beneficial to sit-in with your mastering engineer?

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Will Frances
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beneficial to sit-in with your mastering engineer?

Post by Will Frances »

Hi all,

Does anyone have experience sitting in when getting their track mastered? Is this common practice? If so can you really learn a lot about your mix? I presume that as you sit in more and more you start to learn what is 'wrong' with your mixes more and more. I know that any mastering engineer worth their weight will have tuned ears and you are paying for their impartial expertise and having your audio put through their system.

Thanks

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Lost to the Void
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Re: beneficial to sit-in with your mastering engineer?

Post by Lost to the Void »

Extremely beneficial.
It`s why I have made my studio client comfortable.
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Re: beneficial to sit-in with your mastering engineer?

Post by surface »

This came up before. Can tell you there are a few here that will say if you get the chance, by all means do. Can see why too ..

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Re: beneficial to sit-in with your mastering engineer?

Post by Lost to the Void »

You won't necessarily understand what is wrong with your mix, you could get the same results asking any mastering engineer for feedback on your track, what you will learn is process, and have more of an idea of what mastering is and does and how you can better prepare for it, in relation to your own music.
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Will Frances
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Re: beneficial to sit-in with your mastering engineer?

Post by Will Frances »

Sorry if this was a repeat post, I couldn't find it. From looking about a few places seem to charge more for a sit in. I guess that for dance music, techno and the like it takes around an hour to master a single track based on the type of rates I've seen.

Thanks

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Re: beneficial to sit-in with your mastering engineer?

Post by surface »

My bad. I did a search and see it only turned up in a different topic in passing, not a thread in itself. Just remembered reading it...

It seems some engineers charge extra and some are happy if you sign a confidentiality clause with the blood of a freshly slaughtered one-eyed three-legged albino kid goat, haha!

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Re: beneficial to sit-in with your mastering engineer?

Post by Mattias »

Really it's one of the best things one can do
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Re: beneficial to sit-in with your mastering engineer?

Post by Lost to the Void »

It shouldn't take an hour to master a track unless there are some serious issues.
I've sat in on many many sessions myself at various places with various engineers cutting records, as well as when I was apprenticing to be an engineer myself. An EP of 4 dance tracks will generally be done in a couple of hours.
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Re: beneficial to sit-in with your mastering engineer?

Post by Will Frances »

Thanks for your posts, another question I have is... Could you hear the difference if you got the same track mastered by different people? do people work that differently that the results vary?

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Re: beneficial to sit-in with your mastering engineer?

Post by Mattias »

Yes
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Re: beneficial to sit-in with your mastering engineer?

Post by Lost to the Void »

Will Frances wrote:Thanks for your posts, another question I have is... Could you hear the difference if you got the same track mastered by different people? do people work that differently that the results vary?
Yes of course, different equipment, different studio and different personal tastes.
Although, the very best engineers you won`t notice so much of a difference between them unless you ask for specific characteristics, they tend to have the years of experience that leads to the same broad and even balance.
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Re: beneficial to sit-in with your mastering engineer?

Post by sinesnsnares »

Hmm, super interesting to hear that mastering doesn't actually take that long. Is that because you have years of experience now, or because, hopefully, the mix should be like.. 80% there?

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Re: beneficial to sit-in with your mastering engineer?

Post by Mattias »

Thing is, its all about the experience and workflow and that first listen as a new pair of ears.
When it suddenly starts to take long to master a track then something is wrong plus you get out of touch with that "a first time listener view".
Then its better to stop, master something else instead and go back later. Some tracks can be tricky though.
People wont realize that a chunk of the time goes into comparing even the smallest change with the original mix loudness matched.

I suck at explaining this...
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Re: beneficial to sit-in with your mastering engineer?

Post by Lost to the Void »

sinesnsnares wrote:Hmm, super interesting to hear that mastering doesn't actually take that long. Is that because you have years of experience now, or because, hopefully, the mix should be like.. 80% there?
Well if it's your job you just get better at identifying and locating frequencies and dynamics.
I do it all day every day as my job so unless there are serious problems, a 4 track EP for vinyl (by one artist, it takes, i longer if it is a VA release) can take from 1 - 2 hours depending on the quality of production. Techno isn't particularly dynamic music so it's actually pretty easy to deal with. I've sat with Geoff pesch, Matt colton, Nils and mike at the exchange, porky, lawrie. They all work at a fair pace.
Album mastering is completely different thing though, you are dealing with a lot more, you have the entire album to think about, building the dynamics to a crescendo over the whole album, for example, or moving the tone from cold to warm as the album progresses, as well as dealing with corrections of individual tracks etc.
When the production is not so good then it takes longer. I prefer the tricky jobs where there is a puzzle to solve to get it to sound right, but it is satisfying to take an A grade mix and turn it in to an A plus master.
Somehow, I have a bit of good standing within noise electronics and experimental music. So I get sent a lot of really tricky messed up gnarly industrial music and techno to deal with.
I mastered some Merzbow for vinyl last week, that was insanely challenging but very satisfying.
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Re: beneficial to sit-in with your mastering engineer?

Post by aoud »

Cool and accurate thread.

Always a good time sitting in with the mastering engineer, less common now perhaps, but expect to pay an "attended" rate.

Some of the most clever people you can meet who have a lot of time to think about very specific problems.

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Re: beneficial to sit-in with your mastering engineer?

Post by crowsbelikecaw »

An engineer friend of mine who owns and runs a great little studio has always attended his clients' mastering sessions when possible, particularly if they are local mastering engineers he has relationships with via client recommendations and such.

The ME doesn't sit and tell him how to mix or whatever, but seeing what needed the most "touching up" (especially across multiple projects) allowed him to identify areas he could improve upon in his productions and sense of room translation. For instance, he found that if the low end was just a tad diminished in his room, it will end up being just about right.
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Re: beneficial to sit-in with your mastering engineer?

Post by Alume »

Is it beneficial to shit with your mastering engineer?

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Re: beneficial to sit-in with your mastering engineer?

Post by Lost to the Void »

Oh god yes, shit with and shit on, eat shit with.
It makes the day go more smoothly.

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Re: beneficial to sit-in with your mastering engineer?

Post by SixOfOne »

^^ shit advice


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