So I finally finished a song. I sent it to New York to be professionally mastered at the same mastering house as P-diddy, Ciara, Young Jeezy, The Beastie Boys, Rick Ross and others(hip-hop) have used.
So anyway, I kept a copy and put the Oasys Multiband Compressor and the mastering limiter on my copy. The mastering house sent the mastered version of my song back. Guess what. It sounded worse than the one I kept. So I'm thinking to myself either the Oasys has some good plug-ins or the engineer did a bad job. (heavy distortion among other things) or it could be some kind of digital error. We'll see.
I've been mixing for about 11 yrs. I own a professional studio. I am not that good at engineering. Especially to where a song doesn't need to be mastered, seriously y'all. I've only heard of one engineer who's had a mix so good that the mastering house called him and told him that, "We didn't even have to touch that track." and that's Bruce Swedien. I've sent an e-mail to the project manager to enquire about the quality of the mastered song.
Note: I'm aware that you are not supposed to put a limiter on a track before sending it to the mastering house and I'm also aware to send a 24 bit file(which is why I have been asking for a 24 bit mixdown option for the O).
I will let you guys know what happens.
Y'all are not going to believe this!
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RobertPlatinum
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Y'all are not going to believe this!
Last edited by RobertPlatinum on Sat May 17, 2008 7:08 am, edited 1 time in total.
That's interesting. As an amateur I don't have that much mixing experience and esp. mastering seems a mystery. So I'm always thinking about sending my songs to someone professional. Now having read this I'm not so sure it's worth the money - esp. if you have nice mastering presets in Logic that are simple to handle and produce quite good results.
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RobertPlatinum
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Give it a try. First find a mastering house that you might be interested in using. Some of them will do a free test master for you.
Imo, the secret of mastering is a combination of the following.
-First the engineer undergoes some sort of formal training where they learn all of these theories of physics, sound, acoustics, electronics, and how to use various mastering equipment.
-Second normally the mastering engineer will have a room that's acoustically perfected.
-Third he/she will have super acurate and very expensive amps and monitors.
-Fourth he/she will have both analoque and digital consoles and mastering eq's, compressors, and limiters. Sometimes a reel.
-Fifth he/she will normally have experience and specialize in a particular style or related style(s) of music.
If I've left anything out feel free to add.
Imo, the secret of mastering is a combination of the following.
-First the engineer undergoes some sort of formal training where they learn all of these theories of physics, sound, acoustics, electronics, and how to use various mastering equipment.
-Second normally the mastering engineer will have a room that's acoustically perfected.
-Third he/she will have super acurate and very expensive amps and monitors.
-Fourth he/she will have both analoque and digital consoles and mastering eq's, compressors, and limiters. Sometimes a reel.
-Fifth he/she will normally have experience and specialize in a particular style or related style(s) of music.
If I've left anything out feel free to add.
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RobertPlatinum
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- Joined: Thu Nov 29, 2007 6:43 am
The mastering houses will either charge by the hour or by the track. They also charge for revisions, storing the master for you, each copy of the glass master and sending to the pressing plant(cd manufacturer). The lowest price that I've seen is $100 a track. The most I've seen is $495 an hour.
Prices can go higher because there is high demand for a few master engineers. The main thing that I see that is offsetting the potential high cost of having a mastering project is the availability of mastering software and the increasing number of lower cost mastering houses.
The best way to find acurate information on this is simply to run a search on mastering house(s). Check out there websites and call them to inquire about prices.
Thank you, Charlie there are others on this forum that know a heck of a lot more than I about this matter so also keep checking the forums for info. Especially the mixing and mastering forum.
Prices can go higher because there is high demand for a few master engineers. The main thing that I see that is offsetting the potential high cost of having a mastering project is the availability of mastering software and the increasing number of lower cost mastering houses.
The best way to find acurate information on this is simply to run a search on mastering house(s). Check out there websites and call them to inquire about prices.
Thank you, Charlie there are others on this forum that know a heck of a lot more than I about this matter so also keep checking the forums for info. Especially the mixing and mastering forum.
