Thread: Home Studio Mastering is a Terrible Idea.

You attitude, while essentially correct, is that of a top F1 mechanic dissing SCCA amateur racers for building their own cars. Very little of what they do "matters" in a commercial sense, and nobody gets killed in a five song pileup caused by someone's home studio mastering errors. Meanwhile they are making all the mistakes that lead to a deeper understanding of the process. Though few will ever be real mastering engineers some will come to have an increased respect for the profession. They are your future clients. Chill and let the people have their fun.

I was not saying that they should not have their fun, I was pointing out that mastering quality is directly proportional to the accuracy of the room and the monitors within them. When was the last time you saw a set of near field monitors capable of the broadband response necessary to do good mastering? When, indeed was the last time you saw a home/project studio with a control room that was (at least) 30 feet deep? Without these minimum requirements they cannot hear in the low frequencies necessary to trust any adjustments they may wish to make below—let us say—30Hz - 60Hz. Even with a good subwoofer combined with some high-end near field monitors the small size of such a room will not permit any level of accuracy worthy of the name.

Btw, I am not a mastering engineer myself—although my many years of experience probably would allow me to do a credible job. I began life as a musician/writer/composer and I became interested in recording. This interest led me into audio, and this (of course) left me with a desire to build my own facility. I designed and built a room that looked beautiful but was an acoustical nightmare. Being the kind of person that I am this poor outcome forced me to discover exactly why it was that I had failed. I went back to university and (eventually) earned a PhD in physics thereby leading me into becoming an acoustician and studio designer. However, I simply cannot get audio out of my blood and I still maintain my own studio. When I do an album project rather than mastering them myself I make use of several different mastering labs (even though my control room is both big enough and my monitors broadband enough to master should I desire to do so) because it gives me the much needed advantage of a fresh set of ears that might hear things my closeness to a project may forbid me to be easily aware of.

I hope that the kids in this forum will indeed try to do some of their own mastering because it is almost certain to teach them the lesson that it cost me many thousands of dollars to learn...

Paramadman

I'm curious as to what prompted this post to begin with...?

Good thread though and I share your dream while doing other things to survive. Family and parenting has kept me from diving in full time again. Back in the day when I was full time however, the business was thriving and money was never a problem.
I want to lease a building, partner up with another engineer and do it again but fear the worst as the passion burns inside me. I own all my gear this time round so it wouldn't be difficult to make it work if there was in fact people prepared to pay us. So I like this thread indeed.

I echo moonbaby, what sparked your thread?
Do you really need a 30 ft deep room for mastering?

"Do you really need a 30 ft deep room for mastering? " LOL!!!!!
I thought that , too, until I reread it as ...CUBIC feet. I feel your pain, Chris.

lol, that one had me in "deep" thought. Thanks for clearing that one up moon!

"Damnit, Jim, I'm a musician, not a mathematician!"

I think he really means 30' deep. And I suspect he's got good reason.