mastering pre-master

[djkaz]

so i recently had my project mixed by a more experienced soundman in jakarta, who gave me the final mixdown after running it through a masterx plugin. he said it was better to do a final rough mastering yourself before passing it on to the masterers, cause he says sometimes they don't really check things out themselves and just run it thorough their equipment, so better you sorta make sure it's balanced and decently compressed yourself before you send it.

although i'm not sure if thats how i'd do it working with a reputable guy in the states, it makes a certain amount of sense to me here in one of the slacker parts of south east asia. but i'm curious if thats something other people do?

anyway, my main question is this: having just done an emergency re-mixdown, and not having a copy of master x easily available, do you guys think it would make any big difference to run it through, say, waves multiband and L2, instead?

i tried it, but to tell the truth i cant hear a too big a difference between the two mixdowns anyway, other than the problem is fixed, and maybe the waves version sounds a slight touch brighter...

[audiogeek1]

If you have someone mastering your stuff for you they should take care of your project. If they do not find someone new that will. The world is much small because of ftp upoads and downloads etc...

As to replacing Master X. the waves stuff should do just fine. They do tend to sound brighter to me.

As for a finished project. As a mix engineer you should do your best to make the mix sound as good as you can using any tools you deem necessary. Just keep in mind the more plug ins like L2 or L3 you put on the less the mastering engineer can do in potential help of your project. But mix it the way you and your client think it should be done and move on.

Mike

[mhmh]

he said it was better to do a final rough mastering yourself before passing it on to the masterers, cause he says sometimes they don't really check things out themselves and just run it thorough their equipment, so better you sorta make sure it's balanced and decently compressed yourself before you send it.

If that´s how they work, I would do the whole mastering myself rather than giving it to someone who obviously doesn´t know what he´s doing. No qualified mastering engineer would ever want you to do a "rough mastering" before he goes on with it.

Martin

[Naagzh]

If that´s how they work, I would do the whole mastering myself rather than giving it to someone who obviously doesn´t know what he´s doing. No qualified mastering engineer would ever want you to do a "rough mastering" before he goes on with it.

Martin

Absolutely. Though it might be enlightening to do a gentle mastering job yourself to see how the mix might react (for example: "wow, there's way too much bass!"), sending a good ME a compressed/limited mix prevents him from doing his absolute best.

Also, most MEs will give you a 30 sec or 1-minute sample of their treatment of your mix for free, in order to earn your business.

[narcoman]

If that´s how they work, I would do the whole mastering myself rather than giving it to someone who obviously doesn´t know what he´s doing. No qualified mastering engineer would ever want you to do a "rough mastering" before he goes on with it.

Martin

damn right - and especially not through masterX which is, after all, the plugin version of a Finalizer.....Check it through it, b y all means, but dont master the version thats gone through master X - youve just distorted everything with a cheap plugin !

[mhmh]

Though it might be enlightening to do a gentle mastering job yourself to see how the mix might react

Not even gentle, I do the whole mastering process myself before I send the Mix out to the specialist, for exactly that reason: It tells me, where problems may occur.

Martin