Mastering Question

I have paid a mastering engineer many times and have always felt it was a good investment (provided you get an approval copy before you pay the final bill).  Consequently, I have not done much mastering myself and have a theoretical question.
 
Why do people make a final mix and then go back and master, adding a generation (albeit a theoretically lossless digital one)?  Why couldn't the mastering tools be applied during the final mix at the master bus with equally good effect (or applied at a mastering bus that comes after the main mix bus)?

One reason I do it in a separate process is I developed a mastering template that I use for that purpose. If I were to use that same setup in a full project it would cause severe CPU usage. It could bring the computer to its knees.

Besides when working with a single stereo file one is not tempted to adjust the mix while mastering. If the mix needs to be adjusted I find it best to go back to the project and remix it.

I'm being very general here, so please bear with me.  The term mastering is not quite used in the same way it was before the rise of the bedroom musician.  Mastering used to mostly refer to the final process before duplication and distribution. During the album driven market era mastering often included making sure all the tracks to an album were consistent. It still is used in this way, but with singles dominating the way music is distributed now, it's not quite the same. The one thing that has not changed is that the processes should ideally be separately.   Most mastering engineers will agree that mastering is best done with fresh ears. Trying to listen for mastering after hours of tweaking a mix is not likely to produce anything much different than your final mix.  Think of mixing as baking the cake to perfection and mastering as a separate process of decorating it.  i know that is not the most perfect analogy, but my point is one should not be trying to frost the cake while baking.  Make sure you have a perfect cake and then decorate as a separate procedure.

I'm sure plenty of decent final amateur products have been produced by creating a master bus within a final mix, but i am equally sure a separate mastering session would have made it better.

All the above are good reasons.

I know it really helps me to keep the two separate - I don't have to worry about getting it hot during mixing and don't have to worry about the mix when mastering.  That is one reason I use a different tool mind set).

Having a second set of ears working is a really good thing - if you can justify a mastering engineer for your project.  esp. someone who knows what they are doing and want to help along your vision.

I also have analog hardware that I use, which is a lot harder to incorporate during mixing since I only have three or four units.  That is not enough for me to justify buying a mixer for mixing.

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I actually master on the mix bus with Ozone 5. I find that mastering in a separate session would often point out problems that have to be fixed in the mix session. For me this "killing two birds with one stone" approach saves me time and one less generation of a stereo render. And I have NOT found the quality of the master to suffer as a result.

i do it as a separate task as well, i prefere to get my mix right in the first place, dont think its a good thing to do drastic changes cuz the mix wasnt right, i make good use of spectrum analysers as well, throw one on the master bus, make sure my mix is resonably flat (peak+rms) then render it as a 64 bit file to master with ozone 4

I think the main reason konradh is that if you have been mixing for many hours then the last thing you should do is to apply mastering at the same time which involves EQ, compression and limiting usually. You may not make the right decisions in these areas.

If you leave time between the two processes then you tend to hear the music again fresh and you will be more accurate with your EQ, compression settings. You have just pounded your ears with the mix! How can you now set mastering EQ for example? But saying that I also think it is not bad to mix into some light two buss compression. I have done this a few times especially when I know in advance the client wants a very loud master at the end of the day. That can make a mix sound a little different too but I don't overdo it though.

Also it is great to live with a mix in the car etc for a week. There is always things that will pop out and you will want to modify etc..

All the great sound engineers in our time say the same thing, master later not at the same time. It is tempting to do it at the time of the mix because we can now with all the great mastering tools we have. But if you really want a fantastic mastered sound wait a week, live with the mix and approach it again later. You will be glad you did.

Jeff Evans


I think the main reason konradh is that if you have been mixing for many hours then the last thing you should do is to apply mastering at the same time which involves EQ, compression and limiting usually. You may not make the right decisions in these areas.

+1

As a guy who's done a lot of "home mastering" of both my own an others' work, I'd say that it's mostly a frustrating experience with a lot of going back and forth, reviewing the results on a million different playback systems and wondering when it's good enough. 

Whenever I'm doing an proper "album" (I'm talking indie, self-produced/mixed stuff here) I have a couple of pro ME's that I use, and while the results aren't always positively head-and-shoulders above what I might have achived with the same material (and a lot of time), it's always solid and lets me sleep soundly at night, knowing that the stuff has been listened to and processed by another pair of ears coupled with real know-how. 

I find it liberating!

Sven

konradh


I have paid a mastering engineer many times and have always felt it was a good investment (provided you get an approval copy before you pay the final bill).  Consequently, I have not done much mastering myself and have a theoretical question.
 
Why do people make a final mix and then go back and master, adding a generation (albeit a theoretically lossless digital one)?  Why couldn't the mastering tools be applied during the final mix at the master bus with equally good effect (or applied at a mastering bus that comes after the main mix bus)?

This is a good question. I'll give you my take for what it's worth. I sometimes do a mix inside of Sonar where I master on the bus. But I'd call this "little m mastering" because it's impossible to get all the things right that you would need to do in that situation. If you had a stereo file to work with, it allows for other options that you won't have working inside a project of several tracks. I'll spare you on that since I type a lot and you'd probably not be interested...but the short version would be...
 
There are times when you have to manipulate something in the mastering process. If you have 32 tracks or more, this becomes a tedious endeavor. If you just had one stereo file to deal with outside of the actual mix, it becomes a whole lot easier to deal with yet you can be more precise in other ways. If you master inside of your project, you're not really mastering because there's an entirely different process that should be used. Again I'll spare you the long version.
 
Another cool thing you can do is stem mastering. Export your stuff out of your project in stereo files and then re-import into Sonar and master that way. This way all your effects are applied and you're just dealing with a few tracks. You know, stereo drums, guitars, voice, bass, keys and back-ups. This way if you have to manipulate anything in depth, you're only cutting up or moving 6 files instead of 32 + ya know?
 
But I prefer working on a single stereo mix or a stem mix when mastering. It's just the better way to do things. Best of luck.
 
-Danny

Some of it has to do with your monitors. If you're using near-field monitors you won't get all of the low end (usually nothing below 30 Hz, not much below 50 Hz.) Mastering engineers tend to have speakers that cover the low end, and rooms treated so the low end (indeed the full range) is accurate. If you have a full range monitoring solution and a well treated room you could be very successful mastering things on your own. If not, that is one reason to consider having someone else do it. Another reason people have used professional mastering in the past has been specialized tools that were really expensive. Ozone, UAD, and others have made this less relevant. One last thought- we tend to make mistakes more and take longer to complete work on things we don't do very often. Simply put, the more often you use your tools and your ears with mastering, the better you'll get. This kind of experience is another thing folks pay for when having mastering done professionally. Peace, Tunes