Do You Get Your Songs Mastered Before Posting Them To Your Music Site?

[Prometheus]

One more point I would make on this subject for people who do go to a mastering engineer. A lot of people seem to be comforted by the idea of a mastering engineer inventing massively complex and convoluted signal chains bringing all manner of expensive and esoteric equipment to bear.

The better a sound engineer is, the less of that kind of shit he'll do. When people don't know how to do something simply, it's because they don't know how to do it.

[TapperMike]

I've never experienced that from a mastering studio. Yes they do have a lot of equipment but they also know what to use when and where as well as what not to use dependent on the situation.

Radio

And YouTube are more the scourge of the industry.

A good mastering engineer knows what happens after he's done with it. Something that is often beyond the scope of a good mix down engineer.

[Prometheus]

I've never experienced that from a mastering studio.

I'm sure. I, however, have had dealings with mastering engineers where I felt they were trying to pull a fast one on their clients and mistakenly thought that I as a fellow engineer would find it amusing.

I have also had a short thesis that I wrote stolen by a fellow mastering engineer whom I regarded as a man I could trust, and used commercially.

In short, mastering engineers are not all sweetness and sunshine.

Yes they do have a lot of equipment but they also know what to use when and where as well as what not to use dependent on the situation.

If you re-read, you'll notice that I was never calling their competence into question. The music business is a very competative and testosterone driven industry and it is not at all uncommon for people in it to be very unkind to each other and / or to use each other to terrible advantage.

Some engineers are better than others. Some are more honest than others.

They are not all the same and working with one mastering engineer can work out well for you while working with another might not. It's all about building up a network of contacts you can trust, work well with and rely on.

I see absolutely no harm though in pointing out a few of the things worth watching out for. Like car mechanics, it is not unknown for mastering engineers to make work for themselves that is, shall we say, superfluous and reductive.

A good mastering engineer knows what happens after he's done with it. Something that is often beyond the scope of a good mix down engineer.

Do you mean that I'm a mixdown engineer and should shut up? If so, then with respect you do not know what kind of engineer I am.

As it happens I am a good mastering engineer with some production credits to his name among other accolades, and I am fully aware of what happened to the completed masters. Some of them actually got pretty respectable reviews in mainstream newspapers.

I also know that a few of my fellow engineers are more interested in feathering their own nest than sending the lift back down for the people coming after them. Since at the moment I am in the happy position of not having to rely on sound engineering to make my living and have little intention of doing so again, I don't see much harm in being the prestidigitator who reveals the tricks.

[TapperMike]

Fair enough. You have legitimate gripes against some in the industry who give it a bad name. I haven't.

[Prometheus]

Fair enough. You have legitimate gripes against some in the industry who give it a bad name. I haven't.

I have gripes, legitimate or otherwise, against the whole industry and would love to see it completely deconstructed and rebuilt from scratch. It's one of the few industries I've ever heard of where you can't tick a single box for it. I work for an armament manufacturer at the moment and the people who run that industry are lap cats compared to the ones I met in the music industry.

It has no sensible regulation at all. The people who work in the front line of it have no legal protections at all. The people who run it are rapacious, malevolent psychopaths who generally know nothing, in technical terms, about music and have no appreciation of art whatsoever.

I love music theory, practice and production.

I despise the industry, passionately.

[gradual]

I do master my own tracks specifically for the purpose of posting them on the web. But I won't pretend my feeble attempts at it are anywhere close to pro-level. I just try to get them to sound decent enough on cheap computer speakers or headphones/earbuds, which is how they will likely be listened to on the web. Usually, there is an annoying build-up of muddy low-mid/midrange junk that gets magnified on these cheap devices, so I will try to filter out the problematic frequencies. But on a decent stereo system, it would sound overly bright and pretty terrible. So for officially releasing my music (which I am planning to do very soon), I will definitely be using the services of a professional.

Part of what you are pay for with a professional services (besides an objective set of ears and better gear) is a proper acoustically-controlled environment, which is an extremely important factor. In your average basement or bedroom studio (or even some professional recording studios), it's near impossible to get an accurate representation of what the music actually sounds like, because the room colors the sound.

[Prometheus]

In your average basement or bedroom studio (or even some professional recording studios), it's near impossible to get an accurate representation of what the music actually sounds like, because the room colors the sound.

That's true in any studio, none of them are flawless.

The way a pro engineer gets around that is by A to B analysis. In simple terms, I listen to the song through the Alesis Reference Monitors, then again on my living room stereo through mission speakers and a sub, then I take a jaunt in my car and listen again over car stereo speakers and then one more time on a set of shitty speakers on an old ghetto blaster I keep in the house.

Once you get a master that's balanced on all four of these setups, it'll sound reasonable on anything.