Quote:
Originally Posted by cdog  Yeah, focus on mixing and let somone else master it.
You should never master your own material if you care about the final product.
Unless you are very experienced.
...[snip] |
I'll go with that as long as we're talking about a budgeted project that will be released or is a mission-critical demo.
And I think the experience, fresh-ears, and better-gear-monitoring-environment arguments definitely hold sway.
But for typical demos, personal projects, even low-budget self-releases, I think mastering-it-yourself can be a money-saving option and may be the only option at the zero-budget end of the scale.
And -- let's not forget -- many "mastering engineers" who've hung out their shingles in recent years are simply recording "engineers" who tired of trying to fill their project studios with live projects... or couldn't. For every ME with experience going back to the cutting lathe days and a $100,000+ mastering environment, there are a lot of guys like... well, like you and me.
PS... I'm still uncomfortable with calling what most contemporary "ME"s do "mastering." To me,
mastering means cutting the master for a grooved record. CD-mastering means preparing a replication master [P&Q codes, yadda yadda] for CD rep. Back in the vinyl days, the "sweetening" that so many people how refer to as "mastering" was almost an incidental aspect -- a chance to to one, last, quick fix.
Honest to gosh, I think the concept has been rejiggered because of changing economics for mastering houses more than anything else. That's not to say there's no potential benefit, mind you. But it is something of a sea change.