter", if mastered properly. But panning, track effects, track EQ, etc...is all done in the mixing stage, and actually CAN'T be done in the mastering stage.


***I want to apologize to the ME's in here. I'm not trying to take any potential money out of your pockets, and I do believe in and appreciate a good mastering job. I just don't think that's what Jason is really looking for.
 
JasonBird said:
not a stupid question at all. i'm imagining that they will eq it, add reverb, possibly a little compression to make it louder, maybe some phasing things to make wider,. not sure what else. I was thinking of this myself. not sure how long i can drag this thread out, but i have a confession to make. i've always been an Ozone user. since the very first version and recently upgraded to version three, and they acyually upgraded me to 4 since it was so recent. Massive Mastering John said that he didn't really like the program. i read through his points and would agree. So i'm at the point where i want to try and master it without Ozone and see if i can get good results, but if i'm mixing it, then i'm not supposed to maser it right? See where i'm going?
JasonBird
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Yeah, mixing and mastering are two entirely different things, man.

Mixing, what you're doing is making everything "fit" together. You set levels so the instruments sound better, do some (hopefully) subtle EQ tweaks so nothing's interefering with anything else's sonic space, compress individual instruments to get their transient response in line with what you want it to be, add reverb or delay or chorus or whatever to give a sense of depth or distance where appropriate, pan to give the right stereo spread, and take all your individual tracks and make them "gel" together into a song.

Mastering, you take that song, and do some post-processing to make it sound a little more musical. I'm no mastering engineer, but typically this will involve some sort of mild compression/limiting of the entire mix to juice it up a few dB, maybe a little bit of careful eq polishing to make it sound clearer and fuller, and then getting all of the tracks on the CD to the same level so they'll play back evenly (way harder than it sounds).

Mixing and mastering are two entirely different, yet complimentary, things - when mixing, you take a bunch of individual tracks and turn them into a song; when masteting, you take that wave file representing the song and polish it up a little to make it sound that much better.

Also, get it out of your head this "the same person shouldn't mix and master" because while 9 times out of 10 it may not be bad advice, it seems to just be confusing you. Thor will not come down from Valhalla and smite you with his mighty hammer if you master your own files or anything. Rather, it's just rare to find a guy who's great at mixing AND great at mastering, as they're really two different art forms, and require two very different skill sets.
 
thanks again Rami, that's what i was doing. So i guess i was doing it right. i was under the impression that it might be better somehow to add some of that stuff to the overall mix, and the ME would do that. and i'm sure he would. i know you have to have like any automation the panning etc all set when you mix it down. well piss, i guess i took the whole thing about not mixing and mastering to literally. i'll just keep on doing what i was doing. thanks for everybody's input.
JasonBird
 
thanks to you as well Drew

i totally agree with what you are saying. i'm going to post a "mastered" version of the song that i posted that link to in the mp3 forum and if you wouldn't mind give it a listen and give it a critique. hopefully someone listened to the dry version, i'll leave them both for comparrison purposes. again, thanks i appreciate it!!

JasonBird
 
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