Yes, mastering = stuff you do to the 2-bus.

I was thinking he meant to see what you can do with the mix on your own without sending it out somewhere else to have it mastered, as if we could afford that "just for fun" anyway.

Originally posted by tubedude:
I was thinking he meant to see what you can do with the mix on your own without sending it out somewhere else to have it mastered, as if we could afford that "just for fun" anyway.

Thanks. That's more along the line of what I was thinking. Still, I guess we'll have to wait until Mixerman gets back before we know for sure.

I routinely do stuff to the 2-bus in the end, and as said above I still consider this "mixing" in most cases, mastering in some. :)

/Z

Ehhh, but I'm running Pro Tools here and I can do both mixes at the same time. Am I not allowed to use the maximizer, EQ or Limiter on the masterfader???
;-)))

A mix that hasn't ben mastered is a mix that sounds as good as possible without taking the final release medium or location within a sequence into account. A great mix will generally sound better than the finished product which needs to be at a "competitive" level and consistent within a CD. It will include any dynamics control that is needed for musical reasons but will not have the final peak limiting and eq. that is commonly used strictly to push the average loudness up at the expense of sound quality.

The standard term for this is an "original master." What comes out of a mastering facility is called a "production master."

This will be optimized for context and for CD, Vinyl, streaming or tape replication.

Do what you want to the mix. There are some here that have acess to mastering engineers and houses by virtue of doing business with them. I don't want to hear a bunch of loud BS. I want to hear some mixes. As long as you are processing the mix while you're mixing it, then that's fine. Just don't touch it up later.

Mixerman