What is Mastering??
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- čas přidán 7. 02. 2022
- Responding to a viewer question if I could explain the difference between "mixing" and "mastering". Here's the answer in under 60 seconds.
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So basically: mixing is making the instruments sound good with each other while mastering is making the whole mix sound good on all systems. Got it
Brilliant distillation really.
@@GH23d7sL45 master in a mix, polish and package in a master ;)
@@RedButtonTV1 yeahh I agree. I think it's best to make the mix sound mastered already so that the mastering engineer doesn't need to ask for changes and revisions that much.
Limiter on the master buss during mixing might be a highly debated topic though so idk what to say about that lmao.
Would the mastering engineer make sure all songs are at the same level in an album.
@@GH23d7sL45 You can learn ANYTHING that you dedicate time and discipline to, my friend. You've literally got tons of information in the palm of your hand right now. Don't ever say "I cant". You're allowing yourself to be defeated before you've even tried. Be positive, passionate, and poised. Have the mindset of a winner and you'll be a winner. 🤜🏻🤛🏻
Informative and straight to the point, nice!
Where are you? I'm terrible at guitar and could use your help.
CAUSE ITS THE PICK...OF DESTINY
Mixing: cohesion / vision
Mastering: competitive continuity on as many systems as possible / the last 1-3% polish
Glen, this is the perfect format for quick, one off questions.
holy shit Glenn, thanks for doing this.
Really appreciate you doing these "for dummies" explanations for those that enjoy your content but have no clue what half the stuff means
Seriously, that is absolutely my case LOL
Admirable format - one question, one answer! Gread for searching! Keep up, please!
I love this format. 1 question, 1 answer explained like I'm an idiot. Perfection.
Good idea on doing the Q&A Shorts! 🤟More please!
i agree these are good for questions that are easy to answer and don't fit the normal Q&A vids
Dammit, it was probably the most useful 49 sec video I could ever find. THANK YOU
Perfect! Easy enough for my bassist to rewatch a few times and also within my drummer's attention span 👍
Mastering is when you take your carefully crafted mix, and compress it down into an undifferentiated, continuous brick of sound with no peaks or dynamics of any kind. The louder, the gooder.
LMFAO
Man, there really is something to that. Without fail I listen to 80's records that just sounds a million times better than newer releases. The older recordings feel 'alive' with very nice dynamics, clarity, beauty, whatever superlative you can find.... a pleasure to listen to. Many new releases is just a wall of sound with no detail. Mixed & mastered to be bearable on a phone.
@@christianholmstedt8770 Recently stumbled upon an old vinyl record of an original release of A Night at the Opera. A thoroughly superior listening experience than today's remasters.
Well, loud IS more good.
@@patriotbarrow
Idiots who run their music through the 'sausage machine' should be keel hauled.
@@RedButtonTV1
Or 'auto-sausaged' like the 'music'.
Great explanation. "That's all there is to it." Indeed.
Mixing: Tuning and placement of your tracks individually as you see fit. This includes your sound/instruments and your vocals.
Mastering: Tuning and enhancing everything as a whole under one track. Unlike mixing, where you deal with individual tracks, the mastering is one track that holds all your mixes or everything in your project (the master track). This is where whatever changes you make, affects every sound/instruments and vocals on your project. This is the last step to give your entire project that lively boost so it comes close(depends on how experienced you are) or meets up to professional standards.
It's awesome you showed the Youlean Loudness Meter on the screen. That's my go-to loudness meter. It's free and looks great!
Thanks for touching on mixing vs. mastering Glenn, this came up in conversation between myself and another dude in the chat on MIX REVIEWS. Could you do a short on Impulse Responses (IR's) as well? A few bass players in the chat were kinda lost as to what they were? 😂
Probably one of the most useful videos regarding music production on CZcams.
Duuuuude!!
That MAKES SOOO MUCH SENSE, now
I record stuff and it sounds WAYYY DIFFERENT on my AKG studioheadphones and Car Stereo
I love your explanations man. Simple and right down to it!
More shorts! You nailed this one!
Loved this.
Thank you, and well done, sir. Please keep up the shorts.
Yes, more of this format please 🤘
Love this format. You should definitely make more of these from time to time
Yes. Do more of these uncle Glenn
Great explanation Glenn, appreciate the solid answer! Rock on 🤘🏼
I love those short but very informative videos!
Thanks Gleen. One of my teacher’s in college is a mastering engineer. He said that older people tend to do mastering.
Nice, to the point video!👍
Warren has been doing these lately (as you no doubt already know), and it's great because instead of adding a 20 minute video to my "watch later" list, and waiting to get the time to watch, I can just watch them! 🙂
Thank you for the explanation 🤘
I wondered that too. TIL. Thanks Glenn! I will watch more stuff like this if you make it.
Great format!
Perfect explanation. I only know it’s a perfect explanation because I can understand it. Thank you.
Mixing is like building a house. The foundation, framing, all the "bones". Mastering is like finish carpentry. That's where the magic happens.
The mastering cant fix shit or make things "magic" if the mix is garbage.
The "magic" happens in the mix.
The mastering is pretty much just making shit loud. xD (
Literally more tangible info than half of the 8 minute videos on this subject. Thank you! 🤯
Thanks man. I'm starting to get into recording and mixing mostly, my background is in films but I still have a passion for music. Your videos are a great help
Love the short man, keep them coming
There's actually quite a bit involved in mastering. We *can* apply EQ but not always, do level adjustments from song to song and even within songs, use compression/expansion, limiting, clipping, noise reduction if needed, balance corrections etc. I might use 1-2dB of any one process that would't be that noticeable by itself but all together, makes for a more polished sound. It's also preparing PQ codes, setting gaps between songs, encoding the files etc. A single will often take an hour or so but a full--length record usually takes 4-6 hours depending on how consistent the mixes are. Also, I'm just going to say it, the trend of plastering a bunch of processing on the main buss by mixers makes my job A LOT harder. I can't undo over-processing. When I get a heavily compressed, brick-walled, stereo-enhanced etc mix, I wind up taking more time on the job and have less ability to help you. One producer said he brick-walls his mixes so the mastering engineer CAN'T make any changes. I basically said he was a jackass and either needs to find an engineer he can trust or he shouldn't be sending stuff out for mastering at all.
Perfect and concise explanation.
thank you, this is just what i needed, not a 10 minute video that tells me literally nothing
Very well explained! Thanks!
more of this! a lot more of this!
Love the LCT 1040 Drop :) how cool is that thing! Glenn, I've been out of touch with your channel. Did you get one to review?
Keep on going. We need u
Good info. Thanks. Keep up the good work!
Thanks appreciate the knowledge.
Great video. I was very confused by this
That was an excellent question.
This was great!
PLEASE DO MORE BASIC AUDIO STUFF! I’VE WASTED ALL MY MONEY ON SHINY GEAR AND HAVE NO CLUE HOW TO USE IT!!!
Awesome stuff, like the CZcams shorts
Mixing is when you make it sound good. Mastering is when you undo all of that work by crushing the dynamics and removing anything special about the sound that would make it stand out from all the other generic metal on Spotify.
lol sometime so very true. love it.
This is cool, and time saving
Great Video!
I remember seeing somewhere that Mixing is building the car and Mastering is polishing it off to be presentable.
Thank u !!
That LCT 1040 looks like such a fucking beast. It makes my 840 & 940 look like a toy.
I love this. I like watching your content but my audio knowledge is minimal. Explain it like I'm 5 series on audio would be awesome!
Just wanted to let you know I really enjoyed the bite sized video.
glenn shorts will make the world a great place :0
i would love for this to be on instagram , would be awesome to share
Thank you
As a bassist, my short attention span thanks you for this
I don't see them as separate processes in my own music. The sound that comes out of my project is the final sound. If I'm working with someone else and they want to have it mastered by someone else, I just disable the clipping and limiting and whatever else on the master bus. This actually happened and it came out pretty much the same as my mix. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Mixing: putting all the ingredients together
Mastering: baking the cake
Perfectly explained Glenn 🤘🏼
Mastering is when you spend hours putting the finishing touches on a mix that nobody will ever listen to except for your mom
these are gonna blow up
In the early 90's I was in a death metal band and recorded at a small studio in South River N.J. Trax East.Had the privilege to work with Steve Evetts, at that time he was the bass player in a band called American Angel( should have reached more stardom but that is another topic). I know Steve is still a puritist, no modeling of drums, etc. He will spend days micing cabintes, drums, whatever else to make it work. I had the privilege to pick his brain and mentor under his masterful skills before he moved to California and made a big name for himself working with some major groups. He plays by the same rules as our man making this video, the raw roots is where the real music lies, all the sampled shit, anyone can do that.
Wow, I couldn’t explain it better.
I think your good old video about taking clips vertically is now more relevant than ever
Mastering is like making a birthday cake, before you put the cake in the oven called mixing, and after the oven process are baked and ready, it's time to put the dressing or last touch to complete the make of the bday cake. The final touch u can say its the same term with mastering.
Good stuff
This caused me a lot of confusion, especially because of the term "master tracks" (or "stems", often used interchangeably) haha.
I was like "So... you're telling me the process of dealing with master tracks is not called mastering?"
Skrrrrr💯 bhot pyaar❤.
"That's all there is to it, man." True... but getting good at mastering might be more difficult than getting good at mixing. Modern tools can help, but good ears, lots of experience and a good listening environment are all essential. It's not easy.
Mastering gets exponentially harder when your not careful in the mix. So far, the choice is more tweak in the mastering, or go back into the mix and control that drum compression or pull out the high end on the guitar. Mastering can easily screw the mix. So we play with L/R, compression, equalizers, anything to keep the compression low and around -6 dbs. Definitely focus on getting good a mixing. It makes mastering easier.
@@mikkalbreeden956 - Indeed. Mastering is not a magical fix.
Mixing - Horizontal (make all instruemnts sound good on the EQ spectrum)..... Mastering - Vertical (make all the volumes sound right)
Nice repetition of this!
Mixing is setting the levels of the instruments so that its listenable.
Mastering: Suiting it for listening to it making it and to prepare it for cd lp physical format.
I still fully stand by Steve Albini saying ‘mixing is a creative process, mastering is a technical one’. The mixing engineer has already made the decisions on how the song sounds, whether or not there’s a master bus comp or EQ. so taking their mix, removing perceived ’muddiness’, adding top end, compressing it clipping it and limiting it, is not necessary. Your only job as a mastering engineer should be to ensure play back across systems is optimal, not change the overall feeling of a mix
There is also a lot of vocabulary, used by people who went to school for this, like 'glue it together'would be nice to know what all the jargon means
Would be cool to show and compare mixes mastered and unmastered. If you show me a mastered song, im unable to tell you if its been mastered or not.
Mastering is liek taking the final snapshot of your work. like an artist setting up scene. Tracking is to moving everything around and setting the position and mastering is taking the final picture
Nuff said!
That was the best way I've heard someone explain mastering .when I first recorded a few tracks at a studio I had that question and it was explained in a much more confusing way ..basically he was purposely trying to make it sound much more than it really is ..that being said I still haven't mastered anything myself but I'm just a simple metal ore guitarist.. 😆..uuuddduhhh... gainzzzz..
Much Yes
Sick.
What's with the vertical angle?
Dithering the recording from 32 or 64 bit with a Dithering program into 16 bit it what funnels the high quality
Sound into a universally acceptable medium.
Same goes for Album art work
It must be Rendered with a rendering program .You can have a CD cover air brushed but then there must be a high quality digital reproduction , which must be in a format that is easily uploadable on all devices in Smaller file size than the origional
An alarming lack of screaming in the video
gratulacje
If I've mostly done mixing, is mastering an entire new specialty? Is it possible for a mix to not need mastering
Couldn't say it better /m/
@spectresoundstudios, what's your perspective on mixing and mastering one's own stuff?
Nice job Glenn. Play bass and followed you.
surprised you didn't do anything too crazy to accommodate the vertical video format, like using the anamorphic lens and flipping the camera on its side, lol
An engineer I know once told me:
Imagine being a forest-worker: mixing is taking care of the individual trees, while mastering is making decisions regarding the whole forest.
If we're mastering our own mixes, does it benefit from being a separate process or is it better to do it at the same time?
I'd love to have a pro master my songs but that requires money, so I always do my mixes with mastering plug-ins so I know what the final result will sound like while I'm mixing. I've tried doing it as a separate process but found no benefits and wasn't sure if I just suck or if it's unnecessary. I only post songs to CZcams and Soundcloud so don't know how much it matters.
Btw, here's a link to my latest video in case anyone wants to tell me if my mixing or mastering sucks. czcams.com/video/hBsVEZgtr5k/video.html
I feel the term "master" gets applied to sooo many things these days. Can everything actually achieve this? I doubt it!!!
♥
Mastering is the last boss lvl of corck snuffing.
For me, proper mastering means essentially a fresh but experienced opinion from another pair of ears that hasn’t been involved in the mixing process. The real professional mastering engineer also has balls not to do anything for the finished mix (except limiting) if the mix is so good that it doesn’t need any further tweaking. I’ve "mastered"! most of my own mixes myself, but I never call myself a mastering engineer because of this.
Question: Can EQ be applied in each instrument while mixing? or is it better to wait until mastering?
Of course! That’s generally part of the mixing process