do you guys mix with mastering in mind?

[phillysoulman]

Originally Posted by beat you down

ever since i read up on mastering i started thinking ahead when mixing, ... i started sacrifying lows and dynamics cause in the end all i cared about was a loud master... i was like mixing and mastering (squashing tracks to crap) at the same time.
result: bass light flat ass tracks.

how do you guys go about this?

btw.. i'm now at: i want my mix to sound good, dynamics over loudness, no more squashing, i want actual peaks not blocks.

ps, i know mastering is not just about squashing sh*t.

If you are still coming to Philly, Ill be glad to show you the right way to go about this and you will be amazed.

[James Meeker]

Absolutely.

[OLD BANANAS]

all the time... I find if i know who will be mastering it I do it differently. I doubt that its "the right way" but after a couple of my mixes came back from mastering, i found that i wanted to give it to the ME in a way that would keep more of what the artist and i were going for.

[chris carter]

You always have to mix knowing that it will be mastered. Personally, I TRY to mix so that all the ME has to do is slap a limiter on it and trim the head and tail and call it a day. Sometimes I'm more successful than others LOL.

I always test my mixes with a limiter in a two-track editor to see how it will sound after limiting, but I don't print it that way.

[staudio]

Make the mix as good as you think it can be. As you all may know, mastering is about correcting problems, making albums consistent sounding, sequencing, quality control, etc. With that in mind, a "perfect" mix will be left alone by the mastering engineer.
This probably never happens because we don't mix in flawless environments and we have subjective tastes.

Don't squash.

[Nahuel]

I've been told by an ME: "leave 6 db of headroom in your mix for me it's better than me bringin down the levels before my chain" is it a common instruction from MEz? (wll it sound kinda obvious but I'd like to know what you think about that).

[bgrotto]

Originally Posted by lpuma

I've been told by an ME: "leave 6 db of headroom in your mix for me it's better than me bringin down the levels before my chain" is it a common instruction from MEz? (wll it sound kinda obvious but I'd like to know what you think about that).

Yup, that's pretty standard - and really good - advice.

Our desk/tape deck is calibrated so when the meters read 0VU my mixes' peaks land between -6db and -7db on the computer.

As for the original question:

The more comfortable I get with my mixing, and with my understanding of how mastering (or more specifically, various mastering engineers) will affect it, the more I find myself leaning on mix buss compression and even (gasp!) mix buss EQ. I find I'm less surprised by my masters when I'm mixing into a compressor and EQ. I know I'm sort of tying the hands of the ME, but that's kind of the point. Of course, if George Marino is mastering the record, I'll be much less likely to do those things...

Anyway, it also helps to keep things more consistent from song-to-song. When this is the case, the ME will LOVE you.

[kkulesh]

If your music needs to be loud, it's common to set your SD and BD a little louder (up to 2db) than you want after mastering. Drums wouldn't disappear after hard limiting

[E.rOk.stA]

I'm nobody special so please bear with me. It starts with tracking. Getting the best possible sound from the source. If you are gonna use a ME, trust that their limiters and EQ's are much better than yours. I try to only use EQ or Compression in the mix when necessary.
Try mixing everything raw (no plugins). Then determine what sounds are interfering with each other, bass, kick drum, vocals, snare, pianos?? Solo each track and see where you can high pass or low pass frequencies. Don't worry about how good each track sounds solo as much as how it sounds in the mix. Alot of times, the bass going along with the piano for example, will give the impression that the low end energy from the piano is there even though you used a high pass filter on it cutting everything off below 200Hz.
It's all about cleanup. That's how you get separation. If you do that properly and leave the "making it loud" to the pro, you'll be better off at the end of the day. Sometimes you have to make a pre-master for that antsy friend who wants to leave with a good copy. I use iZotope's Ozone 3 for that. It has an excellent limiter that is very transparent. Sorry if I ramble, I'm new to this forum and this has probably been said half a million times...

[beat you down]

thanks, all you kind people...

psoulman, thanks for the invitation, won't make it to philly anytime soon though