Bad Mastering - anyone been there?

[Your Add Here!]

Let me start out by saying that I've yet to hear the final master and maybe all is hunky dorey. However, I was quite disturbed by what I experienced. I mixed a debut album for an indy rock band. Suffice to say I did the best I could considering some tracking deficiencies, and the final mixes sounded good to everyone's ears. The band was happy. I made sure the tracks were prepped for mastering with plently of headroom and good notes, including specific directions not to over compress or use excessive peak limiting. The band mailed the mix master to a one-stop-shop type mastering/replication-broker house in a major Western City and sent me a "test pressing" of the CD to review.

It was a piece of shit; limited to death, lousy EQ and compression applied, just awful.

To make a long story short I contacted the mastering engineer and told him what I thought, as diplomatically as I could. I tried to contact the owner or first engineer to make sure there was some oversite on the job afterwards but my call was intercepted by the engineer and he listened again to my concerns, this time more directly stated, with the affect of someone disturbed to hear weeks worth of work destroyed overnight - not a particularly pretty conversation.

I hope he took my direction and layed off the bullshit evident
in the first pass, and that the record sounds OK. I'll see. Meanwhile, I did what I could in my limited role as mix engineer. Pretty frustrating experience.

[Reptil]

oh yeah.

[ttauri]

Yeah, been there. So far hasn't happened on a project I've been super-invested in (emotionally speaking), but if I do a remix, generally, I don't have much say on the finished mastering (usually, it works out that not much is done, but I've had the "big room club banger" multi-band treatment done to a delicate deep house mix too).

Biggest disappointment was a track that had a nice dynamic finish that was lost in the squash, but I kinda expected it, so wasn't too disheartened, and the overall balances were pretty intact, so... As The Stranger says in The Big Lebowski: "Sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes, well, he eats you."

Peece,
T. Tauri

[Jose Mrochek]

I just received a master of an album of mine. Couldn´t be happier. Brad Blackwood is the man. Very fast and is great with PM´s. Makes you feel he cares. Returned me something way better than what I sent him. Took it to a different level. I don´t know how other high end mastering guys work, but I really don´t care knowing anyone else. Try him out.

[maskedman72]

this very thing just happened to me on tuesday.

that shit pisses me off. makes you not want your name on it.

[crna59]

That's why I always suggest to my clients that they pay me a visit and maybe even listen in on a session to make sure I'm going in the direction that they had envisioned.
I've heard horror stories of people giving their project to a "friend" to master on their bedroom computer using plug-ins. The whole wave form was BLACK!
If someone doesn't like what I've done, then they don't owe me anything. Of course they get their project back the way it was handed/sent to me!

Regards,
Bruce

[cdog]

If you're sending it out to someone you've never worked with before, its a gamble, no matter what their name is or who else they worked with.

[BradD]

I had a "get what you pay for" on my band's last album. I was all ready to send it off to a national guy, when I heard about a local guy who would master the whole album for $200. I knew I was in trouble when I went to the guy's place and he was using a Behringer Eurodesk for listening to play back. This thing turned into the tinniest piece of shit you've ever heard.

I ended up sending it out to Brian Lucey and was happy. Given what we sent Brian, which was far from perfect, he did a very nice job.

[djui5]

Originally Posted by Jose Mrochek

I just received a master of an album of mine. Couldn´t be happier. Brad Blackwood is the man. Very fast and is great with PM´s. Makes you feel he cares. Returned me something way better than what I sent him. Took it to a different level. I don´t know how other high end mastering guys work, but I really don´t care knowing anyone else. Try him out.

BB's awesome.

I've had some pretty shitty experiences with mastering guys. Entirely wrecking my sound, and it's annoying as hell.

[MASSIVE Master]

Bad Mastering - anyone been there?

It's one of the reasons I stopped tracking and mixing!

[Screws]

I experienced the exact scenario with the same type of replication house/mastering all in one thing. After calling them with some explicit instructions and dislikes they got it right.

However I've had mastering done by both Bob Katz and Bob Ohlsson that was superb, and made me feel like a Cessna pilot in the presence of Space Shuttle pilots. Actually, I'm probably more like a guy in a VW.

[swankdoc]

May I ask, why you felt the need to send it to someone that you hadnt worked with before or that you couldnt be with during the mastering session?
I dont mean to be a dick, really just curious as to others situations. Maybe we're lucky here in Seattle, but I feel like I have a few really good options of guys that work with me in which I can attend the mastering.

[raal]

Originally Posted by Your Add Here!

Let me start out by saying that I've yet to hear the final master and maybe all is hunky dorey. <snip> Meanwhile, I did what I could in my limited role as mix engineer. Pretty frustrating experience.

never fails to surprise me how people can spend months doing a whole album and then skimp on the mastering side.

'The band mailed the mix master to a one-stop-shop type mastering/replication-broker house in a major Western City'.

wow... i feel for you bro.

[Screws]

Originally Posted by swankdoc

May I ask, why you felt the need to send it to someone that you hadnt worked with before or that you couldnt be with during the mastering session?

Replicator/psuedo-mastering house was the client's call. Ohlsson was my call on my own project. Katz was a friend's CD I mixed and he made the call, and it was a good one.