Different mastering engineers have different preferences or instructions. Exporting your mixes for masteringĬonsult your mastering engineer as to how they want the tracks delivered. Keep in mind that most mastering these days is done remotely via unattended sessions, so you can choose a mastering engineer from anywhere in the world. If you can find an engineer that has experience with your genre you’re typically better off. There are many ways to find good engineers including asking friends for referrals, searching an audio engineer directory such as SoundBetter, checking your favorite sounding albums for engineer credits and seeing if you can afford the engineers who worked on them. Double check edits in every track to make sure there are no clips or pops, listen to each track solo and again to the full mix in headphones.
Don’t forget to remove these processors from your master bus before exporting your tracks for the mastering engineer. This exercise won’t let you hear exactly how the mastering will sound since there is more to mastering than limiting or clipping, but it’ll give you some insight as to the direction of what will happen to your mix. Are the vocals where they need to be compared to other elements in the mix? If the balance sounds way off, it’s a good indication you should re-visit the mix. Monitor very soft and see if the general balance of the elements is right. You can alternatively use a clipper and drive it hard (but not distortion hard). One way to check what mastering might do to your mix in broad strokes is to throw a limiter on the master bus and set it to get significant gain reduction. Mastering engineers will do their best to stay true to your mix and not compromise it while ensuring it’s appropriately ‘loud’ and sonically fitting with your other tracks Therefore just like ‘we’ll fix it in the mix’ is bad recording practice, ‘well fix it in mastering’ is bad mix practice. It is generally easier to treat ‘issues’ when you have a multi-track open. Sometimes mastering engineers deal with ‘issues’ such as harsh sibilance, muddiness, lack of width, but generally these are nuanced fixes. More often than not mastering engineers will do their best to stay true to your mix and not compromise it while ensuring it’s appropriately ‘loud’ and sonically fitting with your other tracks on the album. Some musicians and less experienced mixing engineers hope that mastering will significantly improve, fix or alter their mixes.
Make sure that you are happy with your mix Here’s what you can do to ensure the mastering process is smooth and you get the best mastering you can. Congratulations, you’ve reached an important milestone that not every musician reaches. You are finally ready to call your mixes ‘done’ and send your tracks to a mastering engineer. This is a guest article by Shachar Gilad, founder of SoundBetter - the place to find audio engineers and studios.
0 kommentar(er)
