We were based out of Lake City at the time so we always just went to his place over in Greenwood. So as far as sending him tracks I’m unfortunately not sure what he prefers at the moment. He’s properly professional though so I’m sure that part would be easy. The only thing I can really say about his process is that I was really glad that I got to go and watch and pay real attention to what he was doing. It was honestly a bit baffling. I’ve been in plenty of studios over the years but his has been the only dedicated mastering facility I’ve seen. I recognized almost none of the gear which was interesting and my ears are so beat down from 100 watt stacks with no earplugs for years that I really couldn’t hear what he was doing after about 15 minutes. If you hire him you should see if he’ll let you sit in. The whole schmeal was mighty impressive. And the results when played next to the raw mixes were fucking astonishing.
Nowadays I’m not really trying hard to make anything of all this so I do it myself. My approach is to get it how I want it in the mix. Then my ‘mastering process’ (lol) is to just hit those loudness numbers without making anything sound worse. If I ever do get truly serious again I will definitely take my stuff to Black Belt.
Hey there ! I can do it if you feel like it, mastering is my main job with teaching modular synthesizer.
Here is my studio website, feel free to send me a message here to talk
I can 100% relate to this. Self Master all day for this reason. That being said, I tend to use TDR Limiter 6 GE exclusively for mastering. It has everything I need (comp, soft clipper, peak limiter, hf limiter) It also measures DB / LUFs, has a stereo / mono toggle, etc…It sometimes goes on sale around holidays and can be had at a discount.
Its a good point.
Ive had stuff professionally mastered in the past, but it was paid for by the label. An EP and some compliation tracks, I still get royalties everynow and then, but honestly, I dont even notice it the income is so minute.
My last album I did myself, sold on bandcamp. Ive made 200 AUD so far, 1 year in. So no, financially, paying for mastering would not have been worth it.
The people that bought the album, bought it based on what they heard. Would a pro master have sounded “better”? Yes it mosty certainly would, but the audience didnt hear a pro master, they heard my work, liked it, and bought it.
Hey everybody, I think I found the mastering engineer I’m going to work with. They were kind enough to work with my budget, meet virtually to discuss everything and offer a free sample master.
Super awesome experience so far.
Thanks to everyone who recommended and offered.
Does anyone really think it does? Honestly, I’m mostly interested in getting an EP mastered more as a reward to myself for getting work out there in the wild.
A master does not magically make a bad tune great just as a pro paint job doesn’t make a ugly car beautiful but a beautiful car will benefit a decent paint job over some use of spraycan. Especially from close view.
The common process in music industry is stil producing-mixing and mastering. The debate of leaving that final stage in or out … for the sake of future generations and everyone who doesn’t love 128kbs mp3’s on Ali’s €2,- bluetooth earplugs keep good music mastered properly.
Fantastic sounding examples! Also very diverse in style - a standard Big Room Techno Track would have been nice on your website. But all of the examples sound very good - fair pricing too.
In my experience mastering has always made my tracks sound better, regardless of how much work I put in to them. Just take your time to find someone good and be communicative about your needs (IE I hate it when people go too heavy on the compressor and squash my mixes).
All that said I actually don’t bother with mastering anymore, mostly because it’s an expensive habit. To date I’ve made $0 in return and I don’t think my 6 monthly listeners on Spotify can tell the difference anyways.
Thanks ! The website is not really up to date but anyway I never really worked for any techno artist as you refer. I’m happy being a mastering guy for the weirdo hahaha.
I got back the sample master and it’s awesome!
Moving forward with whole album.
His name is Frank and he is very good to work with. We already had two zoom meetings so he could better understand what I was hoping for.
