If Mixing & Mastering are separate professions and skills, why do so many individuals offer both services?

[jamcat]

I pay mastering engineers to address things that I can’t hear properly in my space. In the process, they’ve given me feedback and my mixes have improved. That feedback is golden.

I don’t know why you want to assert this is not part of the process.

I've never said it can't be part of your process. I've only said that is isn't vital or necessary for distributing your music digitally. Unlike creating a wax master for pressing vinyl.

[vurt]

im not asking either of you for your own work, but can you at least give some examples when you discuss things?
which acts are sounding like demos?
or which would you suggest are of a decent quality? just to get some idea of where you sit in the spectrum of sound so to speak.

Here is a song that illustrates my philosophy. It is "In Shreds" by the Chameleons. It was produced by Steve Lillywhite, who is of course one of the world's most elite producers, known for producing U2's most important albums, and Peter Gabriel's seminal third solo album, among others.

But, the Chameleons were not too cooperative during recording. They kept moving Steve's mics out of the way and turning up. They didn't care about production. They were punk rock. This goes back to what I was saying about production values and authenticity.

So the fruits of the Chameleons' relationship with Steve Lillywhite don't sound like U2 or Peter Gabriel. This is pretty raw. One take in the room. The drums and vocals clip the meters. There are phase issues and frequency masking all over the place. But it is absolutely jaw-dropping.

When you listen, you understand. Music is all about the song and above all, the performance. Sound quality means nothing, in the end. And if it had "better" sound quality, would it be as good? If the floor tom didn't overload the mics when it was smacked, and if Birdie's voice didn't distort when he wailed, would it be the same song, or would it actually lose something? This is what Synthmaster2000 doesn't seem to get.

This version is from the 2013 remaster. Sure, it sounds marginally better than the original wax master from 1981. But it's still the same song. It wasn't drastically altered during remastering, nor should it have been. Mastering couldn't have "saved" it. Nor did it need to be. And the original master is still just as enjoyable to listen to. But what's not enjoyable is a 128kbps mp3 rip of it. That's the sort of thing that actually matter to listeners.

thanks, that's all i needed.
i just honestly think it's easier to understand where we are coming from, why you, me, and others may see this and other aspects of production differently.

the chameleons, i know (not personally, i mean i know the music and have enjoyed it since the 80s myself too) and yes, the authenticity is a part of the sound of theirs and many others, as i said earlier.
if it's a punk band, they're not likely to care about fidelity so much.

but, if someone is aiming for a more contemporary pop sound, then they will see the mixing and mastering as important too, getting a radio friendly mix, even for an amateur is good practice, if you have dreams to go that way.

so while i do agree with you in many cases, the mix and mastering is secondary (i love daniel johnston for example) but for some it is an important stage.
it's a different mindset really, there's artists who do art for art's sake, then there's artists who do art to get noticed. for some the success is in the doing, others in the sales/views.
neither is better than the other, im not looking to make out there's something holy about the art for art's sake.
just that knowing your market, is the first step.

that said, i would be interested in your music if you ever do wish to share.
and not for snark, that's not my way.

[twal]

Sites like Fiverr are filled with mostly people that do both.
Is this a Red Flag? Should I avoid people that offer both services?

Mixing and mastering services are quite the ambiguous animal because the level of ability is so wide, that anyone can do both at an arbitrary level. For instance: Someone like Dave Pensado mixes mainstream records, while someone who is making music for lesser projects can get the job done with lesser skills. In the former example, you want the best that money can buy, and in the latter you want presentability for less the money. Same goes for mastering, and I myself could advertise myself as a mastering engineer or a professional mixer, because I can do both at decent level AND that may be fine for a small project but I would feel like a parasite because if the song sucks the work is almost pointless. But, for a major project you get what you pay for. It also depends on the music genre and the work you need done. If you are mixing/engineering a rock band then you want that higher level and you want a professional who can actually do it. If you are mixing a simple hip hop beat then you could get some advice off of youtube and try it yourself. Nonetheless, mixing and mastering is not easy and takes a lot of practice to be decent, but if you want to be a master at mixing or mastering, more than likely you will have to commit your entire life to it for a long life-span. Some professional mixers will tell you that all you need to do is throw a clipper on the master. In fact, if you know what you are doing you may be able to get away with this if the mix is pristine in the first place, also if the song is already well made the mixing is automatic. With mastering, you have to consider if it's just one track or a whole album. Anyone that is making money mastering or mixing random strangers online is doing it for the money as the song arrangement is the most important process to good music. If the arrangement is poor, then the mixing will just make it sound more leveled to a degree but if the song is trash, the sound of the mix will be trash and so will the master. So the better the song, the more harmonics, dynamics, processing and so forth and so on can be done by a professional mixer and finally a professional master engineer. So think of it like this, if you were an electrician and you are working on someone's home, you need a certain level of expertise, and if you are an electrician for an amphitheatre you need another level of expertise. So yes, anyone can become a novice level mixer and master engineer that would be good enough for hobbyists throwing together stuff that just wants their levels good, and also good enough for shipping out quality music to be professionally engineered for a popular artist to work with if the song arrangement is good in and of itself. On the other hand, anyone can "master" a random song online and make something that would be good enough for someone sitting at home who needs leveling but as there is with all marketing/ambiguous fields/difficult projects there's a lot of smoke and mirrors.

[jamcat]

Some professional mixers will tell you that all you need to do is throw a clipper on the master.

Why would they do that? Isn’t that literally the worst thing you could do to a song?

[twal]

Some professional mixers will tell you that all you need to do is throw a clipper on the master.

Why would they do that? Isn’t that literally the worst thing you could do to a song?

If the mix is good and all you want is a louder mix then all you have to do is throw a limiter, clipper, or maximizer on the master fader. No joke. Irko, a platinum award winning engineer does this. You can check out the interview here, idk the time but he does make Urban music so maybe that's a reason:

[jamcat]

the chameleons, i know (not personally, i mean i know the music and have enjoyed it since the 80s myself too)

I thought you might!
I had the pleasure of spending some a few minutes with Mark Burgess once.

[jamcat]

If the mix is good and all you want is a louder mix then all you have to do is throw a limiter, clipper, or maximizer on the master fader. No joke.

Yeah, I know what it does. But wouldn’t this just result in a loss of dynamics, which will sound worse, rather than louder, when Spotify/YouTube/Apple Music/etc turn the volume down?

[twal]

If the mix is good and all you want is a louder mix then all you have to do is throw a limiter, clipper, or maximizer on the master fader. No joke.

Yeah, I know what it does. But wouldn’t this just result in a loss of dynamics, which will sound worse, rather than louder, when Spotify/YouTube/Apple Music/etc turn the volume down?

I didn't mean to infer that you didn't know, just saying that that's all some engineers do. Irko is a mixer as well, so most of his processing is done at that level and probably very good.

Not sure if they increase the LUFS by that much by adding the master chain volume increase.
Maybe they are increasing for CD or just straight mp3/wav?

The question is really- what else do we need to do on the master besides increase volume? The obvious answer is compression and some eq, stereo whatever you want, but really what is necessary? If for basic artists wanting a master, merely throwing on a limiter could be a way to make money, but how terrible is that just increasing volume on master- I bet that's what "engineers" do online for customers.

[vurt]

the chameleons, i know (not personally, i mean i know the music and have enjoyed it since the 80s myself too)

I thought you might!
I had the pleasure of spending some a few minutes with Mark Burgess once.

cool!
never met them, but have seen them a couple of times, once early on and once not too long back on a reunion gig.

[vurt]

but how terrible is that just increasing volume on master- I bet that's what "engineers" do online for customers.

some might, but not all.
the good ones, will be happy to share previous work, and a short demo of your own piece if you ask. you send your file, they send just a chorus and a verse back, you can hear what they have done.
then decide if its worth paying for.

[jamcat]

but, if someone is aiming for a more contemporary pop sound, then they will see the mixing and mastering as important too, getting a radio friendly mix, even for an amateur is good practice, if you have dreams to go that way.

so while i do agree with you in many cases, the mix and mastering is secondary (i love daniel johnston for example) but for some it is an important stage.

It’s important to me, too. It’s just less important than everything that comes before it.

I would think that if a self-producing musician considers getting that polished post-production sound to be an important step to finishing a song (which is totally valid), they would want to master it for themselves (pun intended.)

Now as Scotty has said, he wants his music to sound the absolute best it can, and that means paying someone else to do post-production.

But, why stop there?

There are also always going to be better recording and mixing engineers out there. Better guitarists and singers and drummers and MIDI programmers, too. And there will be better producers, arrangers and songwriters. So why not bring in someone else to write your lyrics, arrange your compositions, play your guitar parts, and sing your songs, while you’re at it? That is, if you want your music to be the absolute best it can be.

But at that point, is it really still yours?

[vurt]

that's been done many times.
one example, joe meek wrote telstar, got session musicians to record it.

or pretty much every boy band.

not everyone in music is a player/ performer, there are many different aspects.
song writers/engineers/producers (old definition) and so on.

we all have different strengths, different needs/desires, what's right for you isn't right for all, that way is the way of bones! you want us all making ebm?

[jamcat]

I want nobody making ebm

[Scotty]

I usually avoid clippers on the master bus. That isn't the way I want to impart colour or deal with transients but they can certainly help you squeeze more loudness out of your mix if you hit it immediately after with a limiter. The soft clipping settings that I have used just momentarily catch the odd transient and doesn't seem to impact the normalization offset. If you use more aggressive settings in combination with the limiter you could certainly push it well into the penality zone.

There are plugins that calculate the loudness penality and there are online drag and drop calulators. I use ADPTR to check my masters as it is a plugin and I can check my work within the DAW. https://www.plugin-alliance.com/en/prod ... liner.html

With ADPTR you can actually hear the songs as they will play back on several platforms by selecting the streaming protocol of choice. It shows the normalization offset and you can of course hear it as well. Its a great tool if you are experimenting with your mastering chain and want to determine if the compromises you are making to get more loudness are detrimental.

https://www.plugin-alliance.com/en/prod ... liner.html

Yeah, I know what it does. But wouldn’t this just result in a loss of dynamics, which will sound worse, rather than louder, when Spotify/YouTube/Apple Music/etc turn the volume down?

[jamcat]

I use ADPTR to check my masters as it is a plugin and I can check my work within the DAW. https://www.plugin-alliance.com/en/prod ... liner.html

Thanks, Scotty

I’ll pick this up in the next MEGA ULTRA BOOM!SALE

BTW, how much did you pay for it?

Also, how does it compare to these?

MeterPlugs Loudness Penalty
Nugen MasterCheck
Sonible True:Level

Does it do all the same stuff, more, less?