Do you hear any difference? You do this so that you know how your mastering process affects the quality of the audio. Compare your mix and your master at the same loudness. But that is because our ears trick us to think that louder is better. If you compare your loud master with your quiet mix, you will think that the mastered version sounds better.
Compare your master to a professionally mastered song in the same genre. Brick-wall limiters will get your track very loud, but keep an ear out for the loss of quality. Use a master limiter, or a brick-wall limiter if that's what you prefer. This is the part where you can experiment with EQ, stereo enhancer, or whatever fun tools you have to color the audio. It usually results in 5-7db gain increase. Right click on the audio file, select "item processing", then "normalize". Load the file into a separate project, which you can call "whatever_song_mastering". The louder you get, the worse the quality becomes. It's actually quite easy to do at first, but difficult to master (badum tss). Then when I found the trick, I suddenly got the opposite problem of my music sounding too loud. So I can’t really say I “master” my music but it comes out at a competitive level, so it is mastered. I have a template of plugins that i know work and I just plop them right on top of everything. Finishing with a master.įor me? My mastering is done right in the mix. Once everything is in working order and all lined up, then comes mixing. Do you send your finished mix off, do you process it in a different way compared to the mix? Then I’d say that’s mastering.Įditing throughout while you’re recording and all that adjustment? I’d just call that the production/edit faze. So I guess this just depends on the individuals process. I could throw a Fabfilter Pro-L on top and say I mastered my album. Nowadays though, the whole process is so streamlined and it’s so easy to make a good sounding record and all the tools are so accessible. It’s like the sniper and the machine gunner, they can’t do each other’s job, but they’re vital to each other, part of a bigger moving piece. Maybe a different mixer came in to shed light, then it gets sent off to a mastering engineer who had a totally different room and gear, tailored specifically to making records sound good and loud. A few guys for writing automating in a track. There we’re guys running a desk and gear for mixing the song. As long as the ears like everything is good.īut mastering? Well the term originated back in the day when there was one guy for each different task. That’s how I usually run my process anyway. When it comes down to it, how you want it to sound and what works for the song is the best route to take, regardless of the path. For a more in depth (stem)master, send stems of the busses but that usually costs more im pretty sure. Sometimes your master is just better, maybe because they did master for the song, they mastered for their tastes.Īnd usually I’m just sending them a stereo wav file of the songs. Getting a different perspective is a great thing and I’ve found myself liking someone else’s master over mine more times than not. When it comes to sending my tracks out, I am a fan of that but only if it’s an important release and it’s not one person paying for the whole album lol that’s a killer. I use those when I feel it’s needed, but I’m a fan of really cleaning up a mix so that way when it’s mastering time, I can push it loud with little to no effort. I know there’s distortion/colour, automation and adding in layers, auditioning different compressors. #IZOTOPE OZONE 4 VOICEOVER COMMERCIAL PLUG IN SETTINGS SKIN#
There are many ways to skin the cat but I just like to keep it simple and use mostly EQ’s. Ideally this would be done in the mix but it seems to also work in the master. So when I go to push the mix, the biggest elements don’t mask each other. Now when it comes to the mix itself, what I’ve found has worked for me when I need to make a song louder is playing with the frequencies and find points to boost the key elements, giving everything its own space. Mind you it still doesn’t compensate for terrible problems in your room, but it helps, A LOT. My mixes translate 120% better and I’m much more confident in the decisions I make. I got the measurement mic and my speakers sound amazing. But the most import thing to me is Sonarworks Reference 4. Same with listening devices, got a pair of trusty headphones and my main speakers. I always reference with multiple different tracks, from pop to metal.
Or at least until I’ve kinda purged it from my memory, so to speak. I never, ever, EVER master something I mixed in under a week of finishing the mixing.
I like to think I do quality work, people are happy to pay me for my time. Hey there! Fellow music nerd here, I usually master all my stuff and I’ve been mixing for about seven or eight years.
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