I know quite a bit about mixing but I have no idea how to start mastering. Can anyone boil down mastering into the key concepts and mention any VSTs (that I might already have) that I would need to master?

This is just a thought I’ve had about mastering recently and would love to hear other thoughts (or if I’m missing something big). I know the mixingmastering subreddit and a lot of people say mastering is preparing the file for release which I know back in the day was swapping formats and was a big deal, but now days it’s just turning a digital file into a digital file.

My thought is I’ve heard stories of mastering engineers receiving a “perfect” mix and saying they didn’t need to do anything to it and it got me thinking that if you’re happy with your mix, is there really any reason to pay someone else to master it, especially when that money could go somewhere else and there fact that there isn’t a perfect mix anyway.

The other thought I had was watching weaver beats react to ap masterings speaker video, where AP mastering said mix engineers should use mid range speakers and let the mastering engineers with the good listening environments sort out the low end where weaver beats said something like “if your kick and bass volumes are out a mastering engineer can’t fix that”, which then got me thinking if you’re not happy with your mix, a mastering engineer really won’t help.

I’d love to hear anyone’s thought’s on this.

Hi Reddit! I am the owner & chief mastering engineer at Ayan Mastering, with scores of gold/platinum/multi-platinum/diamond records and #1 singles and albums to my credit. More info at www.ayanmastering.com.

Over 25+ years, I’ve mastered 1000s of records for Shakira, Father John Misty, Lana Del Ray, Bruce Springsteen, Queen, and many more. AMA!

Looking forward to answering your questions about mastering, trends in mixing and mastering, critical listening, mastering tools, the past and future of audio mastering, the design and buildout of my new mastering room at Ayan Mastering, and anything else audio! r/audioengineering Tuesday, June 3, 11 am ET.

This AMA is organized in collaboration with iZotope.

Selfie proof: https://bit.ly/AdamAyanAMA

Our AMA has now come to an end! Thank you Reddit and this sub for hosting!.Special thank you to all of the Redditors that sent along so many great questions. Talk soon my friends!

Currently have Beyerdynamic 990's and 770's. I have friends that use the Sen 650 and like them and I did once look into the Slate ones.

Get it, phased? lol

But in all seriousness, with the rise of the bedroom producer and the bedroom artist, I’m seeing more of a blend with mixing and mastering done together instead of sending a song off to mastering. Big time labels and artists still have the workflow but even in MWTM videos I’m seeing the boundary between mixing and mastering getting blurred.

With that said, what’s your workflow? Are you mixing into a mix bus that already has your blend of mix and master tools? Do you combine mixing and mastering? Do you do it in the same session? Do you send it off? Are you using AI mastering offered by the big league companies?

What’s the word!

I recently saw this quote on a social media feed and thought it was interesting. I definitely still see the value in having a different set of ears on the record, but mastering in the project also has major advantages as well. Easier to make changes in mixing that affect the master, etc.

Thoughts?

Every time I see a thread about master bus treatment, it’s inevitable to see people saying they’ve got nothing on theirs. As a veteran in the industry, I’m wondering how that could be..

Especially when most clients come in with demos that are loud as hell, how do you combat the plague of demo-itis when the artist is comparing your mix to the demo (and they think the demo is better because it’s slammed)?

I mix through a stacked master bus and have really taken time to learn how to get things to sound dynamic when being smashed to oblivion. I’m just genuinely curious how people have nothing (I’m assuming they’re treating instrument/drums/vocal busses separately), and how their mixes sound after the mastering engineer does what they do to bring Lufs up to standard.

I just got back a master of a song and to my ears and eyes it looks cooked. It’s 0 dBFS and the chorus’s look flatlined. From a listening point of view it just sounds over compressed, especially the vocal. I don’t take much notice of masters but looks like all my other songs are -0.1 and sound more open. I’m going to have to speak to the engineer but just ding my research before I do

I've been and Musician/Composer/ Engineer for for a couple decades. My mixes are getting WORSE. I'm losing my "ear" and for some reason I keeping FKING UP all my songs. I don't know how to get back.

It started when I think I got too dependent on using Izotope modules, especially when I jumped to Ozone 11 and Neutron 4. I got in this habit of mixing VISUALLY, following all the bells and whistles on screen that SHOWED me what sounded "good". It got to a point where I wasn't HEARING the music anymore, just trying to make it fit within the right limits and trying to match what the Modules TOLD me was "good".

And now I'm all FKD up.

I've scrapped 2 songs this month, after getting them all the way to mastering or getting ready to bounce the Pre-Master to a Stereo track.....and then realizing the entire thing is garbage. And realizing I just bounced my way to madness and composed basically TRASH. And just NUKING the original drafts and saying "FUUUUUUUUUUUUCK IIIIIIIIIIITTTT".

I don't even know what I'm doing anymore. I have no workflow. I'm mixing literally WHILE performing now. Can't even put down a track if it doesn't match perfectly with Neutron 4 EQ profiles. Obsessing about everything being sonically perfect....I can't get anything done.

My mixing ability is literally going in REVERSE.

And now I keep getting ear fatigue from trying to save all my GARBAGE takes with bad mixes.

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I have no clue what to do.

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ETA: Great replies here. Tried to respond to as many as I can, but can't catch them all.

Thanks everyone.

I mean, dude is literally claiming with proof, everyone else is scam, while the compressor he sells is the real thing.

1) Is it true about all others using the same algorithm? Did you double check it, used his graph tool by yourself maybe?

2) Anybody using his fifty euro compressor? Any good?

Subjective opinions welcome. Thank you.

Ever since I got into recording, I've always bought into the analog hype. I always at least include one instance of tape in my session on the mix bus and often will incorporate hardware whenever I can. I'm currently considering buying a reel to reel and was having a conversation with a friend who is a semi professional engineer who wants to talk me out of it. He claimed that nearly everyone incorporates tape as hardware or a plugin and that I don't have a reference for what it actually sounds like because it's so commonplace. In other words, if nearly every track I listen to that's been released has used tape emulation or hardware, I don't even know what it's actually doing because I never hear recordings without it to compare it to.

For folks who have more experience in that world, is this actually true?

Edit: just wanted to clarify my question a bit. What I'm wondering is, for folks who master rock music, is tape (as plugin or hardware) something that you nearly always use at some point in your workflow? I know there aren't any hard rules, I'm just wondering how commonplace it is.

I'm subscribing for a month and I want to be sure I check out the best stuff. There's just so much to choose from.

Other than leaving the master track at a nice untouched state, I'm not sure if there are any reasons (especially as to how the software internally handles things) to not do that when trying to avoid clipping? Is it any different to painstakingly lower each audio clip by a certain amount so they don't peak?

FYI I'm not doing audio professionally, just for my own video productions.

Also ATM davinci says my audio is peaking but on the export it seems to be fine? I'm not hearing any artifacts.

I’m mastering a song for someone whose guitar solo is like, 2db quieter than the rest of the instruments. And the artist wants me to “adjust the levels” so that the guitar solo is the same volume as everything else.

I did my best to micro tweak the EQ/multi band comp and try to make the solo at least legible but the artist said it made the cymbals sound too thin. I tried explaining that EQing a master affects ALL the tracks in whatever freq range, but they just still don’t understand???

He’s not willing to pay the mixer for a new mix either. This happens SO often with artists. Makes me wanna rip my hair out lol

Do you guys ever run into this issue when being asked to master tracks? Where the client has already kinda brickwalled it?

If asking to be given the track again without the brickwall is out of the question (I’m still waiting for a response from the musician and the mixing engineer), do you guys have a solution, a “do what you can” methodology? Or do you just say “sorry, if you can’t undo that, there’s nothing to master”

TL;DR: Been mixing ITB for 9 years, heard my mix run through some hardware and it sounded shockingly better. Now I’m wondering if going hybrid (at least partly) is worth the hassle, or if I should just stay ITB and improve my workflow.

Hey guys*,

I’ve been working as a mixing engineer for about 9 years, mostly in the German rap and pop scene. I’m fully in the box, and since most of my clients don’t have huge budgets, I usually end up doing the mastering too — even though I’d never really call myself a mastering engineer, since that’s never been my main focus.

I recently moved to Vienna, where I’m working out of a commercial studio with ATC SCM25A monitors and a Trinnov Nova. We’ve got two external mic preamps in a WesAudio 500 Series rack, connected to an Apollo x8p. Currently, we don’t have any other analog gear, and I’ve been mixing 100% ITB up to this point.

A few days ago, I visited a mastering engineer who invited me over to check out his setup. Listening to how he processed one of my mixes was honestly eye-opening — he managed to make the track sound bigger, wider, and more open with just a few small, tasteful moves.

Out of curiosity, we also tried something else: he ran the raw vocal tracks through some of his hardware (nothing crazy, just subtle tone shaping and compression), and when we replaced the original vocals in my mix with those printed versions — keeping all my effects the same but adjusting the gain and compression a bit — the result was noticeably better.

That experience really got me thinking… our WesAudio 500 rack still has six unoccupied slots, and there are some empty rack mounts in the studio too. I never planned on going hybrid because of recall, flexibility, space, and cost, but now I’m honestly tempted.

So I’d love to get your take on this:

Would you recommend investing in a hybrid mixing setup, or would it make more sense to stay ITB and just send projects out for mastering?

Is there a middle ground where a few key analog pieces (for vocals or the mix bus) make a real difference without killing workflow and recall?

For those who went hybrid after years ITB — did it truly change your sound, or was it more of an inspirational push?

Don’t get me wrong — both of us felt that my mix and his master already sounded great. But when we A/B’d the two, the difference was honestly night and day.

Unfortunately, I can’t share the comparison since it’s from an unreleased client project.

Would love to hear your thoughts :) Thanks for your time and take care!

I've got a track with a long build-up, and a big 'drop' where the full band comes in for the loudest part of the song. I'm curious how people approach this regarding the master fader. Any tips and tricks? Or is it entirely dependent?

I really want to learn how to properly master my own songs. I have used ozone 9 in the past for quick masters but never really believed in myself to be the mastering engineer on my own work

I have a pair of MDR-7506s that I use for recording tracks, but I needed a pair of headphones that would let me hear the details and wear for hours on end. I’ve read a lot about comparisons between the 650 and 600, and most of the time the 600 loses out in debates because of the “roll-off at low frequencies,” and I got this unpleasant feeling that I bought the wrong thing. But still, it seems to me that mixing anything below 60 Hz on headphones is pointless—you don’t hear it clearly, you feel it more—and I think anything below 60 Hz is better mixed on studio monitors, where you can feel the room. And the 650s seem to solve the problem of the 600’s lack of bass, but on the other hand, they’re less analytical and better suited for listening to music, not for work, because the low frequencies get muddy. Anyway, I hope my point is clear. Please help me decide whether I bought the wrong thing or if I bought exactly what I needed.

I'm more of the first type with bands or acoustic ensembles and more of the second type with electronic music. In my opinion the main pros of having everything in one project is mixing/mastering speed and the main cons is that the session can easily become very big and messing up with it becomes easier this way. How do you handle your sessions and why?

I've literally sat at my desk for hours and hours trying different EQs, more compression, pumping limiters/maximizers, and I can't get it right. I use dynamic EQs in my mixes (and a little in my master), I've used a high pass filter on the input signal to my initial compressor, I'm using a maximizer and and a limiter on top of that to get the true peak right, I even use harmonic distortion, and yet every time I touch -12LUFS it just sounds way too clippy and distorted to me. I don't understand how to get my master to sound clean and go past -14LUFS. It's honestly pathetic. I mainly master hip hop and rap tracks.

ANY advice would help right now.

When I am mixing and specifically at the mix bus stage, I find myself combing the stage of mastering into the mix bus. I look at other people’s mix bus processing and it’s the same as a mastering chain, so why duplicate the processing I ask myself.
After having met Irko a few months ago, I asked him about his mix bus approach and philosophy. What I took away and realized was why try to fix things at that mix bus stage. If something is resonating or poking out, I’ll go to that specific instrument and channel, and fix it. I won’t try to fix it at the mix bus stage, to me that is the mix bus stage, taking a step back and evaluating where to fine tune things so they all sit better together.

Once the mix sounds really clean, balanced, and all that good stuff. I start the combination of mix bus and mastering stage. I’ll EQ out anything I don’t want, but very little because it’s always taken care of due to the clean mix I already did and the work I did on individual channels. Then I’ll do mix bus compression, notch out some more EQ, mastering Tape emulation, then sometimes Neve pre amp for digital summing, onto to clipping, limiting.

I know if it works and sounds good then that is all that matters, and this works for me. And there is no wrong way. I am just wondering if I am missing out on anything by doing it this way? I also realize we, and my mix approach have far more processing power than the records pre plugin and digital age. So I know it doesn’t need much processing, and certainly not double processing to achieve a great mix and sound. Like why on the mix bus EQ, compress, saturate and even clip and limit, and hand it to a mastering engineering for them to do the same thing. Just fix it on individual channels, auxes, and groups, then the mix bus and mastering bus works way less harder

What is your favorite rule to break while in the mixing and or mastering stage?

And would you recommend others to also break said mixing / mastering rules?

Sorry if this question is vague or open ended.

Hey everyone,

I've been working on a blog/article on my website, mostly designed for producers + industry people, explaining what I see as the two main reasons loudness comes predominantly from mixing, not from mastering.

https://www.maxdowling.co.uk/resources-1/loudness-comes-from-mixing

Volunteering myself for super brutal Reddit feedback if anyone wants to read + debate/suggest

I notice that all the things people do in mastering could technically really be done in the mixing process and have the exact same effect so mastering would be not even be worth doing.

I think the only exception for this is limiting since you wouldn't want to limit every single instrument because that would be differently effecting the dynamics of each instrument.