No it's not common, or it is for people who don't know how things work, the so called noobsaircargo wrote:Just out of curiosity, is it common practice to send a mix to someone to master that's already gone through a master channel limiter like any one the options mentioned above? Shouldn't the mastering engineer do this? I do this stuff myself because I don't have a mastering engineer but I'd assume I would want to disable all the plugs on my master channel if insert to send a mix off to a mastering engineer to give him the most flexibility.
.Like you said, it's up to the mastering guy to do this job and take care of the master.
In general, a thing that is common is to use a bus compressor on the master, to to take care of some peaks, around 1-2dB in general, and mostly to glue things together a little more, but that's just it. And that before going into mastering.
I know that it's not the question here, but just a reminder, that I can also use for me (:D), is that if you know how to "master" yourself, I mean you know what's the process and more importantly what's the goal of mastering, don't forget to make a break after you consider your mix done.
Usually after the mix is done, I just work on other things, and come back 1 or 2 days later to check if I'm still satisfied, and if I'm OK with what I've done, now I can start working on the mastering, to give it that final touch, with FRESH EARS !
Just my thoughts, IMHO
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