There seems to be a growing debate about how far a mixing engineer should take a track before handing it off to be mastered. Many of you have voiced concern about how much processing (specifically on the mix buss) is OK and how much should you leave for the mastering phase. I think much of this is born out of confusion over what really happens in mastering. My suggestion? Pretend like mastering isn’t even an option.
Don’t Defer Your Responsibility
One of the dumbest things you can do in audio is to defer responsibility to a later stage, or to someone else entirely. What I mean is this: many people setup to record a band and it sounds OK, but they assume it will sound better once it’s mixed, so they settle for mediocre sounds. Or they have great sounds, but too many to choose from. They defer the responsibility of committing to a tone or performance.
The same is happening for many of you when mixing. You near the end of a mix, but it doesn’t quite sound like the pro tracks that you’re referencing, so you assume it’s because it’s not mastered. You “give up” on your mix and defer the responsibility of making your mix awesome to the mastering engineer. Big mistake.
The Role Of Mastering
I’ve addressed mastering before and I think it’s a very valuable step in the music production process. But it’s important to understand its role properly. Mastering is the process of taking great mixes and balancing them against each other to sound good as a collection of song. Where mixing balances tracks, mastering balances mixes.
Of course it’s also a final step in quality control. Whether you do it yourself or hire an outside engineer, it’s one final step to reference the mixes to others, balance out any tone problems, make sure the mixes translate on other speakers, and then of course get the volume to acceptable levels.
The Goal Of Mixing
The goal of mixing should be to get your song to sound as good if not better than your favorite pro tracks, that are already mastered. Yes, you should be comparing your mixes to mastered tracks. Mixing is where the song really comes together, not in mastering.
You should do whatever it takes to get your mix to pop like the pros here and now, in the mixing phase. If that means compression on the mix buss, do it. If that means tape saturation or console emulation, do it. If that means stereo widening or mid side processing, do it. Whatever it takes to get your mix to compete with the big boys, now is the time. Not later.
But What About Volume?
The only exception to this “mix it to sound mastered” mantra is output volume. In the mixing phase you shouldn’t be concerned with output volume in the least. In fact, your goal, with proper gain staging, is to make sure you don’t even come close to clipping the mix buss. Just focus on sound, not volume for now.
The mastering stage is a much better place for final volume to be addressed. Not because you need fancy equipment to do this (a limiter plugin will do the trick), but because it’s a different mental space. Forget about volume, pull your reference tracks down to better match your mix, and then make your mix sound as good as theirs. It’s that simple.
Your Mastering Engineer Will Thank You
In the end, any mastering engineer will tell you that they can’t work magic on your crappy mix. If the mix is bad, the master will be a louder, more balanced version of your bad mix. If the mix is pretty good, the master will be a louder, more balanced version of your pretty good mix.
But if you deliver your mastering engineer (or yourself) a kick butt mix that is engaging from start to finish, is well balanced, and has some headroom for him or her to work with, you’re in great shape to have a great sounding master.
Funny, how it all comes down to how good the mix is.
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My name is Graham Cochrane and I'm the founder of The Recording Revolution, one of the world's most loved audio recording and mixing blogs with over 200,000 readers each month. 
First of all, I’m a Reason user, so I’m stoked to see a snapshot of the Reason Mixing Console on here! Also, this is a huge issue I dealt with for a long time on my own. I always wanted to go as fast as I could to a finished product because the musician in me wanted to have a finished polished product. As you can tell I have a very short attention span! But this is a valuable thing to remember through the whole process of recording, mixing, and mastering. Always work towards the best quality and best take before moving on. It makes it so much easier down the line!
I’d love to get a thread about using Reason, because it is such a self contained system from start to finish!
Reason fan here, too :)!
I too have a short atten…..what were we talking about…
Great article! This gets right to a topic which has long vexed me.
Yep Reason FTW!! Great under appreciated program that has really come along way.
That’s what I’m talking about! This is the way I try to work, and It’s also the way I try to get my clients to think. And this should be the mindset from te first note you caught on tape to the the release. If the recordings aren’t the best they could be I will not be able to turn thous in to golden takes in the mixing phase. And if the mix the client sends me isn’t up to the standard they’re aiming for I will not be able to fix it for the.
I had the poor judgment of jumping in and trying to discuss this issue over at the Gearslutz forum, and it surprised me that so many, even professional mastering engineers see it as a part of their job to fix things that could have been fixed in the mix. Like pops and clicks and whatever. When I do mastering jobs I’ll always do the best to fix such issues, but at the same time I’ll tell the client that it is something they really should try to adress as early on in the process.
It all comes down to trying to do the best work you can in every step of the process, from demoing to mastering.
But really great post Graham!
Great article Graham! Most of the times I’ve been unhappy with the master of a song, I’ve ended up changing the mix to make the master sound better. If anything, mastering only points out how unbalanced your mix was in the first place rather than smooth everything out.
I think it was Greg Wells (not sure) who said something like “I want the mastering engineer to think..”I’m not needed here” When he listens to the mix.” Remember how Fonsi (happy days show) used to put his comb back in his pocket before using it…it was like “hey…can’t improve perfect” :)…like that!
haha Eyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy i like the analogy
Awesome post. If you want something done right (your final sound) DO IT YOURSELF.
Absolutely fantastic recomendation. Great work. Great Article Graham. I always try to read all the stuff you write here and I always get great tips, conclusions and great ways to learn diferent things about Mixing!
Cool Man!!! keep Going!
Alex.
Giving your mastering engineer enough headroom and a WELL BALANCED (both level and eq wise)and dynamic mix is the best advice here in my opinion. You should be HAPPY with the mix coming out of the studio and EXCITED about the mix coming back from mastering.
That being said, you’re 110% right… you send crap out, you get crap back. I forget who said it but… you can’t polish a turd, but you can roll it in glitter. lol
PS your mastering engineer will thank you if you don’t use a widening plugin on the mix bus. If you HAVE to use one, use it on the element that needs widening, not the whole mix, causes SO many phase problems esp. if not used correctly, which it rarely is.
Just wanted to reinforce your point about the need to bring references DOWN to the same level as the mix.
As a mastering engineer I don’t object to mix buss effects as long as they aren’t screwed-up. I would prefer the mixer NOT to add compression as an AFTERTHOUGHT but mixing THROUGH a compressor is a well established option that is fine with me (again as long as it isn’t done badly). I wouldn’t want the mixer to mix through a compressor and then bypass the compressor at the time of rendering because I wouldn’t be able to duplicate the original mix unless I had the identical compressor and knew the mixer’s settings for it.
That sounds very reasonable!
Love it! The only thing I slightly disagree on is the fact that if you pull up your loudness meter of choice and take note of the loudness levels for the tracks that you’re referencing, you can choose in the mix process how loud you’d like the tracks to be and maximize/limit them accordingly across the board. If you import your references into your session and see that they come out around __ rms/128, then aim for that and judge for yourself how you’d like the “mastered” sound to be.
Why wait and add an extra step to have to go in and limit them all to a certain rms or r128 level? Just get er done!
Great post Graham!
I work in Logic. Many times I set up a default mastering setting on the master while I am working on the project. Once I think it is completely finished, I will remove these plug-ins from the master track, check the mix, output… then start mastering with the mixed version of the track. Is this a good way to work?
I wouldn’t do it that way. If you are making mixing decisions based upon what you’re hearing with “mastering” type effects on the mix bus, then taking those effects away could / would / should probably change mixing decisions you’re making.
If you put an effect on your mix bus and use it throughout the mixing process, then you should render your mix with those effects to hand off to the mastering phase. You made your decisions based on what you were hearing, right? What you were hearing is colored by those effects.
If you remove effects before rendering, you’re not handing off the best mix possible.
/$.02
Thanks for the insight. That makes sense to me. I will try it.
Reason 7 FTW! *_*
great article! Although these mistakes don’t apply to me (anymore) I can only agree: One of the big mistakes I did back in the days: tryin’ to come out as fast as possible. No good.
Ha ha just as I thought I went to mastering stage last week and got a nice finished product I was happy with. It didn’t take too long to get that finish. A week earlier than deadline. Guess what I did? I saved the settings on my master session and went back to mixing phase. Yup I had more time to play with so thought id tighten up and add some extras. For eg I Had a clean Tele sound on one of the songs. I decided to see what my acoustic could produce and found the acoustic sound worked better on the song. THANKS Graham for this as it re assures me that revisiting the mix is nothing to be frightened of but instead it does give you a better end product
I just came to this conclusion myself about a month ago mixing my bands new demo. When I got to the master all I had to do was some very mild eq and push the volume. I had found mastering very dificult until this.
I try and keep a decent mix at all times, based on whatever’s already recorded – it costs a bit of time re-EQ’ing X after Y’s been added, etc. but it’s easier on the ears and helps me spot problems sooner. Then when it’s all ready EQ alone won’t quite make up the shortfall but a moderate multi-band compression (mainly to control the bass and make the high treble bigger*) followed by a very light basic compression to pull the bands back together will get it from “student” to “almost pro”.
* Most of my output is densely-layered guitar rock, so there tends to be a big wall of upper mid but a rather sparse and ragged top end.
If to have someone do the mastering for me what would I send them? A CD of my song or what?
In the digital age we live in, probably a .wav or .aiff file. Most likely via email.
These days a vinyl record or cassette tape is the standard Steven.
A CD is not good.
Make sure your song is at 0.0 db.
What!!!!!!!
LOL))
The best thing to do is to put a limiter on your master and set the it so that it’s 0.0db.
Make sure that al the peaks ,even the little ones hit the 0.0 db.
This you must record on cassette deck tape.
Send the tape to your Mastering engineer.
Here Is my release. some tracks worked better than others for some reason. I decided to donate any sales to Childrens hospital. I found it hard to let go at deadline as there was more I wanted to do 🙁
Thanks Graham for this Challenge it learnt alot from it.
Why Now (All Sales Go To Childrens Hospital) by carmick
Nice article Graham. In my experience its a good idea not to get your mix mastered by a pseudo-mastering engineer (someone you know who has some mastering plug ins and thinks that makes them qualified).
Best idea is to get a pro or else your mix might come back a shell of its former self, and you will spend the next year of your life thinking bad thoughts when you hear the word “mastering”, but in fact you were just a cheap skate who got what you paid for. wow I’m damaged.
Inversely, I’ve sent my last album to a music school connection who has started his own ITB studio. He’s polishing my tracks in a way I never could have and I’m immensely happy with his work. My plan now is to send him my old albums, so they can get the proper stuff.
I’m glad I sent him my stuff un-EQ-d and unbalanced.
I guess the awesome thing about it is that you have a chance to involve a completely fresh pair of ears. After working on something a few days, weeks, months, you know it so well, right? And if on top of that you have a girlfriend or family that loves your work, you’ve literally overheard it already. How can you approach that final decisive state with fresh ears, a new outlook?
That guy did just that for me, and I love it! I would have done a completely different job. I would have fixed what I thought were “problems”. He completely heard things from a fresh angle. He made the bass live in the mix, like, whoah, the bass is so nice and big and hangs right in your diaphragm, while the highs dangle far above your forehead. It’s great and 3D. A far throw from the mixes I sent him.
Collaborations can also be so, so enjoyable and fruitful. No matter how much I love to geek out, I’ll be outsourcing my mastering to him from now on (good riddance, actually 😉 ). The music benefits from it, period.
I don’t know if it’s cool posting his page here. I know this place is supposed to be all about DIY, but hey, it’s also about helping each other, right? I’m not doing his promotion, just sharing. Hopefully it helps some the readers here as well as himself.
https://www.facebook.com/lucrative89 He does honest good work (Graham, delete this last bit if you’re not cool with it.)
graham, i understand the article…. but I’ve been trying to figure out; why isn’t mastering a mass-learnable skill in the form that production or songwriting is? I want to professionally become a mstering engineer, but every makes it seem factual that we simply CAN’T master our tracks ourselves. why is this?
People who say that you can’t master your own music or learn the skill are lying to you. It’s just as “learnable” as recording or mixing. There’s nothing inherently special about mastering that makes it off limits to the average person out there. Ignore what people say and start learning how to do it yourself 🙂
Another great article. I’ve come to find the one of the best way to mix and master is…listening. Use you ears. Listen on different stereo sources, car, ipod headphones, home stereo. Shut everything down and then listen with fresh ears the next day. You can learn all of the technical tricks, bells and whistles, mastering engineer but know that your instincts is your best weapon. Mix is the balance of instruments and vocals and master is balance of mixes. Like it it was already eloquently stated before.
On the final stages of mixing i tend to make final tweaks with the limiter ON on the mix buss.
The reason is heavily compressed mix sound different. What you thought would be very subtle, like reverb, delay, or drum room will be boosted. but after bouncing the mix there is nothing you can do with it.
So, yes, i came up with tweaking the final mix with the limiter on, or otherwise master stems to ensure my priorities are kept in the mastered track.
Comment on that:
1) its only for referencing, not mixing entire mix through limiter
2) limiter is bypassed before bouncing
3) no other master buss effects except subtle stereo buss compression which i tend to mix through
I agree with the idea to treat as if there will be no mastering involved. On your end, the mixed track should be good to go.
Record like there’s no mixing.
Mix like there’s no mastering.
Great article Graham. Well articulated ease to relate to inspiring and digestible. Where have you been hiding?