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Originally posted by derail
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A lot of this is historical. You're talking about "big bands" on "major labels" like EMI, Virgin etc. Yes, absolutely all that music went through mastering engineers.
I'm talking about trance, including the greatest sounding trance. I don't think all the greatest sounding tracks had a separate mastering stage. Most of them, absolutely. But ALL? No. *It isn't an essential process if you've taken care of it during the mixing process.*
Please explain why mastering has to be a separate process from mixing. What will that separate process be able to achieve that applying the same process to the master channel won't? I don't see why it's not possible to get the same result. |
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You are confuzing yourself, but I understand why you are confuzed now, you think because you do the mastering from the mixdown is not mastering, and keeps being mixdown, you dont realize you master your tracks when you apply work in the master channel, as I told you in my last quote, to master a track directly from the master channel in the mix, is not the most accurated way to do it, but you are mastering your tracks and you dont realize it!!!!!
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Some mastering engineers get to trust their one set of speakers and don't feel the need to check many types of speaker, to check that the mix will sound good everywhere. Some will check a few different speakers/ systems. Likewise, if an artist has a few year's experience with how their mixes sound on other systems, then they trust that their listening environment is telling them what they need to hear. No need for separate checks. It sounds good on their system, it'll sound good everywhere, based on their years of experience. |
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You dont need other speakers to check out the Master sounds good in any system, I never said that, you have tools for that, and that's done in the studio monitors, sound enginner experience and skilz, plus his tools will ensure sound good in any system.
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I'll definitely get further external mastering done in the future. I've attended a lot of mastering sessions for my tracks and I've realised how very, very limited the process actually should be, ideally. In an ideal situation, the mastering engineer won't do a thing to it. They're looking for things that went wrong in the mix. If they need to touch an eq, that's something that went wrong in the mix. Whether it's due to the listening environment in the mixing room or whatever, that's something that went wrong in the mix. If the mastering studio has particular high-end volume maximization hardware that the mix engineer doesn't have, then yes, you'd probably rather have that working on your track than the plugin you'd use. But a lot of mastering engineers are using Waves plugins, and they're the exact same plugins I have in my gold bundle. A lot of stuff was mastered using Waves and a lot of it sounds fantastic.
If I get external mastering done, I:
1 - sit in on the session. That's absolutely vital. It's my track, I know every sound that went in there, I want to know everything that the engineer is doing to it, and why. When it comes to eq, limiting, etc, finding out the why will help me to improve my mixing skills so the mastering engineer doesn't have to do that again with my tracks.
2 - bring in reference CDs with as narrow a ballpark as I can find, so the mastering engineer doesn't try to take it away from what I want and towards their personal musical preferences.
3 - Ties in with point 2 - find someone experienced in my sub-genre of music. I can spend massive amounts of money on a mastering engineer working in a million dollar studio, but if they generally master rock music, they may very well make my trance track sound like rubbish (and they have done! I learned that lesson!). If they do a lot of trance, and like trance, they'll do a better job with my track.
4 - make sure I have the opportunity to come back the next day, or next week after listening to it on my usual systems. It's hard to tell what's being done to a track when listening on unfamiliar speakers. One engineer I went to mastered extremely loudly, the music was slamming, it sounded great. Until the next day when I listened to it on my cd player!
I think every mix engineer should have the aim to one day not need anything extra done to their tracks at the mastering stage. It takes a long time to get there, but I think it's wrong to say that every artist will always need to get their tracks externally mastered.
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Seems you dont know at all a golden rule from mastering, this rule is, is never good idea to Master your own music, because you are not objetive with some things, that's why usually a sound enginer will send to master a track to other studio, not because they dont have the skilz, a sound enginner can master pretty good his own music, but is not good idea.
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The Mix is 99.9% of the final sound, mastering 0.1%. Give 100% to the process when mixing, don't think mastering will make things sound better. |
This is totally incorrect  .
To make all this clearer for you.
To mix channel by channel, called *stems*, that's mixdown.
To work with the master channel, or all stems exported in a WAV (no matter you do it from your sequencer), that's called mastering.
Kopi =o.
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Last edited by kopi_luwak on Sep-07-2007 at 17:01
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