Hey folks!

And so it begins, my story, with my wanting to see if a professional mastering guy with a huge resume of professional jobs in his CV could outperform my efforts here in the home based studio. Had a bit of extra cash available to us last year, and so we figured, 'Let's give it a shot - save me some time.'

The basic package was around $325.00 CAN dollars with '2' redooz as part of the plan. For every further edit after that though, it'd be another 25 bones tacked on. Okay, we said, let's go.

1. Though the pro was courteous in emails - at first - he was surly in dilatory (late) with his responses, more often than not. He was upset that I provided, for each of my 6 songs, their own reference tracks. Each of our songs is REALLY different in style, so each ref. track was aligned to the intended outcome we were looking to achieve. Figured, 'more is better'. Nope nope. He was not happy with that approach at all. So we said, "Okay, just work with THIS track as your baseline (picking the best of the lot)."

2. I also provided him with what we know to be industry standard requests for mastering levels and he acted as if I'd insulted him. 11.2 LUFS (perceived loudness levels) please? Why NO! "Don't tell me how to do my job". How could this guy - nearly 60 years of age - not understand that it's better to master loud(ish), without killing dynamics so that from CD's on down to streaming audio, you'll get the best results?

3. Every master he sent back revealed my flaws in my mixes. THAT was to be expected. He was right in saying mastering will bring out the best in your mixes, unless of course, it's bringing out the worst. Even though I'd provided Ozone-pseudo-masters for him, I'd mucked up some levels and had to come back at him with improved mixes. Here come those extra costs @ 25 bucks a pop for fixes/redos!

4. Every master he sent back told me his ears might be getting tired? One of my songs had distortion on it! How does a mastering guy send you back a master with distortion when he's not even pushing the envelope of dynamics (like the mid 90's through to the 00's used to with ever louder CD's and 'smashtering')?

5. The guy was late with every mix (premaster) I gave him. How many jobs did he have on the go? Then its, "Oh, gee - sorry man to hear your relative died. That does suck - my heart goes out to you." NONETHELESS, my job gets put on the back-burner for about 3 months. 6 songs - 3 months? Crazy!

6. Ended up keeping 2 good masters he did pull off, but then used his other mastering jobs as templates for OZONE 9 jobs I did here and - gotta say - I'm blown away by what that animal can do! If I make money with any of these CD's/airplay streams, I will have to buy it for sure. OZONE 9 can match songs like nothing else I've seen. One of my pieces was a rock orchestral - very hard to mix (6-years in the making!), and wicked hard to master. But using a track by Secret Garden (You're Always There) I was able to procure a similar sounding output/master that made me smile!

............ LESSON LEARNED.............

In my barely humble opinion, if you have good ears and no one is saying your mixes really suck, then chances are your mastering won't suck if you just spend lots of time matching things right and follow some good guides and YT vids out there - whether you're using Ozone or T-racks or what-have-u.

No more money to mastering techs. But I wouldn't trust the 'auto-pilot' services/sites out there. You'll just hear your flaws, want to remix and then settle for half-assed work done by AI. Nothing beats good ears (wear your ear-plugs to concerts kiddies!).

I am not affiliated with Recordingrevolution.com, but Graham Cochrane is an awesome dude who provides a lot of free 5-minute vids (YouTube) on all sorts of things that guide you in your home studio endeavours.

Best to all for the New Year and have fun mastering at home! It's worth the saved money, based on my experience.

 

When and where could we hear those songs? I am really interested in the final outcome!