Tempted to pay for Mastering Service, is it worth it? Advice required.

T

T3ZA

New member
Hey guys,

I have been making music on FL Studio for a year and my knowledge of mastering is extremely limited and I think it is to the detriment of my tracks. I've been told I'm making good music and have gathered a decent enough following and have had positive feedback... the over-arching bad feedback I have had is due to my poor mastering as opposed to bad mixing etc.

For example, if you listen to a recent Beatport remix competition entry of mine (link below) I am sure you will agree that the drums could be better, vocals louder in bits etc and just overall sound quality could be improved in areas..(the song is hella catchy and good in lots of ways).. So what I'm saying is, is it actually worth sending it off to professionals and shelling out $40-50 (£30) for one very amateur track to try to make it sound better? Or is it a case of you can't polish a turd type thing and the hard work comes from the producer (ie.. me)??

MATTHEW KOMA - SO F**KIN' ROMANTIC (T3ZA REMIX) by T3ZA in the Matthew Koma - So F**kin Romantic :: Beatport Play
 
Would be a quick fix, I personally have all the passion I need. Someone else handling aspects of my creative work is not going to give it the type of passion and overall depth I would personally. I sure you can find a great service at a quality price though at the end of the day it's still a business transaction and their interest is vested in your $$$ at the end of the day. How much of their passion can they put into "your" song. In the long run its better to learn now and make your mistakes because the end result will be a refined sound. If your drums could be better, that's, in the mix as well as the levels and overall sound quality. Mastering = making your already good mix sound it's best at the loudest possible levels. It does take a certain skill though. A ton of great information here. Rick
 
T3ZA said:
Hey guys,

I have been making music on FL Studio for a year and my knowledge of mastering is extremely limited and I think it is to the detriment of my tracks. I've been told I'm making good music and have gathered a decent enough following and have had positive feedback... the over-arching bad feedback I have had is due to my poor mastering as opposed to bad mixing etc.

For example, if you listen to a recent Beatport remix competition entry of mine (link below) I am sure you will agree that the drums could be better, vocals louder in bits etc and just overall sound quality could be improved in areas..(the song is hella catchy and good in lots of ways).. So what I'm saying is, is it actually worth sending it off to professionals and shelling out $40-50 (£30) for one very amateur track to try to make it sound better? Or is it a case of you can't polish a turd type thing and the hard work comes from the producer (ie.. me)??

MATTHEW KOMA - SO F**KIN' ROMANTIC (T3ZA REMIX) by T3ZA in the Matthew Koma - So F**kin Romantic :: Beatport Play
Click to expand...

Absolutely a you can't polish a turd situation. And anyone who told you mastering is the problem is ****ing cancer and you shouldn't listen to them.

The genre your working in definitely thrives on clarity, and there's not much in this track, but bad mixing can hardly ruin a good song (unless it's a genre that really depends on the mixing). I could still imagine hearing this on the radio because I think it was arranged well. Frankly it's pretty damn good for someone who's only been doing this for a year.

Mastering really isn't even meant for singles. It was meant for that for maybe 5 years. But the loudness wars are actually dying down, and mastering is going back to what it used to be about, which is making cohesive bodies of work (and I suppose checking if it works in certain phase scenarios, which could be done in mixing anyway). Mastering is more suited to entire albums, not singles, and you really don't need to have the loudest song anymore. I mean, a lot of streaming services now level match their stuff, and most people listen on those anyway.

More importantly, when you are making all of your own stuff, there is certainly nothing to be done in mastering that you can't do better in mixing or arranging. I mean, you don't even need to smash it with a compressor, if your genre depends on it. You could just smash certain elements like snares and then leave the masterbus with only enough limiting to boost the volume without any reduction.

If, for some reason, volume is a factor, an eq before a limiter does wonders. You'd be surprised how much low end you can chop off of a pop mix. Try a high pass until it's too much, dial it back, then try a low shelf until it's too much, dial it back. Do the same on the highend, low pass with high shelf. You will be saving headroom and you will be able to push your stuff louder.

I was just reading an article about childish gambino's first mixtapes when he was in college (which are pretty awful) and the article was mentioning how his production started to shine on his tape "Poindexter" and what a great example the "thumping bassline of the rocker" is. Here's the article and the mixtape. But I'm Not A Rapper: Everything You Need To Know About Childish Gambino's First Three Mixtapes | Complex UK
Childish Gambino - Poindexter (2009) Hosted by N/A Mixtape - Stream & Download

Really? That's not a thumping bass line if you put it on big speakers, but that's kinda the point. Music is about mids. You can really play with people's perception. There's not really anything that low so it still sounds bassy. There are a couple places where it thumps a little lower. In any case, he coulda limited this more than say, Marvin's Room by Drake.
 
Let's listen to a song you made 100% by your own. I guess the files for the beatport remix contest are preprocessed, so it's not possible to rate your real mixing skills. :)
 
Mastering can solve some mix problems if they are the same at each element of the song, it may help somehow. But before spending $$$ with professionals, master it for free with me, so you may check the influence of mastering at the song.
 
It's not a mastering engineer you need. It's a mixing engineer. I think you might be confusing the two. Mastering is very subtle (unless your mix is a total trainwreck, but that's not a situation you want to be in).

Second, even if it were better mastering you needed, honestly, $40-$50 isn't going to cut it. With rare exception, at that price point most "mastering engineers" (if you want to call them that at that price point) are going to do more harm than good to a good mix. They might make an improvement of a lousy mix, but they generally aren't going to help a good mix.
 
T3ZA said:
Hey guys,

I have been making music on FL Studio for a year and my knowledge of mastering is extremely limited and I think it is to the detriment of my tracks. I've been told I'm making good music and have gathered a decent enough following and have had positive feedback... the over-arching bad feedback I have had is due to my poor mastering as opposed to bad mixing etc.

For example, if you listen to a recent Beatport remix competition entry of mine (link below) I am sure you will agree that the drums could be better, vocals louder in bits etc and just overall sound quality could be improved in areas..(the song is hella catchy and good in lots of ways).. So what I'm saying is, is it actually worth sending it off to professionals and shelling out $40-50 (£30) for one very amateur track to try to make it sound better? Or is it a case of you can't polish a turd type thing and the hard work comes from the producer (ie.. me)??

MATTHEW KOMA - SO F**KIN' ROMANTIC (T3ZA REMIX) by T3ZA in the Matthew Koma - So F**kin Romantic :: Beatport Play
Click to expand...

I am both a mixing engineer, and most of the time a mastering engineer.
It's ok, I'm not trying to ask for your money here.. just want to give some perspective on your track from a mastering engineer's angle.

The track has potential, but definitely needs corrections if it was to be commercially released.
One thing that you need to take into account is that while headphones or home speakers or even studio monitors are nice for listening to music from a close range in a moderate volume, a commercial track must be compatible and ready to be played on a wide range of speakers, including some very loud stadium monitors.

One example of a small and subtle "error" in your mix, can be clearly heard at around 2 minutes and 8 seconds into the track: there is a phrase that the singer says something like "We can save the ocean.. we can save the Ocean..". That "Ocean" word has a very strong, very irritating treble peak somewhere around the 3khz-5khz spot. Maybe you didn't hear it in your mix, but its definitely there. and this can be and has to be corrected, but it can also be done in the mixing stage (using a multiband compressor that is properly set, or by simply changing the EQ settings for the vocalist track).

if this track was to be played in a large stadium.. the ears of the people standing near that speaker will be irritating from hearing this. Not good. Mastering is mostly supposed to correct the mix in order to have it mostly "pleasant" to the ear. In an analogy, its like the process of creating a book. The author writes the creation, and the publishing company wraps it together to a nice, "pleasant" package that is like a candy to the reader. In the same way, so is music for the listener.

So this is just one example, one perspective, of why mastering.. or having a mastering engineer who understands what has to be done is neccessary when you are seriously considering a commercial release.

Most people think that mastering is all about "puming up the volume". Its realy not. boosting the volume is realy the easy part of this process. the real deal in mastering begins when after boosting the volume, all sorts of mixing errors suddenly pop up and must be corrected in other to release a final, polished, professional, and pleasant to hear, track.

BTW - Some times, the mastering engineer may ask the mixing engineer to apply some corrections to the mix. And ultimately, many times, studios will send the entire multitrack mix to the mastering engineer. In fact, this is even preferred if you want to achieve the best result.

I hope this helped.
 
Last edited:
'Second, even if it were better mastering you needed, honestly, $40-$50 isn't going to cut it.'

I don't know really how the pricings are in the U.S. but in Germany you'll get a well done mastering for 30€ already. :)
 
I've mixed tons of records for artists. Hundreds (over a thousand? I don't know). Sometimes I have some influence over who the artist/label chooses for mastering; sometimes I don't. So I've had stuff mastered by people of varying ability... everything from the guys who 'moonlight' as mastering engineers just because they have the plugins necessary (doesn't EVERYONE have the plugins necessary?? Just because you own a scalpal doesn't make you a surgeon) all the way up to A-list top of the game guys like Chris Gehringer (Jay Z, Katy Perry, Jason Derulo, etc.), Stephen Marcussen (Aerosmith, Foo Fighters, Miranda Lambert, Rolling Stones, etc.), etc. Honestly, with the $40-$50 guys the artist/label is better off just using my mixes with the limiter I give them for reference and leaving it alone. Granted, I'm a better mix engineer than 99.999% of the people on this forum - I'm mixing stuff on the radio, on the charts, etc. But still..... my point is that many of these guys are doing more harm than good. It might sound better for a quick minute or two when you get your master back just because it's "different" and maybe "louder" (usually TOO loud), but then after the nostalgia wears off a month later you realize that it doesn't really sound that great.
 
Some good comments and info here in this thread, but I take exception to this comment >>>>Mastering really isn't even meant for singles. It was meant for that for maybe 5 years. But the loudness wars are actually dying down, and mastering is going back to what it used to be about, which is making cohesive bodies of work (and I suppose checking if it works in certain phase scenarios, which could be done in mixing anyway). Mastering is more suited to entire albums, not singles, and you really don't need to have the loudest song anymore. I mean, a lot of streaming services now level match their stuff, and most people listen on those anyway.<<<< because it's wrong...

Yes, thank goodness the "loudness wars" are easing, but mastering isn't simply about loudness (you'd think so, if you're relatively new and have been paying attention the last few years). And yes, as far as an album is concerned, mastering is used to help make a project filled with lots of different tracks recorded in different facilities sound like they "belong together." And yes, the questions the OP is dealing with are definitely more mix-oriented rather than mastering-oriented. All that to say, mastering is the "finishing touch" for _all_ recordings meant for public release and/or airplay, and it definitely holds for singles as well-- just ask someone like Bob Ohlsson, who mastered many of the classic Motown tracks heard on the radio, TV, in the movies, and that a lot of famous hip-hop tracks are based on. Mastering has been the final step in the process since we moved from primarily direct-to-disc recording to intermediate mediums like analog tape and currently DAWs in the digital realm. It is still a very valuable process for prepping a single for release.

GJ
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top