Hey Charles,
Talk to us about preparing your mix for mastering.
I have several questions . . .
1. Mastering engineers are always pounding the pulpit telling us
to never use compression nor eq on the over-all mix . . . but to
let the mastering engineers handle stuff like that.
But you mentioned you like to use Analog Channel 1 and maybe
DUY Wide on your Master Fader. Do you ever compress your
final mix prior to the mastering house? How about EQ?
Or do you let the mastering engineer do all of that?
2. How hot do you set your Master Fader level when your ready
to send the mix off for mastering? Do you leave them plenty of room
below 0dbfs and let them make it "hot"? Do you crank it as much
as possible? Do you use any brickwall limiter plugins? L1 or L2 ?
If so how hard do you hit them? Do the mastering engineers give you flack for this?
3. Do you dither the mix down to 16 bits or do you let the mastering engineer handle all dithering?
4. Do you send the mastering house a hard drive with a Pro Tools
session on it containing the mixed song at 24 bits? OR do you mix
to analog tape?
5. At this point in your career do you exclusively deal with major label artists and high profile sessions, or do you also have independant artists or local sessions sometimes as well?
Do you handle the mastering / dithering issues differently for
major label artists compared to unknown or local artists?
Hows that for getting a thread going ?!
Pete Weaver
Like Incubus or No Doubt?
www.halftheworld.cc