What is your "mastering" process?
The other thread got me wondering how we go about mastering or finalizing our songs.
- Do you do it yourself, or do you rely on others?
- If others, then professionals, or other hobbyists?
- If you do it yourself, then do you do it right in your DAW, or do you use something like Sound Forge, Wavelab, Ozone, Har-Bal, etc.?
For myself, I handle it myself unless it's being signed to a label. If it's signed, I just find out what the mastering engineer is looking for and export a raw mix. I like to review their masters because I had a terrible master made once (made the mix extremely muddy!) that would've gone out for distribution had I not requested that the label send it to me for review first! And, I'm not talking about a nitpicky thing here either - it was totally effed-up and the mastering engineer was even like "whoa - how did that happen?" in hindsight.
Anyway, for my own tracks that aren't signed, I have my own general process that I consider more "finalizing" or "pre-mastering". I get the mix to sound as much like a commercial reference track or two that I can in my DAW. I only use a limiter on my master buss set squarely at -0.2dB to catch any "overs" and not to affect track loudness. I try to mix so that my peaks are hitting about -2dB. I export the track (at 24/44.1), then sometimes I'll put it in Har-Bal to just see how the overall frequency curve looks and sometimes tweak it using reference curve(s) from the same reference track(s) I used to compare my mixes. If I make changes to the file, I export it as a new file with a "...._HARBAL.wav" added to the file name. Then, I bring it into Sound Forge, clip/fade the intro/outro to eliminate dead space and start with a plugin chain usually consisting of:
volume > multi-band EQ > multi-band compressor (optional) > limiter
I have a few preset chains and presets for each device within the chain that I've dialed in over the years for various genres/styles, so I usually start with those and tweak as necessary. But the tweaks are usually minor and mostly getting the volume/limiter balance where I want it and slight changes to the EQ, sometimes in concert with slight adjustments to the MB compressor. I reference it by A-B'ing it with commercial tracks through my monitors, headphones, and computer speakers until I'm happy with it (I'm too lazy to burn CDs and listen in my car anymore, and my car stereo sucks  ). That's about it. I export the song as another new file with a "...MASTER.wav" suffix and that file becomes the origin of any mp3s that I subsequently export.
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