What does mastering do to a solo track after it's been mixed?

[Mixing93]

Tbh I've searched and still don't exactly know what mastering does after mixing? I thought it was only done for a collection of more than one track in order to balance the levels, but I've somehow heard of mastering done to a solo track after it's been mixed?

What does mastering do to a solo track after it's been mixed?

Thank you for your time and help.

 

[steffeeh]

Mastering has many tasks, but in general you could say that it's the stage where you prepare the track for the real world (compared to mixing, which is more about shaping and balancing the different sounds in the track).

If I remember it right, these are the common steps (might be wrong though, but this is pretty much in general):
First step is when you do fine adjustments to the whole track, like very subtle EQ, compression, M/S, or saturation moves on the whole track just to see if you can give it a lift and balance it as a whole, as well as making it sound good on various types of soundsystems (meaning you reference the track on a lot of systems and use a lot of reference tracks and adjust different things).

Next step is often a loudness increase to make it more competitive on the music market.
Though if you're against the loudness wars and such, then there's no need to care about this step.

Next step would be exporting the track properly - normalizing the amplitude to where you want it (often -0.3 or -0.1 dBFS), then applying dither if you're going with 16-bit for bitdepth, etc.

Next step is when you're dealing with more than 1 track, as if you're producing an EP or album. Then you balance the levels between the songs, and set the suitable length of silence between the songs.

Then you need to set the metadata; author, album name, song title, and so on.

Then you have some other things to do if it's through a label.

 

[Mixing93]

Mastering has many tasks, but in general you could say that it's the stage where you prepare the track for the real world (compared to mixing, which is more about shaping and balancing the different sounds in the track).

If I remember it right, these are the common steps (might be wrong though, but this is pretty much in general):
First step is when you do fine adjustments to the whole track, like very subtle EQ, compression, M/S, or saturation moves on the whole track just to see if you can give it a lift and balance it as a whole, as well as making it sound good on various types of soundsystems (meaning you reference the track on a lot of systems and use a lot of reference tracks and adjust different things).

Next step is often a loudness increase to make it more competitive on the music market.
Though if you're against the loudness wars and such, then there's no need to care about this step.

Next step would be exporting the track properly - normalizing the amplitude to where you want it (often -0.3 or -0.1 dBFS), then applying dither if you're going with 16-bit for bitdepth, etc.

Next step is when you're dealing with more than 1 track, as if you're producing an EP or album. Then you balance the levels between the songs, and set the suitable length of silence between the songs.

Then you need to set the metadata; author, album name, song title, and so on.

Then you have some other things to do if it's through a label.

I thought that was also the mixing engineer's job, unless it was a collection of more than one song whereas the mastering engineer would do those effects and balance the levels between songs?

 

[steffeeh]

A mixer engineer do the similar, but focus on balancing the different elements/sounds/instruments in a track, with all the sounds on its own channel with its own processing, while a mastering engineer (mostly) works with 1 wave-file and work on the whole track.

 

[Ametrine]

In addition to what steffeeh's already said, it's always good to have a fresh pair of ears make adjustments to your track to make it sound as good as it can. When you're working on your own mix for a long time, it's pretty easy to lose an objective sense of the track's overall quality.

Also, a good mastering engineer will have listened to hundreds of tracks with their speakers / set up and will have better insights as to what should be fixed in your music.