That fine line between mixing and mastering...

when you get the feeling that your mix is great, then bounce the mix. There is a time to start mixing and a time to let go. You will always wonder if you just made one more tweak that the mix would be better. Most of the time it won't be. Be happy that you did your best and go mix something else.

wizard71
 I spent a lot of time thinking that there was only one specific way of doing stuff and believe me, I felt useless. But since I started using my knowledge to do my own thing, I have been pleased with my progress.

Bibs

Wizard - This is an awesome shift in perspective. Good for you man. Funny how this also applies to things other than mixing too...
 
 

Rain
 
Keeping in mind that it's relatively easier to remove a few db's here and there than to trying to add back what's been removed, and that shelving high end is relatively easy, wouldn't it be preferable to provide the engineer with something that is a bit flatter?
 
Where do you trace the line? At this point, I'm wondering whether pushing forth could actually do more harm than good when it's time to (hypothetically) master?

Rain - I think you nailed it right there.
I remember sitting in a class at Sweetwater at GearFest a couple years ago and watching a mastering engineer
work his magic on a song.
This song sounded GREAT when he first played it, before doing anything to it. Then after applying his changes
I was just blown away at the side by side differences he made during mastering.
I think we as home mixing engineers (ha) can learn from medicine (Physician, do no harm).
Glad to hear you made such good progress and achieved results you are so pleased with.
Plus you got to 'show off' for your wife... :)
 
Dave
 

I don't believe in these unattended mastering sessions, where you hand over you music to someone without instruction or input.   Get the mix as good and polished as you can in every way, save some masterbuss compression and limiting. Sit down with the mastering engineer to get a final impression of the mix on great speakers.  If the ME has to do nothing except the final level then both of you have done your jobs perfectly.
 
A mastering engineer's job is to fix minor problems, set the final level in the most transparent way possible, and create a CD pre-master disk or DDP file for replication.  Not to fix your mix or change your sound.  If they think that, you shouldn't hire them.  

Great info Danny!  I never knew that mixing engineers like to present a "flat" mix to the ME.  I never did that in my day but in today's digital markets, it does make sense to me the way you described it.  I think I will try that on my next song.  Try to mix flat and then do the color shaping in the mastering.  
 

My perception from experience is 9/10 mastering engineers suck. There's only a few that are any good and they cost a lot of money.

Actually, in the "big leagues" the producer situation widely varies. In reality, there are a whole lot of variables involved. Here in the 21st century, the ecosystems have changed from the old school "big record label" mentality to more control to the artists. Thanks to the internet, artists are now more free to publish work to a wider audience as opposed to relying on a "record deal".  With that comes a change in the presentation medium. Yes there are still those stuck to vinyl and need "mastering". A vast majority of people listen to their music through crappy earbuds anyway. Few people, if any, will hear your music through studio grade precision monitors. I do agree with Danny though, that everyone should have fun mixing and mastering on their own.

Danny Danzi
Unfortunately I have to agree with you on the crappy listening experience of buds. I actually had a client ask me for two masters of their album to be included on their cd. One mastered on real monitors, the other through his personal preference of Sony ear buds and the mastered material needed to sound good and compensated for at 192 kb for mp3. Though this makes me cringe, I can see how someone would want something like this. It also made me a little.more cash and was a "different" experience to say the least.

But this is the whole point of the mastering process... The consumers aren't listening to your stuff on your expensive monitors, they're listening on their ear buds, home "hifi" and car stereo.
The mastering process is intended to make that sound as close as possible to what you heard when you mixed it in your studio..

It is not intended to 'improve' your mix.

There's also consumers that have high end systems and expect the quality of the music to match them. A big mistake is to assume ear buds, hifis and car stereos can't sound amazing. I can't see any mastering engineer worrying about how anything sounds outside his studio because he'll know it's perceived quality is a pure reflection of the system it's being monitored on by the consumer. If the client requests something specific then why the hell not.
If a record company asked me to submit them something in particular then I would ask an ME to do it for sure.

I think one misconception is that high end speakers like audiophile monitors "make" things sound better.  If they sound better it is because they are better drivers, but they are not forcing that sound through processing or design.  They will reveal more detail and make it easier to correct issues or weaknesses.  The better results will trickle down to consumer end listening devices.   That is one of the reasons you see mastering engineers use these high end audiophile loudspeakers with clean amplification rather than studio monitors.  The sound is no-compromise honesty and detail.  

Here are a few of my thoughts.
 
1 Mixing and mastering are not the same thing and should not be done at the same time. They are very separate processes and should be treated so.
 
2 In the right hands mastering can just take a track up another level. Hard to describe. It is not a big mix fix either. I prefer mixes that are excellent to start with. It is something else again. It is that fine EQ tuning that just makes a track sound nicer and more well balanced across the spectrum. It is that very slight compressor conditioning that just adds a touch of pro evenness and leveling to a mix and it is that limiter which can just kick it up a notch in level without destroying the mix.
 
3 CakeAlexS is correct, MOST mastering engineers are very average and they routinely make most mixes worse by far.
 
4 Genre has a lot to do with how obvious great mastering is. In a classical situation it may be very subtle. In a pop or hip hop situation it can make or break a tune!
 
5 I would not hand over my track to a ME and not be there either. It is important to compare the unmastered sound to the mastered sound at exactly the same volume so the level shift or loudness thing is removed. Then what you hear is only how they have made your track sound worse! (or hopefully nicer)
 
6 Reference tracks are vital especially if they are right in the ball park of your style and music.
 
7 Mastering is a very delicate operation and the music is SO easily ruined or made worse. Most ME's are too heavy handed. And many pass the mix through way too many processes as well. It takes skill to actually make it nicer.

whats up ?…...did I miss something ? ……..where's the song / mix ? 
 
how can the idea of mastering a song or a mix apply to creating a working mix for a vocalist to sing over ?
 
Yes ? No ?
 
I can see being concerned about keeping the gain staging right , carving frequencies , making space in a mix , the proper use of effects , and leaving a little headroom to work with ... 
 
in my ever so humble opinion  ,
the song is only a work in progress until the vocals are done and the song is completely mixed and arranged to perfection ,  
 
THEN YOU MASTER   
 
sheessshhh 
 
Kenny

Jeff Evans
Actually Rain terms of your OP and knowing when to stop mixing and start mastering.  The answer to that is just keep your mixing hat on and go for a very well balanced mix that just sounds great.
 
Keep the monitoring levels in your room up so you are not having any problems hearing your great mix. (make it sound like a mastered level. You really need an SPL meter in the mix stage, I could not live without mine)  By turning your mix up you are removing the compression and limiting part of the mastering almost.  Leaving the EQ.  And if you get your mix sounding stellar there won't be much EQ work to do in mastering either.  Just some tidying up of the very ends of the spectrum and some fine tuning of the mids usually.
 
You cannot make mastering decisions after bashing your ears for 8 hours mixing either. Put the mix away for a week and listen to it quietly here and there and note any possible changes. To my ears importing a premastered mix into a totally fresh (week later) mastering session and applying EQ, compression and limiting always sounds better there than trying to do it all at the time of the mix.  Not to mention you won't need all that extra heavy CPU work required if you don't slam a bunch of processors over a mix.
 
Sometimes a little gentle two buss compression conditioning can be nice but I don't consider that mastering. I usually ensure if I do that, the rms (VU) levels going in and out of that process are the same.
 
Learn to live and love the premastered sound. A lot of people think they only have to go 80% of the way with the mix and the mastering will do the rest. I dont agree with that approach. I think it is far better to go 98% of the way with the mix and then you will only have some nice light and simple mastering processes to do which WONT destroy your mix at all but make it just that little bit nicer.  That is the key.
 

Words of wisdom, and what I was hoping would still be true.
 
You know, one of the reasons I praise Logic is its ability to selectively import data from another project on a very granular basis. I even did a short vid about that feature I posted here a couple of years ago. That feature makes it very easy to start afresh without having to rebuild everything from scratch. Markers, tracks, busses, routing, busses, effects - you pick and chose what you want to import.
 
Also makes it a breeze to create an alternative mix.
 
I do use some very gentle compression on the master buss - 2:1 or 3:1, usually just shaving off 2 or 3 db's and glueing things up together.
 
Ideally, I don't want what we do to sound like what's out there. Personally, I'd seriously consider bypassing mastering altogether. I don't like the sound of mainstream music nowadays.
 
Furthermore, iTunes and more and more streaming services make automatic level adjustments, so you actually will deliver more punch and apparent loudness if you down't squeeze every last db out of your limiter. I see that as an opportunity to start making music that sounds good again.
 
For that, getting the mix 98% there is still essential though.
 

Ok this has been done to death and I have come late to my own funeral.
 
There are lot's of caveats to what the guys have said above, and indeed to your question.  Mastering as it used to be, does not really exist anymore.  The process of mastering was invented in the late 50's if I remember correctly (I'd have to look it up) to balance vinyl...notice the word vinyl.  Up until then (working from memory) the finished recording was mostly just pressed to the vinyl with no real tonal adjustments.  As recordings became more complex i.e The Beatles a whole new process had to be invented to make sure those sounds could be re-produced on a mono yea mono hi-fi system.  And again this progressed throughout the 70's.  Till tape emerged as the pre-dominate format only to be quickly replaced by CD, then funnily enough not long after Mp3 emerged the winner.
 
Now what am I on about, mastering to each of these different formats takes a different skill set.  I am not a vinyl mastering engineer...don't want to be.  I'm not sure how many of the above people can actually master to vinyl...maybe we should ask "can any of you master to vinyl?"  Now mastering to vinyl is a handy skill set because it's a boutique industry with 1 million approx. sales in the UK last year (yea it's actually not that many) if you have the skills and equipment it might be a nice stocking filler.
 
For the rest of us however, we are firmly rooted in the future, I will never release to vinyl and probably never to CD.  However if you were to release to CD again you might need a mastering engineer to help if you don't know the procedure... i.e. redbook audio cd with no more than (I can't remember off top of my head) insert figure burning gremlins and no music file going over 0.2.  You get the drift, then there is registering the tracks with gracepoint (again memory) oh and a basic understanding of dynamics...the loudness wars and how different digital convertors behave.  You can see why a digital mastering engineer might be handy...so that means Danny and Jeff are pretty safe.
 
However, if you are going to release the bog standard Mp3, then you don't really have to worry about all that bollocks.  And truth be told, we are in a totally different era to Danny and Jeff, and this is not a slight at them.  But in all honesty their recording or sonic arts paradigm (now I am being a pretensions wanka) is now consigned to history.  Once upon a time the Jeff's and Danny's were the goto boffins, and they deserved the title of boffin just as some of the best engineers enjoyed that title think Emerick, Norman Smith, Glyn John (The Beatles again) (whose son worked on McCartney's record) and of course Alan Parsons...lol got to love Alan Parson's, the ego on this guy was so huge boffin was not enough he wanted to be a rock star to and he made it...sort of.
 
Now to answer your question, sorry I have a terrible propensity to take the long road...the walk is more enjoyable.  I mix and master as I go, and I get results within range.  Yes fellas I have put up some ****e, because I don't believe in hiding behind skirts but after almost 15 years of perfecting a formula all my latest mixes are within range.
 
This is a very different paradigm to the one that Jeff and Danny are talking about, today we are no longer engineer's or boffins although they still exist...Danny and Jeff and they will continue to exist although less and less for music and more for broadcast.  Today as long as you follow a formula, you can mix and master all at the same time, so that when you complete a track within a hour of completion your master is ready.  Even with tired ears.  As long as you have followed the formula and mixed as you go, then what I am saying is true.  Gosh I'm sounding like an infomercial.
 
I can say this with some authority, as I have mentioned I have spent 15 years in the wilderness perfecting the formula...yes I am bat **** crazy.  I have completed almost three degrees in our field (third one about to finish next month with a top mark of 84 so far, on the history of sonic arts) and "with a little luck" (ah Paul ****ing McCartney still going strong...although he is going senile Jayz the best concert he ever attended) a PHD offer next year.  Although with this caveat, I make the above claim, I am based in the land of theory, although all my music is up on soundcloud so you can judge yourself, I have had music I have written and produced used on three different TV shows here in Oz too.  But I have never had a hit record or released a record.  So take my advice as you will.
 
To conclude, we are in a different era of music/sonic production.  The mastering engineer does exist but is a bit of an anachronism, they're not necessary unless your going to release to vinyl...and who is going to release to vinyl and I point to all the pretentious wankas out there.  You can mix and master all at the same time, and you should mix and master at the same time, the line does not exist anymore.  Today's sonic composer "is all things as he is no things" (paraphrasing Malcom McDowell...Caligula 1980 ;)) as long as you have the skill set, there is no reason why you can't paint beautiful mixes and masters.  Sonic Digital Impressionism or something along those lines.  This is what the 60's masters were, although they needed a team to create their sonic masterpieces...today we can do it with as one man or woman with a machine that fit's into the palm of our hands.  Ah it's a funny time.  But if anyone wants the formula, or the treatise or even the manifesto on Sonic Digital Impressionism, one day I will sit down and write it out for you.
 
Finally this post was not to knock Danny or Jeff, but to offer a third way.  Their way was correct and is still correct but it's fast becoming history...everything becomes history even The Beatles...even you and me.  So Danny and Jeff I'm just offering my answer to the above question, which is the line no longer exists between mixing and mastering.  We are now sonic painters, capturing the light within the mundane ;) Van Gough would be proud.     
 
Ben  

As I said earlier: 
"The low cut at 40 seems arbitrary, and to a certain degree it is. I guess I was partially influenced to take the decision by some (maybe questionable) common wisdom. Other key factors were the genre (rockabilly/swing) and overall production feel I had in mind, and personal taste.
 
Furthermore, my set up doesn't allow me to make an informed judgement on what's going on down there. The way the little mono set up in the gym reacted also gave me the impression that there was too much going on in the low frequencies.
 
240 dip: most of the stuff I listen to seem to have some kind of dip in that region compared to my own mixes. So it's not just the reference mix, which, to be honest, I didn't really attempt to duplicate. As a matter of fact, I simply played back a few passages to give me a feel, but didn't really analyze it."
 
So that's basically following what my ears are telling me, and a certain gut feeling, as well as my very own preferences.
 
As for the Analyzer, I'm fortunate enough to have access to one right into my default EQ - and a LARGE one at that (shown at 111% below but can be enlarged as needed). That's the only EQ I need and use. So anytime I EQ anything, I can always have a quick look at the spectrum, pre and post EQ.
 

 
 

I think you hire a Mastering Engineer depending on the quality of the end product you are expecting to obtain.  If you are a professional musician wanting to put out polished professional work, you hire people like Danny and Jeff that have REAL skins on the wall.  You would probably do best to track in a true studio environment as well.....with real instruments.  If your a home studio artist posting 256 mp3 files, you can do fine small mastering your own. 
 
I feel very confident that if either Danny or Jeff were to Master a project that I did, it would turn out far better than what I could do myself, even though I have been doing this for 10 years as well.  It's called experience, quality equipment and tested environment.  There is a reason that clientele still go to the proven, for the professional end product.