Mastering dance music

[paul6891]

Hi,

I'm working on a new trance track at the minute, and it's just about finished. I am at the mixing/mastering stage, and I just have a quick mastering question.

Do you usually master within your project, or is it better to bounce the whole think and just master the one track? Or does it make any difference?

Thanks

[clivek]

If your mixing in the box then you might aswell master in the box too!

As long as you have enough processing power !!

I personelly prefer to print a mix. And master separately. I'm not a fan of in the box bounces !!

[Joelistics]

Originally Posted by paul6891

Hi,

I'm working on a new trance track at the minute, and it's just about finished. I am at the mixing/mastering stage, and I just have a quick mastering question.

Do you usually master within your project, or is it better to bounce the whole think and just master the one track? Or does it make any difference?

Thanks

If you master your own music all you should need is a little compression and a bit of limiting.. Any other issues should be fixed in the mix.. So yes keep it in the session.

[Chris Bauer]

If you are planning (ultimately) to put out a collection of your material, then it might be preferable to bounce down to a stereo track and master that. The benefit is that you can then take all your stereo mixes, import them into a new project and master them side by side. The alternative is mastering each track in its own project, which may result in a disjointed sounding collection (album).

[huejahfink]

Yes I'm with Chris.... save bounces of each track.
Then, when you make the final compilation of tracks - you can make direct comparisons between them and see what needs to be done to best balance them all up.

[ProfessorNick]

What Chris said.
It is nice to have a mastered and un-mastered version for future reasons as well. Perhaps the song takes off and you want a pro to master it later. Two files, no problems.