Mix Down vs Mastering....?

motion audio said:
Really good way to do things, when I was doing my work experience at a local studio thats fully kitted out and acousticly treated, the engineer there was still using the same technique, burning a cd of the mixdown and playing it on every system he could set his eyes on, making a change if needed (although he didnt really need to make any, mixdown was nice!) I dont think theres ever a point where this isnt helpful.
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Definately a top tip.
Think i might cut up 10 or so loops of really well produced tunes I'm into in .rex format so I can just drop them into my tunes and a/b between them, but alas it's hard when you're on shitty speakers :)
 
motion audio said:
Really good way to do things, when I was doing my work experience at a local studio thats fully kitted out and acousticly treated, the engineer there was still using the same technique, burning a cd of the mixdown and playing it on every system he could set his eyes on, making a change if needed (although he didnt really need to make any, mixdown was nice!) I dont think theres ever a point where this isnt helpful.
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too right mate...
 
Could be. But that will be a question of money, because most mixing engineers that are worth paying for cost quite a bit. And even if you manage to get that tune out there, the profit that you'll reap from the sales will hardly cover the expenses of having 2 professionals work on your tune. The mixing engineer is not a miracle worker either, so you would benefit greatly to have good knowledge and skill in mixdown. This way you would know what can and can't be done to a tune at that point. I'm not familiar with anyone in dnb who has tracks mixed by someone else, but if there are those, I'm sure they also know how to do a mixdown themselves - they would only do it to save time so they can focus on the creative side.

Personally I do my own mixdowns because I want to put my best effort into each tune. Having an outsider mix it down can make you overlook some things and take shortcuts as in "oh whatever, i dont care if it's too loud, that will be fixed in mixing".
 
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would be cool, if someone could upload 2 small audio snippets of a unmastered/mastered tune, that was heavily mastered. Would like to see/hear how it looks before/after.

Also do u think its worth/do prof. labels master for club monitoring system and say ipod headphones seperately. I mean, a lot of the buyers, hear music either in club or ipod//handy/laptop speakers and so on at home/on the road, dont think the majority has really good monitors. And i find myself often adjusting the EQ of my portable headphone player to adjust the low spectrum. DNB tunes r a little more fastidious than average pop.

10 years ago without mp3 and ipods mastering meaning only way to publish a tune on CD it has to sound as good as possible on every audio system, but with digital published music u dont have these material costs/problem.
 
Dom & Roland just had his new album mastered. 4 out of the 12 tracks only needed a boost of 1 dB at 800 Hz. the others where pressed as they are.
this is a prime example of how minimal work a mastering engineer will do on a tune, just as long as the mixdown is good, and of course, you couldnt expect anything less from Dom.
 
kama said:
mastering will not fix problems in mixdown. It is only meant to lift your tune up to par with commercial tunes in terms of loudness and tone. You can't really leave your hihats loud and hope that the mastering engineer will bring them down. He simply cant. You provide the master (1 audio file) and he works on that, no chance he can mess with instrument balances.
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PRECISELY! Thank you.
 
dont see the point in mastering unless
your getting a 12" pressed...
tune sound be sounding exactly how you
want it to by the end of the mixdown process...
which in my mind should not be separated
from the compositional phase of writing the
tune... mixdown as you write imo...
 
sook said:
dont see the point in mastering unless
your getting a 12" pressed...
tune sound be sounding exactly how you
want it to by the end of the mixdown process...
which in my mind should not be separated
from the compositional phase of writing the
tune... mixdown as you write imo...
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If a tunes getting a release of any sort, theres a valid point and benefit to mastering. Your right with the tune sounding how you want it at mixdown, and a lot of people seem to think mastering is a "fix everything they've missed" sort of job, which its obviously not.

But decent mastering houses will benefit from really good acoustics, high quality monitoring, specialised gear, and most importantly, really good engineers. In most peoples home/project studios the monitoring and acoustics will not be accurate enough to make sure the final mix translates well to all types of systems, and a fresh pair of ears can do the world of good for the tune.

The actual work done to the track should still be minimal, but in most cases a professional mastering studio will produce far better results than attempting it at home.
 
luzil said:
would be cool, if someone could upload 2 small audio snippets of a unmastered/mastered tune, that was heavily mastered. Would like to see/hear how it looks before/after.

Also do u think its worth/do prof. labels master for club monitoring system and say ipod headphones seperately. I mean, a lot of the buyers, hear music either in club or ipod//handy/laptop speakers and so on at home/on the road, dont think the majority has really good monitors. And i find myself often adjusting the EQ of my portable headphone player to adjust the low spectrum. DNB tunes r a little more fastidious than average pop.

10 years ago without mp3 and ipods mastering meaning only way to publish a tune on CD it has to sound as good as possible on every audio system, but with digital published music u dont have these material costs/problem.
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http://dnbforum.com/showthread.php?t=78431&page=2&
 
You can't polish a turd.

Mastering can only work with what is there, it can't work magic, if a tune sounds bad before mastering it will still sound bad after it. Check out Murder by Digital if you want an example of an awful mixdown - this will have then been mastered by one of the best in the land and it still sounds awful.

(shame cos the tune is baaaad)
 
sato said:
You can't polish a turd.

Mastering can only work with what is there, it can't work magic, if a tune sounds bad before mastering it will still sound bad after it. Check out Murder by Digital if you want an example of an awful mixdown - this will have then been mastered by one of the best in the land and it still sounds awful.

(shame cos the tune is baaaad)
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cheers sato for that example... i will listen now! definatly understand the importnace of a good mixdown, it was more the difference between the two i was confused on!
 
In terms of the difference; the mastering engineer only gets everything once all the relative levels have been set (by you). When you do a mixdown you can do something about your hi-hats being too loud. The mastering engineer is unable to do anything about that. If you went to sit in on the mastering session you could ask the guy to try and take some 'harshness' out of the top end but doing so would be destructive and as such you would loose those same frequencies on your other sounds which might make them less good - he can't do anything to any individual sound in your track without affecting all the other sounds. Anything done in mastering is always going to be a compromise therefore.

...you would also have to pay more for the mastering session if you wanted to sit in and get them to tweak things. Normally a mastering engineer will take the track as mixed and get it ready to be pressed and try to get it sounding a bit louder in the process. If you specially request at the time of sending it off they can try and 'push' it a bit (i.e. get it a lot louder but at the expense of squashing out any dynamic range - like old a-sides tunes, check 'Destroyer') or try and bring the subs up a bit but that is pretty much it really.
 
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