I understand the end purpose is to just get a good sound overall. this question is just for informative purposes i think it will help remind some important things i might be forgetting to check etc.

Ok lets say you hear a number one charting song and you enjoy the song.

are there any metering plugins or any other methodology you will go through to actually prove/say/or just assure yourself that

1) that is a good mix

2) that is a good master

thanks!

 

Well, standard metering plugins (peak/RMS) can help match the volume and a spectrometer can be handy.

But the best tools are always your ears. Always have a good tune handy so you can A/B your own mix with it. Takes some practice, I know, but I think (though I'm not a mixing guru by any means) this is the best way.

The point is not to get it to sound similar or to 1:1 match your mix/master, but to use the comparison track as a sanity check.

 

Simple answer, no. Taking the (almost) infinite amount of genres and arrangements into consideration, no tool can tell you in general whether a mix/master is good or not (maybe apart from clipping a fix point wave or a peak at -60dB FS (exaggerated)).

 

just slap The God Particle at the end of the chain and call it a day

 

I'll give you what I'm convinced for this particular forum is a sort of 'devil's advocate' response to your question. I know many here will see it differently than I do, they concentrate on plugins and measurements while I look more at an overall methodology. I'm not a great believer in spending endless amounts of time with tons of plugins and/or endless examination of every little aspect of a recording. More often than not, I believe that takes you down a road that most people will never notice or hear when listening to your music. In the end, for most recordings of popular music it's all about the song and the singer. Period.

When I was much younger I used to run off a zillion mixes of a tune I'd recorded. Often I'd fill up a 2 hour ADAT cassette with mixes of a single song, mostly because I was never happy with what I was hearing. That's a frequent problem when you're acting as a producer of your own music. When I'd go back to listen to those mixes, often I couldn't tell you the difference from one to the next. For the most part, that was wasted time, because more often than not I had been focusing on small particles of the recordings, instead of concentrating on the song and the singer.

With the above in mind, I have 2 fairly small suggestions for mixing/mastering success. First, stop after a handful of mixes, like 5 or less. Shut it down at that point. Don't listen to your work again for a minimum of one week. If you do that, you'll get a much clearer picture of the quality of the work you've done.

Secondly, when you do go back to listen, have a friend with you who hasn't yet heard the work you've done. Doesn't need to be a music pro, it can be anyone. I always found I got a much more accurate and reasonable take on my work if someone previously unfamiliar with the recording was listening to it with me. When I did that, I almost always knew immediately if the recording and/or the mix was a fail. The person with me didn't need to say a word. There's just something that goes on psychologically when someone with fresh ears is listening along with you.

I hope that gives you a small amount of help with your question. Best of luck with your work!

 

I would put it in my DAW next to one of my reference tracks for that type of material/genre. Like I would with anything else I was about to call finished. You should be very quickly able to decide if you consider something a "good" mix and master. it's another example of the "20% of the time creates 80% of the work" rule. That 80% of the work time is always the small details, but that last 20% improvement is what makes a mix or anything else any better than "good".

 

Last edited: Jul 22, 2022

Referencing! And not just for the overall mix or master but for individual elements too. If you have access to a reference track's stems that's even better. That's my 2c!