Mastering guys - What are the biggest mistakes made in mixdowns pre-mastering?

[scraggs]

Originally Posted by dualflip

Theres a point i loudening a track where i start hearing (or not hearing for that matter) the kick and the snare being completely distroyed, that usualy happens above -12dbfs RMS

agreed. i find that -12 average is about as loud as most things will go without any obvious (or any at all) artifacts. although some heavy rock stuff can be a bit louder and be fine. if the client doesn't specifically ask for loud i usually default to -12 (or lower) and amazingly, the clients generally go for it. i always send out the nice sounding master first and then wait in dread for the "sounds great! just make it louder!" email, but they are usually fine with it.

*is lucky*

[twwalsh]

-12 is awesome. about half the time now, i get pushed to around -7. it's hard to get it to sound good at that level, but i really like having clients.

[psykostx]

Originally Posted by liax

see the metallica album .. isn´t anybody askling at first, what the Me did ?

He knew what he had to do once he heard how terrible "Justice" sounded. It sounded like someone took a Testament master and limited some more. He then gave them a sound by cutting out all their mids (the details of their playing) and filling it in with distortion. He then inserted headroom above their lack of dynamic range, and a touch of talent to the otherwise botched mix. Now every crappy metal band since then sounds like the mixing and mastering engineers are the talent.