Boydie
If I am mastering my own mixes (or mixes I have made from raw tracks submitted by clients) I will do my mastering within the project on the "master bus" so that if required I can go back to the original mix and tweak anything "on the fly" rather than trying to "fix it" in the mastering

This is how I usually do it myself.
All the best.

Zargg71

Boydie
If I am mastering my own mixes (or mixes I have made from raw tracks submitted by clients) I will do my mastering within the project on the "master bus" so that if required I can go back to the original mix and tweak anything "on the fly" rather than trying to "fix it" in the mastering

This is how I usually do it myself.
All the best.

Likewise 

I bounce the mix to stereo and pull the bounced track into a new project with Ozone 7 Advanced on the master bus for mastering.

Bristol_Jonesey

Zargg71

Boydie
If I am mastering my own mixes (or mixes I have made from raw tracks submitted by clients) I will do my mastering within the project on the "master bus" so that if required I can go back to the original mix and tweak anything "on the fly" rather than trying to "fix it" in the mastering

This is how I usually do it myself.
All the best.

Likewise 

I'm going to fly the flag for not doing it this way. Just a personal view, of course, but here's my argument.
 
The longer you listen, the more things to change you will find. And there is no upper bound on this. You can literally go for as long as mortality allows.
 
Maybe the hi-hat could be louder. Maybe the bass could be more prominent. Maybe the thing on the left could go on the right. Will any of this have any impact on how much it connects with an audience? Well, after a certain point, no.
 
All the real value of a mix, I think, happens in the first few hours. After that, you're just prevaricating. And possibly even making things worse.
 
I like to get the mix so it's exciting, and then either master it, or hand it over to someone else to master, and mark it DONE. If, during the mastering process, I think, "hmm, maybe we could have had the shaker 1/3dB louder", my default decision is "ah well, who cares". Very occasionally, there'll be something that makes me think, "no, really need to go back to the mix on this". This is extremely rare.
 
None of that's because I'm a god-like mixing wizard; I'm not. But I do know a lot about one thing, which is how to finish stuff. And a good way to finish stuff is to not keep giving yourself easy back-doors and room to lose both your original vision and your nerve. If the current record has a flaw, make note, and resolve to do better on the next one.
 
I think that's key to two things that I'm guessing we all want: both to get stuff done, and to get better at doing stuff. And I've seen this many times: someone who has spent years working on music, has started a hundred things, and finished none.
 
I really believe it's good to learn how to live with your decisions. Nothing will ever be perfect. You will never be 100% happy. Something will always niggle at you. That, right there, is the price of creativity.
 
So while people are saying you can blur the line between mixing and mastering, well, sure. You can. You can, alternately, build a massive wall between the two, with heavy security and unleashed attack dogs. I think the latter tends to be far more productive.

John T All the real value of a mix ... happens in the first few hours. 

 
amen, before rigor mortis sets in and a corollary learned the hard way trying to recapture demo magic with a 'professional' recording.
 
biggest delta comes with knowing your gear well enough to focus on performance instead of perfection. 
 
... still working on it.

gustabo
I bounce the mix to stereo and pull the bounced track into a new project with Ozone 7 Advanced on the master bus for mastering.

Lots of folks do it that way. One benefit is you don't need to adjust your buffers. It's also great when you're mastering a collection of songs and want to hear them side by side or fade one into another for a CD album. 
 
But for a single song, there's a major drawback: not being able to tweak the mix as part of the mastering process.
 
Wait a minute, you're thinking, mastering and mixing are separate processes! Well, mastering often reveals problems that are best resolved in the mix. For example, you brighten and compress the full mix but now your cymbals are too prominent, or emphasizes vocal sibilants. A good mastering engineer can deal with that, but it will involve compromises that would be unnecessary if the source tracks are adjusted in the mix.

John T
I really believe it's good to learn how to live with your decisions. Nothing will ever be perfect. You will never be 100% happy. Something will always niggle at you. That, right there, is the price of creativity.
 

This however, is one of the problems I face to often. But something I am trying to get better at. Well put, John.
All the best.

@JOHN T
 
I agree with your general point but I disagree that this is a reason not master on the "master bus" of a mix
 
In all things "creative" there must be an element of self control but at any stage in the process you could keep striving for perfection and not move on (recording, performance, mixing, eq, mastering etc. etc.) so whilst I agree that committing to something is good practice I agree with the comment BitFlipper makes about fixing the mix rather than the master
 
Luckily we have lots of options with SONAR to suit how each of us work 

John T

Bristol_Jonesey

Zargg71

Boydie
If I am mastering my own mixes (or mixes I have made from raw tracks submitted by clients) I will do my mastering within the project on the "master bus" so that if required I can go back to the original mix and tweak anything "on the fly" rather than trying to "fix it" in the mastering

This is how I usually do it myself.
All the best.

Likewise 

I'm going to fly the flag for not doing it this way. Just a personal view, of course, but here's my argument.
 
The longer you listen, the more things to change you will find. And there is no upper bound on this. You can literally go for as long as mortality allows.
 
Maybe the hi-hat could be louder. Maybe the bass could be more prominent. Maybe the thing on the left could go on the right. Will any of this have any impact on how much it connects with an audience? Well, after a certain point, no.
 
All the real value of a mix, I think, happens in the first few hours. After that, you're just prevaricating. And possibly even making things worse.
 
I like to get the mix so it's exciting, and then either master it, or hand it over to someone else to master, and mark it DONE. If, during the mastering process, I think, "hmm, maybe we could have had the shaker 1/3dB louder", my default decision is "ah well, who cares". Very occasionally, there'll be something that makes me thing, "no, really need to go back to the mix on this". This is extremely rare.
 
None of that's because I'm a god-like mixing wizard; I'm not. But I do know a lot about one thing, which is how to finish stuff. And a good way to finish stuff is to not keep giving yourself easy back-doors and room to lose both your original vision and your nerve. If the current record has a flaw, make note, and resolve to do better on the next one.
 
I think that's key to two things that I'm guessing we all want: both to get stuff done, and to get better at doing stuff. And I've seen this many times: someone who has spent years working on music, has started a hundred things, and finished none.
 
I really believe it's good to learn how to live with your decisions. Nothing will ever be perfect. You will never be 100% happy. Something will always niggle at you. That, right there, is the price of creativity.
 
So while people are saying you can blur the line between mixing and mastering, well, sure. You can. You can, alternately, build a massive wall between the two, with heavy security and unleashed attack dogs. I think the latter tends to be far more productive.

I couldn't agree more. In the past I''d spend hours, days on a mix only to find that my first 3 (usually) were the better ones to begin with. So many other things could've been accomplished with the time lost.  These days I pay more attention to the tracking phase, arrangement of instruments, the parts being played and spend less time mixing. 

John T

Bristol_Jonesey

Zargg71

Boydie
If I am mastering my own mixes (or mixes I have made from raw tracks submitted by clients) I will do my mastering within the project on the "master bus" so that if required I can go back to the original mix and tweak anything "on the fly" rather than trying to "fix it" in the mastering

This is how I usually do it myself.
All the best.

Likewise 

I'm going to fly the flag for not doing it this way. Just a personal view, of course, but here's my argument.
 
The longer you listen, the more things to change you will find. And there is no upper bound on this. You can literally go for as long as mortality allows.
 
Maybe the hi-hat could be louder. Maybe the bass could be more prominent. Maybe the thing on the left could go on the right. Will any of this have any impact on how much it connects with an audience? Well, after a certain point, no.
 
All the real value of a mix, I think, happens in the first few hours. After that, you're just prevaricating. And possibly even making things worse.
 
I like to get the mix so it's exciting, and then either master it, or hand it over to someone else to master, and mark it DONE. If, during the mastering process, I think, "hmm, maybe we could have had the shaker 1/3dB louder", my default decision is "ah well, who cares". Very occasionally, there'll be something that makes me thing, "no, really need to go back to the mix on this". This is extremely rare.
 
None of that's because I'm a god-like mixing wizard; I'm not. But I do know a lot about one thing, which is how to finish stuff. And a good way to finish stuff is to not keep giving yourself easy back-doors and room to lose both your original vision and your nerve. If the current record has a flaw, make note, and resolve to do better on the next one.
 
I think that's key to two things that I'm guessing we all want: both to get stuff done, and to get better at doing stuff. And I've seen this many times: someone who has spent years working on music, has started a hundred things, and finished none.
 
I really believe it's good to learn how to live with your decisions. Nothing will ever be perfect. You will never be 100% happy. Something will always niggle at you. That, right there, is the price of creativity.
 
So while people are saying you can blur the line between mixing and mastering, well, sure. You can. You can, alternately, build a massive wall between the two, with heavy security and unleashed attack dogs. I think the latter tends to be far more productive.

+1000 treat mixing and mastering as separate processes, 2 different hats