Yes you need a good mix with a little bit of headroom left before you even send it to master. The engineer is just really making it fit for consumption be it cutting a master 12" on acetate to be pressed somewhere else, or sending the finished file to beatport/juno/etc... to be posted for download. The engineer I know will also do mixdowns for certain clients who pay for that, but that isn't mastering.

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I've never been able to eat a whole baby.
Kill the women. Eat the children.
It's just one of those days where you want to bend over everyone you know and kiss their ass goodbye with a big sideways boot.

Latest Mix

For quick home masters, I run Sonnox mastering chain, think it's most impressive piece of software in that field.

All EQing is done in the tracking stage, so I just cut under 40 and over 18khz, slap an expander and compressor on (expander will technically increase the dynamic range, which is then tilted down with compressing, BUT, with expander active, there's practically second to none audible annoying change in volume when there's no kick), adjusting attacks accordingly, then setting fastest possible holds & releases. Afterwards it's limiting time, where gain is increased so at the loudest part I can see the limiting button lit occasionally.
Afterwards it's a stereo plug which I basically use for a mono checker, and voila, leave it be for a day, next day when I'm fresh I hear it's total crap and do it all over again, I get it right on the evening of day 2 usually

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This is what i do, it takes me about 1 minute.

First i use a limiter to even out the biggest peaks and raise the volume a bit.

Then i put a compressor on at -3 to -6 db threshold, so i even out the track a bit more, then the final limiter again, raising the volume as close to 0 db i get without squashing.

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