Is Mastering Dead?

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Travis discusses how the democratization of technology and an oversimplified view of the mastering process is threatening to ruin it all together.

In this episode you'll learn,
- How Technology is Rapidly Changing Mastering
- A Quick History of Mastering
- What the True Value of Mastering Is
- Should You Be Paying for Mastering

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00:00 Intro
01:56 A Brief History of Mastering
03:37 What the Problem Is
06:11 What Mastering is REALLY About

#musicpodcast #musicindustry #mastering #recordingstudio

[bradashlock]

“Why should I pay someone $2000 to make my music sound like shit when I can do it myself and make it sound like shit?” - Jpegmafia, multi million selling rapper / self producer

[parsonj]

Here's how old I am: in 1966 my songwriting partner and I paid a local music store owner to make a record for us to send to a local radio station. He recorded us on a direct-to-disc rig. We sang and played into one mic; the signal went to a needle that engraved the sound onto a lacquer-covered metal disc. Two songs, three takes: we had to throw out the disc for one botched take. A few days later we heard ourselves warbling through the air waves. It's fun to think I actually recorded in the same way Robert Johnson did!

[Revontuletband]

"Every step of the record making process should always be about honoring the previous steps. Taking the vision of everyone who has touched the project before you and supporting it." This is brilliant! Every mixing and mastering engineer needs to hear this!

[Aaronbeaumontmusic]

Involving another set of trusted (human) ears as mixer on something I’m producing or as mastering engineer on something I’m mixing is one of my FAVORITE things in music making. IMO absolutely essential part of the collaborative, creative process.

[charleshartlen]

i have no training, no experience, and nearly zero exposure to the field that you're discussing. Yet the video is totally entertaining and fully watchable to the end from that point of view. in my opinion that is great content. i also really like your balanced perspective which doesnt push too hard on tropes or take too harsh of a stance. I'm fairly sure you could make ideos about anything even outside your field of expertise with this approach. well done man!

[Syklonus]

I use one reference track and that's it! Too many and you end up going round in circles. Sometimes the mix won't need anything bar a little bus compression and maybe a "safe" limiter.

Just make it sound good to you. The only people doing level comparisons are other obsessive engineers, not listeners.

[alfiearock]

For me i got tired of spending money on other people who simply dont have the vision i have and never produce something im excited to hear. For this reason i took the time to truly learn and understand mastering from the bottom up, and for once, i m happy with what I'm hearing.

[TWEAKER]

* 02:14 – cutting is done to lacquer disc, not to vinyl. It's electroplated plated, stampers made, and then *pressed* to vinyl.

[davidkellymitchell]

That's right. I spent the first 25 years as an engineer where all albums went to vinyl. Vinyl has severe limitations that CD's and hard drives don't have and the main one being is bass. The more bass in the recording the bigger the grooves get on vinyl and you only have so much real estate on a vinyl disc so engineers would leave things like the high and low eq to the vinyl mastering engineer. The guy that made the lacquer disc and plates. Too much bass also makes radio station limiters chomp down on it and drops the level of the whole record What people today call a mastering engineer is a guy with an elaborate expensive home monitoring system that believes they know what translates better on the stereo master. The last records I mixed in my studio that were on complimation CD's and mastered in Nashville the producer said the mastering engineer told him my contributions were the only ones he didn't have to master. That's partly because I got use to mixing for vinyl record albums and radio plus I already had 40 years experience mixing. The media used today can take all the bass you can throw at it so it's more forgiving than the old days. If someone is uncertain about their mixes then mastering may be a good option if they know what they are doing.

[xanataph]

One reason to hire someone to do the master is because if you've self produced a project, at the mastering point it can become kinda painful. You've heard that track so many times demoing, tracking, mixing...and by the time it gets to the mastering it seems to be only *then* when certain things you don't like about the previous stages become apparent, because of the different way you listen when mastering.

It can be very hard sometimes to discern between those elements that really should be fixed (things that a listener might notice that are truly detrimental to the song) and things that could be - but probably shouldn't be - as all that's doing is making the mix perfect...and boring.

Just been through this...song is dropping tomorrow...so a bit a break before the next round! lol

[larswillsen]

Imagine a seasoned chef who's hesitant about using a new kitchen gadget, fearing it might replace their culinary skills. Meanwhile, they jot down their worries about smartphones potentially taking over social interactions.

[alex_ayers]

Aside from AI, you mentioned that DSP's have loudness normalization. With Dolby Atmos/Spatial Audio on the rise, you can't just send a .wav file to someone else and have them master it. Along with the integrated loudness "cap" at -18 LUFS. I think the biggest thing regardless of what you're mastering, having a second set of ears on the project is always nice to have. It is still a skill that takes YEARS to develop, and for some, just having a good enough room for Mastering is hard to have in this economy.

I love the quote "just use your ears", but also question yourself on what you're listening to. While also trying new things. Phenomenal video!!

[darumband]

kind of what I try to explain every client: you do not anymore pay for the tools or the special speaker/romm/whatever setup. WHat you actually pay for in mastering is experience and a fresh pair of ears (and probably these are connected to a person knowing how to turn the knobs).

[martinaddison]

Thanks for this thought provoking video. One KEY fact was left out of the brief history lesson. The MAIN purpose of mastering starting in the late 60s, was to help a “record” sound consistent across all 10 songs. The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Who, etc. would often record tracks in different studios, while on tour across the world. The mastering stage was to ensure the combination of songs included on the ‘album’ had a consistent overall tone and volume levels.

[dotanco]

Great video. Something you touched on but maybe not emphasised enough there is the addition of a 'fresh pair of ears' that didn't spend hours /days / months on the project and have no idea of the struggles and the decisions you made as musician / mixer. I do the mastering for a small label and the thing that I find that most bands that I work with say to me as feedback is that they never thought of the things I picked up on as they spent so much time with the project that they lost objectivity. The tools are there (check out Logic 11 'session players') but the relationship between sonics and emotions are still (who knows for how long) something that machines can't figure out.

[marblemolly]

The x factor is the song. An early 60s Bob Dylan song, recorded live, with one guitar and a pitchy vocal will still be better than anything i write that's been recorded with tech 60 years in advance and mastered by the most expensive mastering engineer in the world. People listen to great songs.

[themotownboy]

Great video!! The real problem is that as the decades progress, new music listeners are hearing worse and worse mastering as the norm. Therefore, what passes for "good" mastering now is crap. Great mastering requires someone who has, not only great listening and engineering skills, but good taste. That last part, "good taste" is the most elusive of all to find in a mastering engineer.

Also, saying that “Louder is always better” perpetuates the problem.

[HornedBee]

I think thing with mastering is that previously mixing engineers were listening to the material on the tape, but the listener was listening on the vinyl or cassette tape, which are quite different media. So the goal of the mastering engineer was to ensure that transition to different media doesn’t ruin the work of the mixing engineer. But nowadays the medium for the mixing engineer and listener is mostly the same (if we don’t count conversion from wav to mp3 or aac), most of the music is no longer transitioned to physical media. So if mixing engineer is able to make final mixes loud enough, there is not much sense in having mastering engineer.

[gavmurph]

The problem in the not too distant past was that mastering engineers/producers were demanding more money than the artists made.
There is no money in music streaming so the future will be shaped by necessity.

[draztiqmeshaz]

When i came up, mastering involved creating cohesion across an entire album, possibly reordering tracks, and making red book cds