For all you DIY'ers, just wondering how you all go about deciding when your mix or master is finished? What techniques and tools, besides your ears, do you use?

 

Either the deadline or my patience.

 

i think u just try get the mix as close to a mastered reference thats at a bit lower volume

and then u master

and call it a day or a year or a decade and so forth

 

https://pitchfork.com/features/cover-story/reader/aphex-twin/

"[...] a reporter from Spain’s biggest newspaper asked him [Richard D. James] about his relationship with his public. "I hate them." What does he look for when he composes? "Nothing." How does he know when a song is finished? "When I'm sick of making it.""

 

Aside from the typical things, I guess i could break down what i do in two steps:

1-check the RTA or any analyzer and see if what i'm listening correlates to that. This is to make sure my hearing is not all fucked up for listening to it too much or any other reason. Then...
2-if i can listen to it and nothing coming from the song breaks the listening experience (like weird resonances, bad distortion, wrong ballance), then that's it.
3-(I don't do this, but could be useful) If you're offering your mastering services to others or just want to step into the industry, you might want to put your master against successful songs of the genre and see if it "fits".

But yeah, sometimes i just don't want to fiddle with it anymore and just come up with some BS: Too loud? Loudness wars are still going. Sounds muddy? It's analog warmth. Sounds harsh? It's just award winning vintage tube magic. Wrong song? It's non-linearities dude.

 

when I add the God Particle.

no seriously I did just try it and it does sound pretty good.

 

Sounds about right lol.

There is a saying: you don't ever actually finish a mix, you abandon it...


More seriously though, this basically just comes through experience - there is a point in the process where you're sorta just tweaking for the sake of it, focusing on shit that literally no-one else will ever notice, and in a lot of cases, probably actually taking away from the overall impact of the song.

The trick is developing the ability to see when you're approaching that point on the curve, and stop right when the mix is at its peak condition.

It's prob one of the toughest things to learn, but for me personally, it's more of a feeling than anything else - if I can play the mix after working on it for a day and a half, and it can still give me shivers, and get the hairs on the backs of my arms standing up, then I'm usually in a good place.

I don't find it useful to use meters, analysers, etc (and tbh I think it's actually counterproductive in the vast majority of cases) - there isn't a mathematical formula for this stuff, and people don't listen to a mix with their eyes!

Also, one of the most important skills to develop in this field is learning to trust your taste and your instinct - if you're constantly second-guessing yourself and/or relying on meters/formulas, you're gonna find yourself going round in circles constantly.

Be confident and decisive in the way you work (even if you don't always feel like it!) and be open-minded and receptive to (constructive) criticism.

There's literally no such thing as a 'perfect' mix - what you're aiming for is an interpretation that serves the song and the artist's intent. The exact form that might take could quite easily change from one day to the next, so you just have to get yourself to a point on the day that you feel you've done all of the above, and then move on to the next thing.
Trying to do anything else will just drive you insane.

 

Last edited: Aug 18, 2022

It's never finished, just released at a certain point.
Sometimes it's the imperfections that stand out:
Like the classic mixing f**k-up at the end of the Mamas and Papas "I Saw Her Again Last Night".
They left it in because it sounded so good.

 

When I'm so tired of hearing it that I regret having wasted so much time on it.

 

Perfection is not creative.

 

I had to look it up as I had not heard about it:

 

Simply put: Taste. If you’re beginner, set a deadline. Acknowledge your current skills and move on when you hear nothing more to be done. A mix from all faders down should be made in a day (and that’s very generous). Master - a couple of hours.

If you’re advanced, than is easy: if the song sounds the way you want is done. If is not, make it sound the way you want and then is done

 

For one tune, excessively generous, however, if you said an entire album in that time-frame I might have said suicidal.