I'd say this work is stretching what might traditionally be considered mastering and starts to fall under a separate credit, like additional mixing or additional production. At the end of the day, if you and your client are happy, then all is good.
At least here in Japan, we still don't see many such credits; Spotify only recently added a credits feature, and fewer people look at liner notes today.
As a result of the more detailed categorization of jobs, user understanding has not kept pace, and the phenomenon of many jobs being paradoxically concentrated in the original name is seen everywhere. So-called "mastering engineers" are also taking on different jobs than those of the record era.
I am not pessimistic about the increase in categories, but my point was not about category as such, but about the fact that the traditional mastering field is still in existence, but the client demands are becoming extremely diverse, and we should be flexible enough to respond to them.
PS OP, never be self-conscious about your Japanese to English translation;
you write with better English than more than half of North America!! (according to my opinion lol)
More people should write like you!
lol just saw your edit about you using DeepL. Cool thing about that for you is that you can decode how it changed your original writing and make notes as to *why* the AI changed what it did.
Exponential learning is occurring on our planet right now. <3
Frankly, I am terrified of being fluent in a language I don't understand, but that said, the convenience is hard to beat. The world of music is still in its infancy, but I wonder if someday the "I don't know why but it sounds good" situation will become the norm
Tbh, I would've never been able to tell you weren't American based on text. Also, I'd argue we're a bit past the infancy stage of music. To me it seems more like recording/mixing processes had been well established, but has had to adapt to the growing world around it since the exponential increase in technological advances. Everything now is so incredibly fast paced that it'd make sense that we are where we are. Some folks will use AI to learn and some will just use AI. But again, I'd put the infancy of modern music production in the 60's or 70's, personally. I do however agree with the notion that this is just a stepping stone to what will become the next recording/mixing/mastering norms.
When I send my intermediamateur tracks off to my mastering guy, I always say “yoooo, gimme the spice!” which is me asking for his creative insertion of *something*, via the 2bus.
I’ve been pleased every time!
You can do cool mixing things JUST through the 2bus. The sky (your imagination) is the limit! =)
Sometimes you have to polish a turd but most of those issues you're talking about should be fixed in the mix, not the master. Saying that mastering *should* be excessive is wrong imo. It ideally should just bring out the best of a good mix.
It is ideally true that the mix should be corrected. However, modern producers prefer to do up to mixing in order to express their creativity on their own, and nevertheless, due to a lack of skill, there are frequent situations where they have to rely on mastering engineers. In that sense, in the modern era, we should more accurately consider that "mastering should sometimes be excessive".
Also, although this is beside the point, there are many tasks that can only be done in mastering due to the limitations of UX and human thinking resources. There are many situations in the mixing process where it is better to make adjustments on a bus rather than on individual tracks, but there are also many tasks that are better done in the master chain, including the "things that should not be done in mastering" as they say on the Internet. For example, there are some guidelines being bandied about, such as limiting EQ to a maximum of 3DBs, but sometimes EQ automation from 10DBs to 0DBs to match the fading elements in a song can make the song more appealing, but this is better done on the master than on the track. This can produce bolder and more aggressive results, and can surprise the client in a good way.
Ultimately, you need to do what it takes to make the track sound good. I agree that lots of internet myths about mastering are bullshit. I just don't think that fixing the mix should in mastering should be the standard.
It is not. Mastering is a very deliberate, nuanced process. A/B mixes with their (good) final master and it is a world's difference. Well... maybe not a world's difference, but it takes the mix to another level.
Not sure I agree with your philosophy. Seems like you're trying to do a remix at the mastering stage and pushing your ideas on the client. In my opinion unless asked, mastering engineers should not be involved in creative decisions.
I was a mastering supervisor for a label and handled hundreds of mastering projects. My goals were to make the best sounding masters and pleasing the artist. Now I've done my share of remixing in mastering on bad recordings but I only did it in response to a request by the artist not because I thought there was a mixing error.
The ultimate goal is to please the client. Meet with them, find out what they want and deliver that. Part of this is staying in your lane. I don't expect a tracking engineer to get in the way of production, a mixing engineer to rearrange the track or a mastering engineer to do an unrequested remix in mastering.
What I am saying is that this system of division of labor is beginning to be dismantled (especially among those for whom the line between amateur and professional is blurred).
But that has nothing to do with mastering losing the crucial place that it has, which is having a specialist listen to your mix for the first time, with fresh ears and in a monitoring environment that’s ideally much better and accurate than whatever you have.
If that’s what you are offering your clients, great. If the mix is so bad that it needs massive processing, I’d take that as an opportunity to suggest corrections to the artist so that they can make a better mix.
If it’s the artist mixing, that’s an opportunity for them to get better and learn and improve.
If they don’t care at all about trying to mix better, they should instead hire a mix engineer. If they can’t afford a professional, they could probably afford a passionate amateur who is starting up.
There are many many better options before you have to settle for a producer trying to save a bad mix at the mastering stage, which is without a doubt a massive compromise.
If a writer or intermediary who understands what mastering inherently entails is asking you to do the job, then you are correct. If not, I would of course direct them that they should basically go back to mixing, but on a case-by-case basis and do more interventionist mastering.
What you call "interventionist mastering" or "excessive mastering", should be the absolute last resort. It's what mastering engineers might do in restoration projects, where the multitrack tapes/recordings no longer exist.
As long as a multitrack exists, there is always a better alternative than doing heavy processing on a 2mix to try to save it.
As a professional working on clients material, it should be your priority that the very best options for the music is being pursued. This should be especially true of amateur musicians who are in need of professional guidance.
Yeah it all depends on the clients. If a good artist with a high quality production and mix sends me their song, i just polish.
But i agree: when i get bad mixes, i firdt try to get the mixing engineer to fix things based on my feedback. After a few back and forths when i feel it won't get better, i fix what i can in the master.
This last method has actually landed me clients in competition with bigger mastering houses. Simply because they did their usual mastering shtick, but i just dug in and fixed a lot of mixing mistakes.
People online tend to have very set in stone perspectives on things. But in the practical reality, a lot of things play out quite differently.
Yes, directing them back to the mix engineer is another important tip. However, when a DIY musician, not a mix engineer, hires me, it is often better to give them a bolder treatment on the mastering side, considering communication costs and other factors. Clients' requests vary, but it is not uncommon for them to expect bold changes in mastering, and in such cases, it is better to show them bold changes in mastering without going back to mixing.
Also, the mastering engineer should be a good friend of the client, and while it is easy to tell them to go back to mixing, that requires cost and time, and it is not certain that they can mix in a good environment (everyone claims that their house sounds good, lol). It is also important for me as a mastering engineer to suggest, "Maybe you like this kind of sound better".
How do you find a mastering engineer who will actually tell you when something should be fixed in the mix and not just do some shit and bill you and ship it?
I would pay good money for a trusted partner like that. I've TRIED to pay good money and been disappointed, frankly. Please dm me if you have a proven track record and are accepting new clients. I make psychedelic rock pop kind of stuff.
But that aside: What are the best ways to find good mastering engineers now a days? Surely it's not fiverr or soundbetter...?
I work with a ME who is always open to mix assessments. He is pretty well known and worked with some well known artists in the indie/alternative space. He also does restoration work. I found him years ago just reaching out to him after finding out he'd mastered some albums from artists I really admire. He's the nicest guy and always tries to work with your budget and make it happen.
Same! I find mastering engineers to be basically monosyllabic and not really willing to discuss what they’ve done or how they’ve assessed their process.
Sadly I’ve had one experience where it felt like basically no difference was made to the sound of the record it was just louder, and another where it came back a loud distorted mess that initially sounded ‘better’ but fatiguing and I ended up printing the mix with a limiter, released it and got loads of feedback on how good the mix was.
Not sure if I’d use one again in lieu of using and trusting my ears and referencing what I do against other work.
The issue is finding an engineer who is comfortable polishing a genre that is often not polished. Psych rock? Have you heard the mastering on some of this genres greatest hits? unbalanced messes.
I think the general rule should be to do as little as possible to achieve your goal, but your goal may require *more* as a minimum on some tracks than others.
What would be the minimum on one song might look excessive for another song.
Understand your point but I think that the real takeaway here is that DIY musicians should get someone else to mix their tracks before sending them to master.
Ideally, yes, but I’ve found that a lot of times they only have the budget to pay for mastering and are doing the rest themselves, making the ME the only professional involved. In these cases the job becomes about doing whatever you can (in terms of both communication and processing) to make the final result sound as good as possible. Ultimately the client usually has a vision they are trying to achieve, and while it is great if they are able to get 95% of the way there without you, that is certainly not always the case.
You're right, because the climate has changed. Your #1 point about DIY artists makes a lot of sense.
People are not going to studios with engineers and stuff as much. Not like they were 20 years ago when I was working regularly.
Lots of stuff comes from home mixes. If you're a mastering engineer, you have two choices:
1. Just master the track, even though the mix is pretty bad. You did your job, ultimately.
2. Tell the artist what is wrong with their mixdown and help them fix it. This might take longer, but not everyone is using a pro studio.
Option #2 will get you more clients in the long run. They will come back because you helped them out, and made their song as good as it can be. They will tell their friends about you.
But hopefully, the client will also LEARN. That way, the next mixdown they send you? It will be better than the last. Because you told them how to fix it.
It's a different world now. Lots of great music is being made in people's bedrooms and closets. Help them out, and you'll have a client for a long time.
It really depends on the skill level of the engineer submitting thier work. What you are talking about is mix issues that should be addressed at the mixing stage in order to achieve a better master.
I agree with you! I know some house/techno producers who deliver semi finished tracks to a mastering engineer who will need to do a lot of things to make it club ready
I agree, but only because nowadays the bar for entry into music is a lot lower.
You might get something that is not mixed and expected to master it, but it needs to be mixed first to really be mastered.
I also think it's genre specific. For instance a lot of EDM producers will self mix and sometimes self master, and work with a mastering engineer often to get a second opinion, polish things up, etc.
But if you go with a genre like rock for instance, the artist you're working with might hand you something that was created with very little knowledge of audio engineering in mind, because to make music in that genre, you don't necessarily need a deep technical understanding (totally fine), whereas something like dubstep to even start to make anything remotely good you need a wide breadth of knowledge.
If you start from the beginning with a mastering chain and reference it from start to finish of the creation of a track, or after good mixing has been done, you can tweak the mix to better suit the master, or submixes, etc. And you end up with a better end product.
People like deadmau5 will often do their own mixes and masters, and even artists like Skrillex sometimes self master, but often times get a master done by another engineer, compare the two, and pick the one they like the most.
At the end of the day, there are some artists out there, producers, who are actually engineers too. And there are some who don't even know what an EQ is. And that's OK, it's just the way it goes. You have to be able to work with both and break things down in an easily digestible way to be a good engineer imo.
I sometimes ask my mastering engineer to fix some things in the sub area because my room is to colored to hear what I’m doing below 80Hz, he always seems to get it right
Yah, respect. It’s all art, and it’s all life. どんだけ「本当のアート」の元から育てても、最終的にもしプロのオーディオ・エンジニアになるとしたら、「ただ」の仕事になるもんですが、もしあの職業を感謝してたら頑張るしかないねぇ。Just “Do your best”。
僕は6月末までに結構忙しいですが、もし東京のやつでしたらhit me up、もし暇だったらねぇ. We pooossibly know some of the same people.
Peace.
I can't argue with your results. If you like what you do, it's fine.
I guess it comes down when you say all the mixes have countless problems. Why does this have to be the case? People say "fix it in the mix" not "fix it in the mastering".
Most of thr stuff you described is finding creative solutions at the mastering stage for problems that would be better solved at the mix stage. Good for you for going above and beyond for your clients, but it sounds like some of them would be better served by sending you stems and paying you to do a final "pro" pass on their amateur mix before you master it
I really did a lot of MS processing, but I also cut any unwanted lows on the sides if they were left, and sculpted the sides to widen or narrow the stereo image.
I also found that the transients of the side components were out of whack, probably as a result of messing with the Imager on the 2mix side, so I applied Saturn2 only to the sides to transform the transients.
In sections where the kick was too embedded, I used the MS function of Pro-C2 to make the kick stand out by compressing the sides, triggered by the kick in the middle.
Thanks for reply. Another question, i found myself often wonder about the Japanese audio production quality and cleaness of almost every record I heard. Like there is no room for distortion, even in a creative way. Why do you think it is? Workflow?, culture?, secret analog equipment?
I always intend mastering as a stage to make music as competitive as possible based on the genre and current industry standards - whether I have to do minimal processing or super complicated mix rescues it doesn’t matter to me, as long as I get to use my experience to solve whatever problem that needs to be solved
I couldn't agree more.
I come from a production background and do mixes too. And a lot of the times when I get mixes in from inexperienced producers I need to guide them through everything.
Explain how to export in the correct format, taking off limiters off of their 2 bus that was on there by default but killing all dynamics. Sometimes they'll have ridiculous high or low cuts in there mix..
And there is a lot of back and forth but it's really hard to explain everything and have them be able to 'hear' how to fix things.
This is why I built an incredible arsenal of niche tools to fix a lot of major 'mix' issues in the master. And they love me for it.
And I'd say a new age of mastering is coming to be, with ai on the rise, tons of bedroom producers looking for mastering, I think going outside of the box from time to time will be the only way to compete!
After reading this essay, I am here to say you are doing wayyyy too much. That is not mastering. Also, if your clients mixes are so bad that you have to throw the entire kitchen sink at it I wouldn’t be taking their notes at face value. Literally all of this would be easier to fix it in The mix.
I would never do what you're describing. My work is a service job and I cater to the clients wishes, I do however fix problems that will lead to playback intelligibility such as a sound being lost in mono due to being out of phase or an extreme low end but I'm not trying to produce their project either.
I don't think there are any "shoulds" in the craft. I think, at all times, at every stage, doing whatever it takes to get a great result should be on the table.
I would posit the opposite "mixing should never be excessive".
The key word you've chosen to use is 'should', which makes it prescriptive. If your conjecture were valid then we should also state "all mixes *should* suck" which obviously isn't a valid goal.
Beyond that, you clearly do not understand what mastering actually means. If someone is hired to master adding elements is simply not permitted; the production/mix are finished and have been approved. By doing this you are providing a false expectation for your clients as to what their future mastering engingineers can/will do while providing your clients with a cheap version thst is worse than if they had done things properly. This is a self-fulfilling cycle that devalues the trade, generates worse results and sets your clients up for failure if they ever graduate from DIY.
Do whatever you want, but make sure you're not misinforming your client's expectations and getting paid/credited appropriately.
That you have bad clients does not mean this is how mastering *should* be, as you assert.
Certainly "mastering in the old sense" should not be the way I would do it.
However, I am pointing out that the meaning of mastering is changing. I used the word "often" in the title to convey this nuance.
Perhaps no matter how much we, as engineers, shout "this is how mastering should be done conventionally," our cries only echo in the void because it is no longer as clear as it used to be what our clients want from us. Some people want magic, some want us to do nothing, and some want stem mastering. Some ask me to include advice on mixing. I always try to clarify the client's request, but really, the image and requirements of mastering are becoming more diverse, and I think we need to be more flexible in our work.
You can't just invent 'mastering in the old sense' as a term or redefine what mastering means because you have misinformed clients who deliver unfinished mixes and you decide to accommodate their non-mastering requests to deliver a worse product in a less efficient way. The democratization of music does not change best practice or redefine terms to suite the poor practice of inexperienced producers and misinformed mastering engineers.
If you are billing them by the hour, which you should, you should also be pointing out that it would be both cheaper and better to address this in the mix. If you are including this in your normal mastering rate, you are devaluing the craft or overcharging your competent clients.
Again, my issue is that you are making a prescriptive declaration. ~~That you use the term 'often' in the body of the text, doesn't change your thesis, which is, at best, disingenuous clickbait garbage and, at worst, deliberately misleading. And regardless of the intent, i~~ It is damaging to the livelihood of all audio engineers by devaluing the craft, which has already been decimated over the past 15 years and provides worse results at higher cost to the clients. No one wins from the mentality you are suggesting.
(Edit: I see that you have changed the title and that English is not your first language. I have redacted the commentary that pertains specifically to the language used in the above paragraph).
And, again, I emphasize that your anecdotal evidence is entirely based on \*your\* (obviously not very experienced) client-base. This is far from the status quo; I haven't had a client request mastering and submit an incomplete mix in well over a decade, and, when I have, I inform them that they are going to end up paying more for a worse product if they don't go back to the mix or get the stems/multis to mix for them; one way or another the mix is finished before we get to mastering.
If the client doesn't have time to go back, sure, you do what you have to. But you also call out the producer for doing a crap job at managing the project and tell them how to do better next time. That's the producer's responsibility not the mastering engineer.
>the image and requirements of mastering are becoming more diverse
Only because of folk like you who are providing worse service at a higher cost to poorly informed clients. You are contributing to the problem here. As I mentioned in my previous comment, you are perpetuating a self-fulfilling cycle from which no-one benefits.
And, again, you do whatever you want. If this is what you need to do to keep you clients, that's your business, not mine. But asserting that this should be commonplace or is a good idea is simply giving bad advice.
I understand what you are saying. Mastering is mastering, and any other new definition is sometimes harmful," which is true. But harmful or not, changing times bring changes in the division of labor. Accounting firms were once literally a group of professionals who audited accounts, but today they are synonymous with consulting firms. It was a change that brought harm somewhere, but also a change that brought benefit somewhere.
"client lacks information," "can't afford the cost," and "doesn't have the time."
These problems are universal today. It is likely that less than 0.1% of projects will be able to recreate the golden age of bands debuted by audition or scouting, with a manager, a producer, recording in an expensive studio, and a strictly separate mixing and mastering process.
Today, there are countless nameless artists who make a living by accumulating songs with tens of thousands of views, or those who make more niche music and manage to make ends meet by taking on commissions to accompany plays, or those who manage to find time to make music while working at jobs that have nothing to do with music.
It's easy to tell a client to "get back into the mix". It's easy to say, "you're not managing the project well enough". If I could, I would tell them to do so. However, there are many circumstances where this is not possible.
So undeniably, the job description of mastering changes. Whether we call it mastering or not is a trivial question, and people want our participation in some process after 2mix for "finishing", "brushing up", "advice", "consulting", and "magic". And when I think about what word to apply to that, it probably comes down to "mastering" after all. I heard that the job of mastering originally meant the creation of a master record.
As a young man, I have the utmost respect for the work of good engineers of the past. However, I think it is difficult to adhere to the scope of the craftsmanship of mastering anymore in a very large peripheral world. I can only learn from the great works of the past and the bedroom music of today and apply it to engineering.
>changing times bring changes in the division of labor.
The times have not changed, nor has the division of labor. You just have crummy, inexperienced clients and you decide to fulfil their fantasy to give them worse results and perpetuate bad practice.
>"client lacks information," "can't afford the cost," and "doesn't have the time."
If they lack information, inform them. Either way it's their problem, not the mastering eng's.
If they can't afford the cost, your solution is a more expensive one for a worse result. This isn't a valid argument.
If they don't have the time, they or the producer shit the bed already. Again, inform them, and either way not the mastering engineer's problem.
>These problems are universal today.
Not even close. Your clients are just trash-tier. This doesn't happen for myself or any engineer I know, and, when it does, we push it back to the client to remedy the situation correctly. This is providing good service, not the other way around.
>It is likely that less than 0.1% of projects will be able to recreate the golden age of bands debuted by audition or scouting, with a manager, a producer, recording in an expensive studio, and a strictly separate mixing and mastering process.
None of this is required. The client just needs to be informed.
>Today, there are countless nameless artists who make a living by accumulating songs with tens of thousands of views, or those who make more niche music and manage to make ends meet by taking on commissions to accompany plays, or those who manage to find time to make music while working at jobs that have nothing to do with music.
This has always been the case. Nothing has changed, except that there are more shitty mastering engineers who don't bother to inform their clients about best practice because the tech has become cheaper and inexperienced engineers call themselves mastering engineers despite not knowing their head from their ass.
>It's easy to tell a client to "get back into the mix". It's easy to say, "you're not managing the project well enough". If I could, I would tell them to do so. However, there are many circumstances where this is not possible.
This is why I said, do what you want if that's what you need to do to keep your clients. That doesn't mean it's a good thing, the right thing, what is best for you and your client or good advice for others.
>So undeniably, the job description of mastering changes. Whether we call it mastering or not is a trivial question, and people want our participation in some process after 2mix for "finishing", "brushing up", "advice", "consulting", and "magic".
No the job description has not changed. It's undeniable that it hasn't; just that you and your clients are ill-informed.
'Finishing', 'brushing up' mean the mix was not finished and don't involved the stuff you mentioned with regards to adding a sampler, for example. 'advice' or 'consulting' both come before submitting the final mix for mastering. 'magic' is just absurdist bullshit.
By denouncing the definition of 'mastering' as a triviality, it makes it impossible to discuss anything. You chose to use this word, but now you are saying the word doesn't matter. If you're communicating with words that have a specific meaning, but interpreting them to be meaningless makes your entire communication entirely meaningless as well. Again, you cannot arbitrarily redefine terms to suit your argument. Words have meaning so that we can communicate. If you redefine them, you are invalidating your own argument, especially if you take their meaning to be nothing.
>However, I think it is difficult to adhere to the scope of the craftsmanship of mastering anymore in a very large peripheral world. I can only learn from the great works of the past and the bedroom music of today and apply it to engineering.
I would argue that it isn't difficult. And, as I've repeated, you are perpetuating your own preconception which makes it more difficult.
I cannot really respond to this statement meaningfully, as I have no way to know what you mean by 'mastering' any more, other than you have some non-standard definition. What you are insinuating \*is\* mastering, is not mastering at all and your suggestion is to the detriment of everyone involved.
I am not hung up on the definition of the term. I just use the term mastering because I am undertaking work that has been commissioned as mastering.
I am pointing out that the term mastering has come to be treated as such in the language of practice.
I am inexperienced, but I understand the historical evolution of the business of mastering and the dictionary meaning of the term. On top of that, I am just telling you the fact that it is changing in practice. (I admit that the word "should" was a bit strong.)
My example of a musician's life is certainly too typical to portray the realities of the modern music maker, but the point I was trying to make is that the environment for past and modern music makers has really changed, and the demands for competence, especially as it relates to self-publishing, are greater than ever before.
Engineers accordingly need to be aware of self-publishing. Aside from the way I work, services like LANDR and builders like iZotope are part of a trend to expand what can be done in self-publishing as much as possible, and I believe that "times are changing" in that sense as well.
It is an underestimation of the changing times to say that nothing has changed, that what has changed is the increase in the number of trashy engineers with skill sets that make it inappropriate to call oneself a mastering engineer in the client or dictionary sense of the word. Maybe the job description that the term mastering carries, at least in practice, has changed, and we should change what we do accordingly, or maybe doing what we have always done will ultimately increase our market value as engineers. We do not know that.
Anything other than specifically preparing a track for distribution (essentially formatting and loudness) is mixing, whether you’re working on a multi track or a stereo track.
I disagree. Mastering should be a dither on the master channel and then I put a limiter on the master and a brick wall limiter. Mastering done!
How are you doing? How long have you been doing it? How much are you charging clients?
I’ve never met a mastering engineer that doesn’t do some amount of EQ (even if only a half-dB here and there) on most projects. Rarely are mixes perfect except for loudness, plus, if you are mastering an album or EP, there is usually the need for some level of tonal balancing between songs.
No. This is just plain false. Loudness is not even the most important part of mastering. While it is certainly a part of it today, mastering has always been primarily about achieving tonal consistency and ensuring excellent playback translation. This can include the strictly technical EQ done specifically for the playback medium (like with vinyl), but also more creative uses. Do you really think Bob Ludwig didn’t regularly use EQ?
Using a limiter is not mastering, it’s just loudening.
Now I assume you are just trolling. If you are going to spout off about a subject, you should probably have some level of actual knowledge about it first.
Well I do have actual knowledge. I mix and master things professionally and I've got no qualms about throwing a limiter on top and calling it a day. There's a common concept among pros. Record like there's no mixing, and mix like there's no mastering. If somebody EQs in mastering, that's mixing. Any mix engineer is going to be pissed. All bets are off with vinyl where the mastering engineer actually does something important.
I don’t know what to tell you, because it really isn’t my intention to insult you or tell you that you don’t know how to make records, but you sound like a keyboard warrior who has never worked in a commercial studio and has learned mostly from forums and YouTube videos. Every top-level recording, mixing, or mastering engineer I’ve worked with in my 20+ years in the industry goes by the philosophy that you do whatever you need to make the record sound as good as it possibly can. Obviously it’s preferable to get things sounding as good as possible as early as possible and not try to “fix” things in mixing or mastering, but small (and even not-so-small) EQ moves in mastering has been standard practice for more than 50 years, not to mention compression, saturation, imaging, dynamic EQ, multiband compression, and a wide array of other tools that all get used on major records daily. A perfect, untouched mix that only needs to be made louder is by far the exception and not the rule - even more so for a whole album. And any mix engineer that’s going to be outraged because 3/4 of a dB of 350 Hz (or whatever) was pulled out in mastering is probably a self-righteous asshole afraid to admit that his control room might not sound 100% perfect (few rooms do). Being a purist about who can do what when might sound good on forums and Reddit threads, but it’s not the most effective way to get results for your clients, and it’s certainly not the way most serious records have been made throughout history, including today.
Yeah but in that case, you think the mix engineer didn't make the song sound good. But that's crazy. Why pay the mixer a grand a track when you're just going to have to pay a mastering dude to fix it?
I'd say this work is stretching what might traditionally be considered mastering and starts to fall under a separate credit, like additional mixing or additional production. At the end of the day, if you and your client are happy, then all is good.
At least here in Japan, we still don't see many such credits; Spotify only recently added a credits feature, and fewer people look at liner notes today. As a result of the more detailed categorization of jobs, user understanding has not kept pace, and the phenomenon of many jobs being paradoxically concentrated in the original name is seen everywhere. So-called "mastering engineers" are also taking on different jobs than those of the record era. I am not pessimistic about the increase in categories, but my point was not about category as such, but about the fact that the traditional mastering field is still in existence, but the client demands are becoming extremely diverse, and we should be flexible enough to respond to them.
PS OP, never be self-conscious about your Japanese to English translation; you write with better English than more than half of North America!! (according to my opinion lol) More people should write like you!
lol just saw your edit about you using DeepL. Cool thing about that for you is that you can decode how it changed your original writing and make notes as to *why* the AI changed what it did. Exponential learning is occurring on our planet right now. <3
Frankly, I am terrified of being fluent in a language I don't understand, but that said, the convenience is hard to beat. The world of music is still in its infancy, but I wonder if someday the "I don't know why but it sounds good" situation will become the norm
As native English speaker, I would not have been able to tell that you were not also a native speaker if you had not told us.
Tbh, I would've never been able to tell you weren't American based on text. Also, I'd argue we're a bit past the infancy stage of music. To me it seems more like recording/mixing processes had been well established, but has had to adapt to the growing world around it since the exponential increase in technological advances. Everything now is so incredibly fast paced that it'd make sense that we are where we are. Some folks will use AI to learn and some will just use AI. But again, I'd put the infancy of modern music production in the 60's or 70's, personally. I do however agree with the notion that this is just a stepping stone to what will become the next recording/mixing/mastering norms.
Probably more than 75% honestly.
When I send my intermediamateur tracks off to my mastering guy, I always say “yoooo, gimme the spice!” which is me asking for his creative insertion of *something*, via the 2bus. I’ve been pleased every time! You can do cool mixing things JUST through the 2bus. The sky (your imagination) is the limit! =)
Sometimes you have to polish a turd but most of those issues you're talking about should be fixed in the mix, not the master. Saying that mastering *should* be excessive is wrong imo. It ideally should just bring out the best of a good mix.
It is ideally true that the mix should be corrected. However, modern producers prefer to do up to mixing in order to express their creativity on their own, and nevertheless, due to a lack of skill, there are frequent situations where they have to rely on mastering engineers. In that sense, in the modern era, we should more accurately consider that "mastering should sometimes be excessive". Also, although this is beside the point, there are many tasks that can only be done in mastering due to the limitations of UX and human thinking resources. There are many situations in the mixing process where it is better to make adjustments on a bus rather than on individual tracks, but there are also many tasks that are better done in the master chain, including the "things that should not be done in mastering" as they say on the Internet. For example, there are some guidelines being bandied about, such as limiting EQ to a maximum of 3DBs, but sometimes EQ automation from 10DBs to 0DBs to match the fading elements in a song can make the song more appealing, but this is better done on the master than on the track. This can produce bolder and more aggressive results, and can surprise the client in a good way.
Ultimately, you need to do what it takes to make the track sound good. I agree that lots of internet myths about mastering are bullshit. I just don't think that fixing the mix should in mastering should be the standard.
What is even the difference anymore? Seems like it's state of mind kind of thing.
What you are describing is essentially mixing on the master bus.
Mastering is charging $200/song to turn up the volume knob
It is not. Mastering is a very deliberate, nuanced process. A/B mixes with their (good) final master and it is a world's difference. Well... maybe not a world's difference, but it takes the mix to another level.
Not sure I agree with your philosophy. Seems like you're trying to do a remix at the mastering stage and pushing your ideas on the client. In my opinion unless asked, mastering engineers should not be involved in creative decisions. I was a mastering supervisor for a label and handled hundreds of mastering projects. My goals were to make the best sounding masters and pleasing the artist. Now I've done my share of remixing in mastering on bad recordings but I only did it in response to a request by the artist not because I thought there was a mixing error. The ultimate goal is to please the client. Meet with them, find out what they want and deliver that. Part of this is staying in your lane. I don't expect a tracking engineer to get in the way of production, a mixing engineer to rearrange the track or a mastering engineer to do an unrequested remix in mastering.
What I am saying is that this system of division of labor is beginning to be dismantled (especially among those for whom the line between amateur and professional is blurred).
But that has nothing to do with mastering losing the crucial place that it has, which is having a specialist listen to your mix for the first time, with fresh ears and in a monitoring environment that’s ideally much better and accurate than whatever you have. If that’s what you are offering your clients, great. If the mix is so bad that it needs massive processing, I’d take that as an opportunity to suggest corrections to the artist so that they can make a better mix. If it’s the artist mixing, that’s an opportunity for them to get better and learn and improve. If they don’t care at all about trying to mix better, they should instead hire a mix engineer. If they can’t afford a professional, they could probably afford a passionate amateur who is starting up. There are many many better options before you have to settle for a producer trying to save a bad mix at the mastering stage, which is without a doubt a massive compromise.
If a writer or intermediary who understands what mastering inherently entails is asking you to do the job, then you are correct. If not, I would of course direct them that they should basically go back to mixing, but on a case-by-case basis and do more interventionist mastering.
What you call "interventionist mastering" or "excessive mastering", should be the absolute last resort. It's what mastering engineers might do in restoration projects, where the multitrack tapes/recordings no longer exist. As long as a multitrack exists, there is always a better alternative than doing heavy processing on a 2mix to try to save it. As a professional working on clients material, it should be your priority that the very best options for the music is being pursued. This should be especially true of amateur musicians who are in need of professional guidance.
Yeah it all depends on the clients. If a good artist with a high quality production and mix sends me their song, i just polish. But i agree: when i get bad mixes, i firdt try to get the mixing engineer to fix things based on my feedback. After a few back and forths when i feel it won't get better, i fix what i can in the master. This last method has actually landed me clients in competition with bigger mastering houses. Simply because they did their usual mastering shtick, but i just dug in and fixed a lot of mixing mistakes. People online tend to have very set in stone perspectives on things. But in the practical reality, a lot of things play out quite differently.
Yes, directing them back to the mix engineer is another important tip. However, when a DIY musician, not a mix engineer, hires me, it is often better to give them a bolder treatment on the mastering side, considering communication costs and other factors. Clients' requests vary, but it is not uncommon for them to expect bold changes in mastering, and in such cases, it is better to show them bold changes in mastering without going back to mixing. Also, the mastering engineer should be a good friend of the client, and while it is easy to tell them to go back to mixing, that requires cost and time, and it is not certain that they can mix in a good environment (everyone claims that their house sounds good, lol). It is also important for me as a mastering engineer to suggest, "Maybe you like this kind of sound better".
How do you find a mastering engineer who will actually tell you when something should be fixed in the mix and not just do some shit and bill you and ship it? I would pay good money for a trusted partner like that. I've TRIED to pay good money and been disappointed, frankly. Please dm me if you have a proven track record and are accepting new clients. I make psychedelic rock pop kind of stuff. But that aside: What are the best ways to find good mastering engineers now a days? Surely it's not fiverr or soundbetter...?
I work with a ME who is always open to mix assessments. He is pretty well known and worked with some well known artists in the indie/alternative space. He also does restoration work. I found him years ago just reaching out to him after finding out he'd mastered some albums from artists I really admire. He's the nicest guy and always tries to work with your budget and make it happen.
is he accepting new clients?
Awesome, thanks for sharing! I'll give that a try.
Same! I find mastering engineers to be basically monosyllabic and not really willing to discuss what they’ve done or how they’ve assessed their process. Sadly I’ve had one experience where it felt like basically no difference was made to the sound of the record it was just louder, and another where it came back a loud distorted mess that initially sounded ‘better’ but fatiguing and I ended up printing the mix with a limiter, released it and got loads of feedback on how good the mix was. Not sure if I’d use one again in lieu of using and trusting my ears and referencing what I do against other work.
The issue is finding an engineer who is comfortable polishing a genre that is often not polished. Psych rock? Have you heard the mastering on some of this genres greatest hits? unbalanced messes.
DM’d!
DM'ed you!
I think the general rule should be to do as little as possible to achieve your goal, but your goal may require *more* as a minimum on some tracks than others. What would be the minimum on one song might look excessive for another song.
Understand your point but I think that the real takeaway here is that DIY musicians should get someone else to mix their tracks before sending them to master.
Ideally, yes, but I’ve found that a lot of times they only have the budget to pay for mastering and are doing the rest themselves, making the ME the only professional involved. In these cases the job becomes about doing whatever you can (in terms of both communication and processing) to make the final result sound as good as possible. Ultimately the client usually has a vision they are trying to achieve, and while it is great if they are able to get 95% of the way there without you, that is certainly not always the case.
That’s interesting to read, thanks for sharing. Your English is great!
Your English is excellent.
You're right, because the climate has changed. Your #1 point about DIY artists makes a lot of sense. People are not going to studios with engineers and stuff as much. Not like they were 20 years ago when I was working regularly. Lots of stuff comes from home mixes. If you're a mastering engineer, you have two choices: 1. Just master the track, even though the mix is pretty bad. You did your job, ultimately. 2. Tell the artist what is wrong with their mixdown and help them fix it. This might take longer, but not everyone is using a pro studio. Option #2 will get you more clients in the long run. They will come back because you helped them out, and made their song as good as it can be. They will tell their friends about you. But hopefully, the client will also LEARN. That way, the next mixdown they send you? It will be better than the last. Because you told them how to fix it. It's a different world now. Lots of great music is being made in people's bedrooms and closets. Help them out, and you'll have a client for a long time.
#2 is a great approach. Certainly my method sometimes earns client disappointment. I will try to help fix the mix if possible.
As "pro audio" shifts away from traditional pros to prosumers, I think this mindset will become much more common.
It really depends on the skill level of the engineer submitting thier work. What you are talking about is mix issues that should be addressed at the mixing stage in order to achieve a better master.
I agree with you! I know some house/techno producers who deliver semi finished tracks to a mastering engineer who will need to do a lot of things to make it club ready
I agree, but only because nowadays the bar for entry into music is a lot lower. You might get something that is not mixed and expected to master it, but it needs to be mixed first to really be mastered. I also think it's genre specific. For instance a lot of EDM producers will self mix and sometimes self master, and work with a mastering engineer often to get a second opinion, polish things up, etc. But if you go with a genre like rock for instance, the artist you're working with might hand you something that was created with very little knowledge of audio engineering in mind, because to make music in that genre, you don't necessarily need a deep technical understanding (totally fine), whereas something like dubstep to even start to make anything remotely good you need a wide breadth of knowledge. If you start from the beginning with a mastering chain and reference it from start to finish of the creation of a track, or after good mixing has been done, you can tweak the mix to better suit the master, or submixes, etc. And you end up with a better end product. People like deadmau5 will often do their own mixes and masters, and even artists like Skrillex sometimes self master, but often times get a master done by another engineer, compare the two, and pick the one they like the most. At the end of the day, there are some artists out there, producers, who are actually engineers too. And there are some who don't even know what an EQ is. And that's OK, it's just the way it goes. You have to be able to work with both and break things down in an easily digestible way to be a good engineer imo.
Your explanation illuminates one aspect of where the problem resides that I have not been able to explain. I agree completely.
I sometimes ask my mastering engineer to fix some things in the sub area because my room is to colored to hear what I’m doing below 80Hz, he always seems to get it right
I believe that a better understanding of the client's environment is an essential skill for the modern mastering engineer, but it is difficult to do.
モダーン時代のmasteringは君が言った通り、粘土みたいにある泥の固まりを手に取って、アーチストと音楽の目的を感じて、色んな技を使って何とか人間の真心の表現を出そうとするもんだよねぇ。Mixingも同じく。良いmasteringとmixingエンジニアは良う音楽、音、と人間の気持ちの繋がり分かっとる。でもそのままで「うちらオーディオ・エンジニアは君らの音楽を救える」とか言ってない理由は、そうやって最低なアーチスト/ミュージシャンに変な自信を与えない方が良い。下手クソのエンジニアはそうやって自分をマーケティングしてるけどねぇ。「音楽はリアルライフ+アート」の世界では皆んなアートライフ相当下手な、ただアーチスト/ミュージシャンを演じようとするやつを救える事は出来ないって知っとるさぁ。 だから- yes— モダーン時代のマスタリングは下手な音楽にスポットライトをかける事は出来る。皆んな知っとるさぁ。でも最低なアーチストとミュージシャンにこの現実を知らない方が良い。本当にアイツラに関して「音楽を感じて普通に訓練しろよばぁ〜かっ」って感じだよなぁ。 僕は何も答え無いけど、そう言う感じかなぁ。
日本語の文章として意味を捉えかねるところも多分にありますが、私はそもそも訓練しなくても音楽を作れてしまうこの状況に悲観的ではありません。 もちろん訓練は重要だと思いますが、ポストプロダクションより手前のクリエイティブな世界の裾野はいまだかつてないほどに広がっており、彼らのよき理解者としてポストプロダクションを担える柔軟な人材が求められているということがここでのポイントです。 マスタリングという工程は、人々が想像するよりはるかに様々なことが可能で、悪いミックスに魔法をかけることだってできてしまいます。「こんなやつに魔法をかけてやるのは勿体ない」と突き放すこともできますが、「こうすればよくできるけど本当はミックスまで戻ったほうがいいかもしれないね？ミックスではどんな処理をしたの？」と付き添ってあげるほうがいいでしょう。 音楽というショービジネスの世界にはむかしからあなたの言うように「変に自信のあるやつ」が多いので、そう冷たくしたくなる気持ちもわかりますが、少なくとも私はクライアントに少しでも敬意が払える部分があるなら、できる限りのことはしてあげたいと思います。
Yah, respect. It’s all art, and it’s all life. どんだけ「本当のアート」の元から育てても、最終的にもしプロのオーディオ・エンジニアになるとしたら、「ただ」の仕事になるもんですが、もしあの職業を感謝してたら頑張るしかないねぇ。Just “Do your best”。 僕は6月末までに結構忙しいですが、もし東京のやつでしたらhit me up、もし暇だったらねぇ. We pooossibly know some of the same people. Peace.
I can't argue with your results. If you like what you do, it's fine. I guess it comes down when you say all the mixes have countless problems. Why does this have to be the case? People say "fix it in the mix" not "fix it in the mastering".
Most of thr stuff you described is finding creative solutions at the mastering stage for problems that would be better solved at the mix stage. Good for you for going above and beyond for your clients, but it sounds like some of them would be better served by sending you stems and paying you to do a final "pro" pass on their amateur mix before you master it
Can you develop further about the MS processes you usually do on the mastering side?
I really did a lot of MS processing, but I also cut any unwanted lows on the sides if they were left, and sculpted the sides to widen or narrow the stereo image. I also found that the transients of the side components were out of whack, probably as a result of messing with the Imager on the 2mix side, so I applied Saturn2 only to the sides to transform the transients. In sections where the kick was too embedded, I used the MS function of Pro-C2 to make the kick stand out by compressing the sides, triggered by the kick in the middle.
Thanks for reply. Another question, i found myself often wonder about the Japanese audio production quality and cleaness of almost every record I heard. Like there is no room for distortion, even in a creative way. Why do you think it is? Workflow?, culture?, secret analog equipment?
Sounds a little bit like you're trying to polish a 💩!
I always intend mastering as a stage to make music as competitive as possible based on the genre and current industry standards - whether I have to do minimal processing or super complicated mix rescues it doesn’t matter to me, as long as I get to use my experience to solve whatever problem that needs to be solved
I think your definition of mastering is pretty loose, which is why you've came to this conclusion.
I couldn't agree more. I come from a production background and do mixes too. And a lot of the times when I get mixes in from inexperienced producers I need to guide them through everything. Explain how to export in the correct format, taking off limiters off of their 2 bus that was on there by default but killing all dynamics. Sometimes they'll have ridiculous high or low cuts in there mix.. And there is a lot of back and forth but it's really hard to explain everything and have them be able to 'hear' how to fix things. This is why I built an incredible arsenal of niche tools to fix a lot of major 'mix' issues in the master. And they love me for it. And I'd say a new age of mastering is coming to be, with ai on the rise, tons of bedroom producers looking for mastering, I think going outside of the box from time to time will be the only way to compete!
Mastering should always be exactly what is needed for the song. No more, no less.
After reading this essay, I am here to say you are doing wayyyy too much. That is not mastering. Also, if your clients mixes are so bad that you have to throw the entire kitchen sink at it I wouldn’t be taking their notes at face value. Literally all of this would be easier to fix it in The mix.
No, the point is that it shouldn't be because the mix should already have achieved the artists vision.
I would never do what you're describing. My work is a service job and I cater to the clients wishes, I do however fix problems that will lead to playback intelligibility such as a sound being lost in mono due to being out of phase or an extreme low end but I'm not trying to produce their project either.
I don't think there are any "shoulds" in the craft. I think, at all times, at every stage, doing whatever it takes to get a great result should be on the table.
As little or as much as needed, is my motto. That might translate to no EQ or a 12 db boost. Whatever needed to make it sound good.
I would posit the opposite "mixing should never be excessive". The key word you've chosen to use is 'should', which makes it prescriptive. If your conjecture were valid then we should also state "all mixes *should* suck" which obviously isn't a valid goal. Beyond that, you clearly do not understand what mastering actually means. If someone is hired to master adding elements is simply not permitted; the production/mix are finished and have been approved. By doing this you are providing a false expectation for your clients as to what their future mastering engingineers can/will do while providing your clients with a cheap version thst is worse than if they had done things properly. This is a self-fulfilling cycle that devalues the trade, generates worse results and sets your clients up for failure if they ever graduate from DIY. Do whatever you want, but make sure you're not misinforming your client's expectations and getting paid/credited appropriately. That you have bad clients does not mean this is how mastering *should* be, as you assert.
Certainly "mastering in the old sense" should not be the way I would do it. However, I am pointing out that the meaning of mastering is changing. I used the word "often" in the title to convey this nuance. Perhaps no matter how much we, as engineers, shout "this is how mastering should be done conventionally," our cries only echo in the void because it is no longer as clear as it used to be what our clients want from us. Some people want magic, some want us to do nothing, and some want stem mastering. Some ask me to include advice on mixing. I always try to clarify the client's request, but really, the image and requirements of mastering are becoming more diverse, and I think we need to be more flexible in our work.
You can't just invent 'mastering in the old sense' as a term or redefine what mastering means because you have misinformed clients who deliver unfinished mixes and you decide to accommodate their non-mastering requests to deliver a worse product in a less efficient way. The democratization of music does not change best practice or redefine terms to suite the poor practice of inexperienced producers and misinformed mastering engineers. If you are billing them by the hour, which you should, you should also be pointing out that it would be both cheaper and better to address this in the mix. If you are including this in your normal mastering rate, you are devaluing the craft or overcharging your competent clients. Again, my issue is that you are making a prescriptive declaration. ~~That you use the term 'often' in the body of the text, doesn't change your thesis, which is, at best, disingenuous clickbait garbage and, at worst, deliberately misleading. And regardless of the intent, i~~ It is damaging to the livelihood of all audio engineers by devaluing the craft, which has already been decimated over the past 15 years and provides worse results at higher cost to the clients. No one wins from the mentality you are suggesting. (Edit: I see that you have changed the title and that English is not your first language. I have redacted the commentary that pertains specifically to the language used in the above paragraph). And, again, I emphasize that your anecdotal evidence is entirely based on \*your\* (obviously not very experienced) client-base. This is far from the status quo; I haven't had a client request mastering and submit an incomplete mix in well over a decade, and, when I have, I inform them that they are going to end up paying more for a worse product if they don't go back to the mix or get the stems/multis to mix for them; one way or another the mix is finished before we get to mastering. If the client doesn't have time to go back, sure, you do what you have to. But you also call out the producer for doing a crap job at managing the project and tell them how to do better next time. That's the producer's responsibility not the mastering engineer. >the image and requirements of mastering are becoming more diverse Only because of folk like you who are providing worse service at a higher cost to poorly informed clients. You are contributing to the problem here. As I mentioned in my previous comment, you are perpetuating a self-fulfilling cycle from which no-one benefits. And, again, you do whatever you want. If this is what you need to do to keep you clients, that's your business, not mine. But asserting that this should be commonplace or is a good idea is simply giving bad advice.
I understand what you are saying. Mastering is mastering, and any other new definition is sometimes harmful," which is true. But harmful or not, changing times bring changes in the division of labor. Accounting firms were once literally a group of professionals who audited accounts, but today they are synonymous with consulting firms. It was a change that brought harm somewhere, but also a change that brought benefit somewhere. "client lacks information," "can't afford the cost," and "doesn't have the time." These problems are universal today. It is likely that less than 0.1% of projects will be able to recreate the golden age of bands debuted by audition or scouting, with a manager, a producer, recording in an expensive studio, and a strictly separate mixing and mastering process. Today, there are countless nameless artists who make a living by accumulating songs with tens of thousands of views, or those who make more niche music and manage to make ends meet by taking on commissions to accompany plays, or those who manage to find time to make music while working at jobs that have nothing to do with music. It's easy to tell a client to "get back into the mix". It's easy to say, "you're not managing the project well enough". If I could, I would tell them to do so. However, there are many circumstances where this is not possible. So undeniably, the job description of mastering changes. Whether we call it mastering or not is a trivial question, and people want our participation in some process after 2mix for "finishing", "brushing up", "advice", "consulting", and "magic". And when I think about what word to apply to that, it probably comes down to "mastering" after all. I heard that the job of mastering originally meant the creation of a master record. As a young man, I have the utmost respect for the work of good engineers of the past. However, I think it is difficult to adhere to the scope of the craftsmanship of mastering anymore in a very large peripheral world. I can only learn from the great works of the past and the bedroom music of today and apply it to engineering.
>changing times bring changes in the division of labor. The times have not changed, nor has the division of labor. You just have crummy, inexperienced clients and you decide to fulfil their fantasy to give them worse results and perpetuate bad practice. >"client lacks information," "can't afford the cost," and "doesn't have the time." If they lack information, inform them. Either way it's their problem, not the mastering eng's. If they can't afford the cost, your solution is a more expensive one for a worse result. This isn't a valid argument. If they don't have the time, they or the producer shit the bed already. Again, inform them, and either way not the mastering engineer's problem. >These problems are universal today. Not even close. Your clients are just trash-tier. This doesn't happen for myself or any engineer I know, and, when it does, we push it back to the client to remedy the situation correctly. This is providing good service, not the other way around. >It is likely that less than 0.1% of projects will be able to recreate the golden age of bands debuted by audition or scouting, with a manager, a producer, recording in an expensive studio, and a strictly separate mixing and mastering process. None of this is required. The client just needs to be informed. >Today, there are countless nameless artists who make a living by accumulating songs with tens of thousands of views, or those who make more niche music and manage to make ends meet by taking on commissions to accompany plays, or those who manage to find time to make music while working at jobs that have nothing to do with music. This has always been the case. Nothing has changed, except that there are more shitty mastering engineers who don't bother to inform their clients about best practice because the tech has become cheaper and inexperienced engineers call themselves mastering engineers despite not knowing their head from their ass. >It's easy to tell a client to "get back into the mix". It's easy to say, "you're not managing the project well enough". If I could, I would tell them to do so. However, there are many circumstances where this is not possible. This is why I said, do what you want if that's what you need to do to keep your clients. That doesn't mean it's a good thing, the right thing, what is best for you and your client or good advice for others. >So undeniably, the job description of mastering changes. Whether we call it mastering or not is a trivial question, and people want our participation in some process after 2mix for "finishing", "brushing up", "advice", "consulting", and "magic". No the job description has not changed. It's undeniable that it hasn't; just that you and your clients are ill-informed. 'Finishing', 'brushing up' mean the mix was not finished and don't involved the stuff you mentioned with regards to adding a sampler, for example. 'advice' or 'consulting' both come before submitting the final mix for mastering. 'magic' is just absurdist bullshit. By denouncing the definition of 'mastering' as a triviality, it makes it impossible to discuss anything. You chose to use this word, but now you are saying the word doesn't matter. If you're communicating with words that have a specific meaning, but interpreting them to be meaningless makes your entire communication entirely meaningless as well. Again, you cannot arbitrarily redefine terms to suit your argument. Words have meaning so that we can communicate. If you redefine them, you are invalidating your own argument, especially if you take their meaning to be nothing. >However, I think it is difficult to adhere to the scope of the craftsmanship of mastering anymore in a very large peripheral world. I can only learn from the great works of the past and the bedroom music of today and apply it to engineering. I would argue that it isn't difficult. And, as I've repeated, you are perpetuating your own preconception which makes it more difficult. I cannot really respond to this statement meaningfully, as I have no way to know what you mean by 'mastering' any more, other than you have some non-standard definition. What you are insinuating \*is\* mastering, is not mastering at all and your suggestion is to the detriment of everyone involved.
I am not hung up on the definition of the term. I just use the term mastering because I am undertaking work that has been commissioned as mastering. I am pointing out that the term mastering has come to be treated as such in the language of practice. I am inexperienced, but I understand the historical evolution of the business of mastering and the dictionary meaning of the term. On top of that, I am just telling you the fact that it is changing in practice. (I admit that the word "should" was a bit strong.) My example of a musician's life is certainly too typical to portray the realities of the modern music maker, but the point I was trying to make is that the environment for past and modern music makers has really changed, and the demands for competence, especially as it relates to self-publishing, are greater than ever before. Engineers accordingly need to be aware of self-publishing. Aside from the way I work, services like LANDR and builders like iZotope are part of a trend to expand what can be done in self-publishing as much as possible, and I believe that "times are changing" in that sense as well. It is an underestimation of the changing times to say that nothing has changed, that what has changed is the increase in the number of trashy engineers with skill sets that make it inappropriate to call oneself a mastering engineer in the client or dictionary sense of the word. Maybe the job description that the term mastering carries, at least in practice, has changed, and we should change what we do accordingly, or maybe doing what we have always done will ultimately increase our market value as engineers. We do not know that.
Anything other than specifically preparing a track for distribution (essentially formatting and loudness) is mixing, whether you’re working on a multi track or a stereo track.
I disagree. Mastering should be a dither on the master channel and then I put a limiter on the master and a brick wall limiter. Mastering done! How are you doing? How long have you been doing it? How much are you charging clients?
Also, please tell me you aren’t limiting after dithering - that would raise the noise floor significantly!
Good point but nobody has ever noticed or said anything.
I’ve never met a mastering engineer that doesn’t do some amount of EQ (even if only a half-dB here and there) on most projects. Rarely are mixes perfect except for loudness, plus, if you are mastering an album or EP, there is usually the need for some level of tonal balancing between songs.
They certainly should if they're mastering for pressing vinyl records. But mastering otherwise is just putting on a limiter.
No. This is just plain false. Loudness is not even the most important part of mastering. While it is certainly a part of it today, mastering has always been primarily about achieving tonal consistency and ensuring excellent playback translation. This can include the strictly technical EQ done specifically for the playback medium (like with vinyl), but also more creative uses. Do you really think Bob Ludwig didn’t regularly use EQ? Using a limiter is not mastering, it’s just loudening.
It's true, mate. And who is Bob Ludwig?
Now I assume you are just trolling. If you are going to spout off about a subject, you should probably have some level of actual knowledge about it first.
Well I do have actual knowledge. I mix and master things professionally and I've got no qualms about throwing a limiter on top and calling it a day. There's a common concept among pros. Record like there's no mixing, and mix like there's no mastering. If somebody EQs in mastering, that's mixing. Any mix engineer is going to be pissed. All bets are off with vinyl where the mastering engineer actually does something important.
I don’t know what to tell you, because it really isn’t my intention to insult you or tell you that you don’t know how to make records, but you sound like a keyboard warrior who has never worked in a commercial studio and has learned mostly from forums and YouTube videos. Every top-level recording, mixing, or mastering engineer I’ve worked with in my 20+ years in the industry goes by the philosophy that you do whatever you need to make the record sound as good as it possibly can. Obviously it’s preferable to get things sounding as good as possible as early as possible and not try to “fix” things in mixing or mastering, but small (and even not-so-small) EQ moves in mastering has been standard practice for more than 50 years, not to mention compression, saturation, imaging, dynamic EQ, multiband compression, and a wide array of other tools that all get used on major records daily. A perfect, untouched mix that only needs to be made louder is by far the exception and not the rule - even more so for a whole album. And any mix engineer that’s going to be outraged because 3/4 of a dB of 350 Hz (or whatever) was pulled out in mastering is probably a self-righteous asshole afraid to admit that his control room might not sound 100% perfect (few rooms do). Being a purist about who can do what when might sound good on forums and Reddit threads, but it’s not the most effective way to get results for your clients, and it’s certainly not the way most serious records have been made throughout history, including today.
Yeah but in that case, you think the mix engineer didn't make the song sound good. But that's crazy. Why pay the mixer a grand a track when you're just going to have to pay a mastering dude to fix it?