Mastering your project: DIY or Go to a Pro?

Mastering: DIY or send to a pro?

  • I do home recording, and I master it myself.

    Votes: 82 72.6%

  • I do home recording, and I hire the pros to master it.

    Votes: 21 18.6%

  • I am a pro: I think DIY is fine for mastering.

    Votes: 5 4.4%

  • I am a pro: always use pros for mastering.

    Votes: 5 4.4%
  • Total voters
    113
Massive Master said:
Reverb...?

Are you talking about actual professional mastering engineers - or "pros" that are pushing $15 a track?

Otherwise - I'd highly suggest communicating your thoughts with the mastering engineer. Samples are wonderful and all, but I'd argue that most of the 'better' mastering guys are a little weary of the 'cattle call' state of the industry at the moment. I'm not the busiest guy out there myself, but the "sample requests" are running about a month behind at the moment. No doubt, I'm probably losing business because of it. Hopefully not to 'hacks' (for lack of a better term) who would dump reverb all over someone's project without a fairly good reason for it (and consulting the client about something that crosses the "radical" line).
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To be honest it may not have been reverb, but that was my best guess for what the hell one 'pro' who charged £75 ($140) a track delivered to me. I honestly could not believe how terrible everything sounded, the vocals were tinny, flat, peaks were a mess and I sounded like Stephen Hawking on the final word in each line... When I mix and master myself, I usually know how I want to sound and have several people in my studio anyway for opinions.

Most of my pro experiences, even with engineers in commercial recording sessions arranged by managers/collab artists, have also been unpleasant. Hip-hop seems to have a seperate style to mixing/mastering and a lot of pros use bad techniques. I generally record, have noise gating and then take the raw wav files home.
 
Damian227 said:
To be honest it may not have been reverb, but that was my best guess for what the hell one 'pro' who charged £75 ($140) a track delivered to me. I honestly could not believe how terrible everything sounded, the vocals were tinny, flat, peaks were a mess and I sounded like Stephen Hawking on the final word in each line... When I mix and master myself, I usually know how I want to sound and have several people in my studio anyway for opinions.

Most of my pro experiences, even with engineers in commercial recording sessions arranged by managers/collab artists, have also been unpleasant. Hip-hop seems to have a seperate style to mixing/mastering and a lot of pros use bad techniques. I generally record, have noise gating and then take the raw wav files home.
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How many different mastering engineers have you used? From the above it sounds like you had one bad experience. If more than one and all of them performed this way you really have had some bad luck! If you didn't request a revision for a bad master this was your decision. Considering top engineers like Lord-Alge, Wallace, etc. still have their mixes mastered elsewhere, before condemning the entire professional mastering community I would suggest that possibly you just need to find the right guy(s).
 
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Damian227 said:
I always mix and master my own music, I've sent my wav files off to several "pros" in the past, only for the mix to be returned in a state. Way too much reverb on some, EQ screwed so badly that I don't even sound like me... more like a talking computer and other times the mix is just downright butchered; where I sit and wonder who exactly pays these people?
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When you are referring to reverbs, noise gates and having your voice screwed up so bad that it doesn't sound like you but more like a talking computer, I think you are referring to that thing kids are doing now a days called mixmaster.

Do not trust anyone that offers mixmaster. Mixmaster bad!
 
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