🎚Mastering music in your studio?

#audioengineer #musicproducer #musicproduction

[Producelikeapro]

Do you master audio in your studio? If so, how do you approach mastering?

[jasonstallworth]

That other set of ears is so valuable! And we don’t want to be our own weakest link.

[scottspaulding]

I master others' mixes. Never my own . The other set of ears is a big key

[unclemick-synths]

Another factor is simply not having a mixing desk spraying around reflections or 2-way speakers with a crossover messing with the midrange. The only thing worse than not being able to hear properly is fixing perceived problems that are not actually in the recording.

[carpentemusic]

While I master at home for my solo projects, my recent collabs are mastered by Dave Kutch & Ted Jensen.

For the home studio mastering, I mostly use the DAW console, and Waves L2, and Nashville Ocean Way NX studio modeller as primary plugins, then various saturation to exciter ones in the chain, song dependant.

I am curious what full AI will soon do to music production and mastering, beyond what it already does.

[cycleofficial]

Check out Acustica Audio Ash.. missing piece for simulating radio sound, emulating different clipping algorithms of high end converters. Came back here after checking the Ash against the Submission Audio Flatline. The "Flatline" - at least to me - outperforms the Ash clearly (though the Ash offers up to 1024x Oversampling, the Flatline can do up to 128x). I absolutely agree with the advantage of a second pair of ears.

[studiovinden]

I find that communication is the most difficult thing here. Describing what mastering is to a musician with no production know-how can be extremely challenging. Especially when working with really low budgets like I often do. I totally agree, budget is the key but it's still not straightforward as IMO mastering is not worth it unless the mastering budget is on par with my mixing rate. I'd like to stick my neck out even further: I believe there are too many mix engineers claiming they also master. Reason being a mix engineer's listening situation is not good enough for the quality control that I connect with mastering. Agree, disagree? What's a good budget ratio between mixing and mastering?

[Excaidus-Metal]

Mastering seems to be just trying to get the overall volume up without clipping. Maybe adding some saturation or color experimenting with different mastering plug-ins or other preferred gear. I don't see why I shouldn't do it myself.

[DanielGuillaud]

mastering his mixes is like wanting to make it look better on that identity photo. wasted time :)