THUNDERCAT'S HOOOOO!!!!!!


ok, now that i have your attention, i gots me one of them thar, uh, kweshuns fer ya'll


We have a lot of talented and experienced people here at audiosex, so i thought i'd ask you all what you think is the best way to master your music: (of course im talking about a single track "mastering" not several tracks to make an album "mastering")


1.IN PROJECT - Master your song by placing the mastering chains on you master channel

2.After Bounce - export your track(s) THEN master in a separate, new project



does it TRULY make a difference? apart from obvious things like saving cpu is there any other beneficial reason for mastering after the bounce?

i've done it both ways, and the end result usually is about the same to my ears

The thing to me that's good about doing it the IN project way is that it becomes iterative very easily. If you find that something isn't quite working at the mastering stage, you can go back and 'mix through' the mastering plugs to take care of the instrument(s) that are being problematic.

BUT! That could be a bad thing if not careful. If you've learned to mix through an effect, it becomes a crutch that'll ultimately hold you back. You shouldn't make radical changes in the mastering plugs and then go back and mix through them. If you find yourself making more than subtle changes, then figure out why and go back and deal with it in the mix without the the mastering plugs enabled.

But if, say, the limiter affects the snare, or widening requires some slight panning changes, or the addition of some overall reverb puts you slightly over the limit on a particular instrument's ambience, you can quickly and easily fix those things.

And like i said before, some people's computer's will freeze up and/or crash if too much CPU resources get eaten up by having your whole project open with all your vst's AND the mastering plugs


i've googled the question and have formed an opinion, but i want to know what YOU think



(pic unrelated)

 

I'm sure you're better at this than I am but I can think of one good reason: compartmentilization. Mixing and mastering are two separate processes and mastering a bounce retains this. This abstraction keeps you focused on the task at hand instead of thinking about all the changes that you might want to implement to the mix. On the other hand mixtering is good in that if there need to be some adjustments made to the mix when you add your mastering plug-ins it is much easier for you to make the necessary alterations right there in the project. In the past that was really the only option but as usual with choices today, they can be a gift and a curse. Until you get some serious time and skill under your belt I have to say it's more of the latter. Honestly I wish I could ask these kinds of questions but with my CPU there really isn't much choice. I can't even mix without freezing or bouncing tracks and it's a real workflow killer. I guess if your computer can handle it and you can refrain from making huge changes to the mix then go ahead and do it live. If not and you really want to focus on mastering then I would suggest working with a bounce. Sonically there shouldn't be much difference but I think that in most cases it would be really beneficial to do so for the aforementioned reasons. I get this feeling that most producers would just flit back and forth driving themselves crazy. Really if you've been doing this for a while then you should be confident and commit to your mix. Otherwise it becomes analogous to jerking off...it gives you something to do but it doesn't get you anywhere.

 

One process for me. If bouncing would take only some seconds ok, but I hate it to mix, bounce five minutes, then find a mixing mistake and/or improvement in the master, open project again, fix, bounce etc.

If my machine can handle it I mix and master on the go. But I'm just an amateur, so mastering is not important for me.

 

I'm new to mixing and i don't know much of mastering either. But i did it once just to see how it's like. And i'll say mixtering is better just like what catalyst said if you have to make changes lets say..on a track you can change them immediately without having to reopen the project and bouncing and moving on with the mastering. So.. it will save you some time. But that is of course... if your machine can handle the load.
Cheers!

 

Another side to mastering is to adjust the overall level of one tune relatively to the other tunes on the E.P. or Album.
So it becomes necessary to have all the tunes under your eyes & ears, and you need a new project with all the bounces of the tunes.

I prefer mastering after bouncing, even though it implies more steps. This way I can do fine level adjustements by comparing it to other tunes. But when I'm in a hurry, I just drop a usual plugin suite on the master, so one can listen to it without wondering why the level is so low (and pushing up the volume knob).

 

i saw Grammy Award-winning Mixing engineer jack joseph puig interviewed on ( pensado's place ) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xujND35MB4w said he is not a Mastering engineer But when he dose his Mixes he makes them sound the way he wants them to sound on a cd so basically he is mastering it and that is the way he wants it to sound and he gives the Mastering engineer some Head room to just compress a little and limit that's what i started doing when i Mix now mix it like i want it to sound and give it about - 5 to - 9 db Head Room and then drop it into T-Racks standalone and just do some MS mid-side EQ and a little more Gluing Compression and Limiting work's for me

 

It really depents, some use Way 1, others Way 2. If You want to save money You do it yourself in one shot in Your DAW. If You have the right tools 'in the Box' You can seperate mixing first in Your prefered DAW and then mastering in Your preferd DAW.
The Commercial Way is to get Your best Mix/Bounce and deliver it to Your prefered Mastering Dude, who might have a 100.000 $ Plus Mastering Studio, to run Through I/O Plus hardware for a MASTERing for not so much $ (80-100 single track) [Compare for Yourself]!
Other than that, it mostly depends on the money you want to spend, the professionality, it should sound like OR the talent You have do do it for yourself.
My personal way is the mixdown and give a dude who has MASTERing knowledge ;) if you want some tipps or need anything, leave me a message/pm.

 

Frito I'm interested in the conclusion you came to and your reasoning. And props on the Thundercats throwback. That shit brought me back.

 

on the mix-buss, you"ll never dare to dial a sharp -5dB eq in the mids even if it's absolutly useful....why ?? because that's your mix and you know how to mix and no...that's impossible.....
In a mastering session, everything is allowed...