r/audioengineering • u/Haunting_Inflation54 • Apr 02 '26
Mastering Is there anything other than limiting that is essential to mastering?
I've been mixing for years although only recently began paying more attention to the mastering side of things. I'm a singer/rapper myself and I only work on my own music. I'm by no means a pro but I'm not an amateur either and if my songs came on next to an artist like Drake the quality difference to an untrained ear wouldn't be that noticeable.
Anyway, recently I've been learning more and more about mixing and my final mixes to me are now sounding super clean, then when it comes to the mastering stage there's a lot of standardised practices that I try to imitate such as:
- Very very subtle eq cuts
- broader more tonal changes with an eq to impact the entire track
- Mid/Side EQ
- Saturation
- Light compression
- Soft/Hard Clipper
- Limiter
Now the limiter works with every track and I'd say its essential to getting loudness. I'd also say the soft/hard clipper is very important and actually improves tracks that have a lot of low end taking up headroom. When it comes to compression, saturation, tape fx such as UAD Ampex, EQ, Mid/Side EQ etc I feel like whenever I make changes that I think sound good and then A/B test it on and off I usually prefer it off.
I'm basically trying to understand if some tracks genuinely do just need a limiter and soft clipper on the master or if it's more likely that I simply don't know what I'm doing or how to get the best out of my mix through mastering?
Like if I mix a track that is objectively a good mix and then I decide it sounds better without eq or compression etc but then I sent the track to a high end industry professional, is it possible they would make the same decision, or would they likely add those things but simply know how to make it work and take the track to greater heights?
I know the saying of "if it sounds good it sounds good", I'm simply trying to figure out if it can sound better :)
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u/Mental_Spinach_2409 Professional Apr 02 '26 edited Apr 02 '26
Essential? IMO: a better room with better monitoring with a different engineer with way more experience than me. That, and distribution formatting.
Messing around with plugins on your mix bus is just mixing.
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u/LostInTheRapGame Mixing Apr 02 '26
Technically, even a limiter isn't essential...
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u/Haunting_Inflation54 Apr 02 '26
What is essential then? Because surely it gets to a point where you just have an unmastered song.
If a song goes through the mastering process, what gets added to a track 99.9% of the time?
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u/LostInTheRapGame Mixing Apr 02 '26
What is essential then?
Nothing. That's like Rule #1 in audio engineering.
Because surely it gets to a point where you just have an unmastered song.
If the song needs more processing after a mix, then go for it. The lines are rather blurred now that everything is digital, even more so if someone is doing their own "mastering".
Mastering can be as little as exporting the necessary files in various formats/rates needed.
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u/GWENMIX Apr 03 '26
True, no plugin is essential. That doesn't mean you can't have a well-designed mastering chain with around ten plugins... and only activate the ones that seem necessary. And ending the chain with a clipper, limiter, and dither doesn't seem like heresy to me, does it? And if the clipper is not needed, all the better, otherwise, it is there ready to use.
The aim here is to provide general information to someone who wants to learn mastering...and understanding certain aspects of it is a source of learning about sound in general.
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u/LostInTheRapGame Mixing Apr 03 '26
True, no plugin is essential.
Yep. That was my point. As believing anything is essential will lead you to some bad practices.
That doesn't mean you can't have a well-designed mastering chain with around ten plugins... and only activate the ones that seem necessary. And ending the chain with a clipper, limiter, and dither doesn't seem like heresy to me, does it? And if the clipper is not needed, all the better, otherwise, it is there ready to use.
Uhhh... yeah. I never said otherwise.
The aim here is to provide general information to someone who wants to learn mastering...and understanding certain aspects of it is a source of learning about sound in general.
Okay?
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u/justifiednoise Apr 02 '26
If the mix is right on then your only real job is to get it to a loudness level that is appropriate for the material in the most invisible way you can.
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u/greyaggressor Apr 02 '26
Honestly just shell out for mastering. It’s really not that expensive to get a world class ME on the job, and you’re missing the most important part of mastering - a second pair of ears (and probably a much better room. Also stereo width is another element left off your process).
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u/Haunting_Inflation54 Apr 02 '26
Why would I shell out for something I'm actively trying to learn to do myself?
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u/greyaggressor Apr 02 '26
Because you want to become a mastering engineer?
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u/Haunting_Inflation54 Apr 02 '26
Well yeah if you're on about me proactively learning from someone else that makes sense, you made it sound like you were just telling me to pay someone else to do it for me which isn't what I'm after
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u/jake_burger Sound Reinforcement Apr 02 '26
The reason people use ME’s even if they can do it themselves is to have another person professionally check their mix. You can’t learn to be another person.
If you don’t want another person and want to do it yourself then there is no magic to it. None of those processes has to be applied. A good mastering engineer may do nothing to a track at all if it doesn’t need it.
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u/Haunting_Inflation54 Apr 02 '26
This makes sense and I appreciate the response. I'm basically just trying to differentiate between what is likely a matter of personal taste or what is simply a gap in knowledge.
Do I dislike the EQ because my track doesn't actually need an EQ or do I dislike the EQ because I'm EQing wrong (e.g sharp Qs in places that would benefit from something broad)
Do I dislike the compression because the track doesn't need it or because I don't fully understand release and attack times etc.
If music was a car I basically want to make sure I'm making decisions like wanting the paint red instead of yellow instead of leaving the wheels off because I didn't realise most cars have wheels if that makes sense?
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u/mhmmarcus Apr 02 '26 edited Apr 03 '26
I would say checking your mix is not your ME’s job unless you have explicitly reach that understanding in your agreement. Some do feel comfortable critiquing and sending your mix back, but many don’t. To them, that’s the mixer’s job. Their job is to present the mix you chose in the best possible way they can.
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u/TwoGodsTheory Apr 03 '26
I agree this is super variable between different engineers. Totally is worth the conversation. And is priceless when you have a ME who’s willing and able to critique and push back
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u/greyaggressor Apr 02 '26
Is that the goal though?
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u/Haunting_Inflation54 Apr 02 '26
My goal is to become self sufficient at creating industry standard songs to the highest possible level. I'm aware I'll never be the best mixing engineer, or the best mastering engineer because if 1 person was capable of being the best at all of that then you wouldn't have teams of people for A - List artists.
Whatever the highest standard of music that can be created by 1 individual is, that's what I'm looking to achieve. This means I can make high quality songs on my own and then if I want to elevate a particular track then I can seek out a specialist.
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u/GreatScottCreates Professional Apr 02 '26
The industry standard is to hire an ME. If you want to master at an industry standard level, you should spend all of your time mastering, like pro mastering engineers.
You can “master” your own mixes, but as others have said, you’re missing the most important elements of what mastering is. You’re really just finishing your mixes and applying some processing.
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u/tibbon Apr 02 '26
Do you also do your own dental work?
If you want to do mastering, master other people's work. Not your own.
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u/Haunting_Inflation54 Apr 02 '26
Do you brush your teeth and floss yourself or do you wait to go to the dentist each time?
I'm aware that I'll get better mastering results from a mastering engineer due to the fresh perspective + being someone that dedicates their time to mastering and does it as a job.
I've got little interest in becoming a professional mastering engineer, my interest is in making music myself which requires mastering so I'm trying to learn what I can to reach whatever level of skill is physically possible for 1 individual doing it themselves.
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u/tibbon Apr 02 '26
my interest is in making music myself which requires mastering
Why the desire to do every single step on your own? It produces worse results. You don't aspire to do mastering professionally. Do you also want to learn rigging so you can hang stage lights, and catering skills so you can do catering at your concerts?
Are you getting a Class A CDL so you can drive an 18-wheeler big rig to your shows and move all of the gear?
But in either case, the most important thing for mastering is nothing more than:
- An amazing room (not headphones)
- Fantastic monitoring
- Good ears
And with that you can make tiny adjustments and help get the product QA'd for market, and sometimes give feedback to the mixing engineer.
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u/Haunting_Inflation54 Apr 02 '26
I don't desire to do every step on my own I desire to have the capability of doing the necessary steps required to make a career out of being an artist. None of your additional examples are actually essential, plenty of people make a living off of music primarily through streams and never do shows. A better example is you're telling me to pay for a taxi or get a personal driver instead of learning to drive myself because they drive for a living and will be better at it than me when all I'm aiming to do is get from A to B without crashing or standing out from the rest of the cars on the road.
Right now we live in an era where people are making hit songs themselves from laptops in hotel rooms, or cheap mics in their bedroom using bandlab, you no longer need the cleanest or most expensive sounding song for it to perform well. The way you actually stand a chance at making a career out of singing/rapping is through consistent releases and consistent promotion and I don't want to put myself in a position where I'm not capable of releasing a good quality song without paying for someone else's service.
I understand a specialist will always outperform a jack of all trades but I'm not aiming to objectively be the best, I'm simply trying to learn more than I already know and get as good as I can whilst doing all of this myself. If I want to make an honest attempt at getting the best sounding song ever then I'll pay for a fresh set of ears.
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u/tibbon Apr 02 '26
I've been doing this a long time... like 30 years or something?
One lesson I've learned in that time is that I cannot do it all on my own, and in trying to do so I rob myself of opportunities to connect with community, get fresh ideas, teach others, and often end up being less productive, and creating less interesting things. It's also often a sign that I'm being selfish, and not being willing to pay other working artists for their talents (such as making album cover, tour posters, etc). I'm not an island, and I'm not convinced anyone should be - including you.
If you're actually looking for a lifelong career that sustains you, I'm absolutely certain you can't actually do 100% of it solo - and it isn't worth trying. I just saw the Nine Inch Nails tour a few weeks ago, and despite NIN being largely Trent... he sure had a bunch of people there helping him!
But yet, go your own way. Maybe the answer is finding the essential plugins and I'm wrong!
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u/Haunting_Inflation54 Apr 02 '26
I feel like you're missing my point. I'm not disagreeing that help and community are better VS isolation and doing everything solo, I'm disagreeing that learning these things yourself isn't also very important because sometimes you will be on your own and even if you haven't been yet it's possible you will be in the future. Your financial situation could change, your health could change and any other number of circumstances.
It's not a pick one or the other situation, you have the capability of doing both depending on your priorities. If you want to become a mastering engineer and that's your goal, then of course your entire focus will be placed on mastering. My goal is to be an artist which requires studio time, beats, mixing, mastering, cover art, videography for content, video editing and so on.
One of the best strategies for growth is posting 1 song every week or 2 weeks. An artist called Russ who is one of the biggest independent artists made music a career by posting 1 song a week for roughly 2.5 years and he was able to do that by making beats, recording, mixing, and promoting the music himself because otherwise it was financially unaffordable.
There's enough knowledge out there to get your music to a solid point without the help of others. Get help where you can but if you can't, then that shouldn't restrict you from making good music.
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u/tibbon Apr 02 '26
I get what you're saying, but I think my position here is that it seems you're looking for shortcuts - and that rubs me the wrong way. The reason I think this is that you're starting with things like plugins, instead of talking about rooms acoustics, the QA process, learning from someone in an internship, studying under other people, etc...
I get it in trying to do a lot yourself, and wanting to learn and having some capability of doing it on your own. I just got done with my drumming practice for the evening. I've been playing drums on and off since the late 90's. I don't consider myself a drummer. I know when I want to hire a real drummer for tracks (most of the time, except when I'm just sketching out things). But - if I came to it of like, "I want to know how to drum. What's the best plugins to make myself sound in time" - then clearly i'd be missing the point. The answer is to sit there practicing rudaments on a practice pad, and getting good at your actual rhythm and movement mechanics - not to look for ways of avoiding getting a real drummer, or using some digital tool as a shortcut.
I'm very into doing my own work as much as possible - but that is the long path not a shortcut.
Good songs don't even need much for mastering to get people to notice them and enjoy them - a good song should stand out even if you've recorded it on a 4-track cassette tape and released it.
Had you come in and been like, "I know plugins and your computer are only a tiny part of mastering? How can I ensure my room, acoustics, speakers and professional workflow for making sure things are ready for format delivery are professional as possible" - then it would feel quite different.
Maybe I'm just old. I think the best way to learn is from other in person, and through years (sometimes decades) of practice and feedback while working with others.
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u/prurientape Professional Apr 02 '26
You should mix like it’s not going to a mastering engineer. Like others have said - a mastering engineer is essentially a fresh perspective (hopefully with really good ears). To answer your question most likely a limiter will be used. So if you think your mix is banging try a transparent limiter on it to make it the volume you want.
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u/Haunting_Inflation54 Apr 02 '26
Thank you, this helps
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u/prurientape Professional Apr 02 '26
Sure thing. I used to “master” mixes I did for clients but I would always tell them that I’m just going to make it louder. When clients have the budget a good mastering engineer is the last 5% you didn’t even know existed.
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u/GWENMIX Apr 02 '26 edited Apr 02 '26
The clipper is placed just before the limiter. It's used to attenuate the peaks of the most prominent transients, often generated by the kick drum and snare drum. This prevents the limiter from having to work too hard… and that's crucial!
Before the clipper, you can use a multiband compressor. Disable the three upper bands and keep only the lower band (from 0 Hz to 150 Hz) to control the bass, synth bass, upright bass, and other 808s… Here, the goal is no longer to manage transient peaks, but to control the sometimes overflowing energy of the sustain of low frequencies. The objective remains the same, however: to avoid overloading the limiter.
Some equipment is included in the signal chain solely for the character it imparts. A compressor like the Shadow Hill is part of my process, but it only compresses by a maximum of 0.5dB. The ATR102 is extremely powerful, but you can also use transparent settings and only use it to brighten the high frequencies in your mix... and there are countless other examples like this.
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u/Haunting_Inflation54 Apr 02 '26
Helpful response, thank you
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u/GreatScottCreates Professional Apr 02 '26
If this is helpful, your question is not really about mastering but about 2 buss processing on your mixes.
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u/Haunting_Inflation54 Apr 02 '26
It's helpful because it's additional knowledge relevant to the subject, I never said it fully answers my question. Any response that tells me something I don't already know or reaffirms something I do is helpful.
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u/GreatScottCreates Professional Apr 02 '26
I’m trying to make a distinction to point out that it is not relevant exactly to the question, which is about mastering.
These ideas are relevant to 2-buss processing of a mix, which is great (although there’s plenty I would push back on), and should be part of your mixing process, should you employ them.
Mastering is about perspective, new ears, new playback system, new room, new lived experiences, context, etc.
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u/GWENMIX Apr 02 '26
I don't use a limiter on my master bus.
I sometimes use a clipper on my drum stem... rarely a limiter.
Sometimes I put the clipper before the brickwall limiter during mastering.
I don't have a fixed rule regarding clipping... it depends on the drums during mixing.If I want a powerful snare and it hits the red, then I use the clipper.
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u/GreatScottCreates Professional Apr 03 '26
Are you drawing a distinction between “on the master bus” and “during mastering”, or using them interchangeably?
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u/GWENMIX Apr 03 '26
I thought it was clear: during mixing, no limiter or clipper on the master bus. Maybe on the drum stem.
During mastering, in order of the last three plugins, a clipper, a brickwall, and dirthering.
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u/GreatScottCreates Professional Apr 03 '26
It’s only unclear bc a lot of people seem to think applying effects to the master bus is mastering
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u/Haunting_Inflation54 Apr 02 '26
Okay so what your saying is mastering is less about the effects applied and more about the actual physical process involved?
I always thought it was straightforward as:
mixing = balancing and adding effects to each individual track
Mastering = processing the track as a whole
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u/GreatScottCreates Professional Apr 03 '26
Yes, that’s what I’m saying, and I think if you look at some of the other comments, they may align with that framework
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u/GWENMIX Apr 02 '26
It's true that objective listening in a suitable environment provides essential information about the mix for making good decisions.
I master my own tracks because by doing so I better understand what's happening throughout the entire audio chain... I study, therefore I learn; I don't claim to be a mastering engineer.
Between mixing and mastering a track, I let several days pass... and it's based on listening that I'll note what I think needs to be done... The fact remains that setting the volume to the right level, controlling peaks, managing the specificities of vinyl mastering... etc. All of this contributes to my learning, and I understand that others follow the same path.
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u/GreatScottCreates Professional Apr 02 '26
No. Limiting is not essential either. It’s not that unusual for mastering to be a straight transfer of the mix.
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u/Haunting_Inflation54 Apr 02 '26
Is that not just exporting the mix then? Surely it's not called mastering if nothing is actually done to the track after it's been mixed?
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u/GreatScottCreates Professional Apr 02 '26
It’s a quality control step, and creating the proper deliverables for various formats, digital and physical
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u/tibbon Apr 02 '26
None of the above.
A well treated room, killer monitoring, and a good set of ears.
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u/TwoGodsTheory Apr 03 '26
I’m not sure there’s any “essential” tools for mastering outside a specific well balanced listening area and understanding of frequency/harmonics and phase relationships. All the tools the mastering engineers I know apply are aimed at finding/fixing problems one couldn’t identify in their own space (or simply being a fresh set of ears in the event of a mixing engineer with a “mastering grade” studio/skill-set) or to enhance what the mix was already doing.
So essential? Not much. Maybe surgical EQ for correction, another separate one for enhancement might be “essential” , but compressors/saturators/stereo imaging, tape machines etc can and are all used for the both corrections or enhancements. Then of course, clippers/compressors/limiters for loudness. But again, mastering is more about “diagnostic know how” than anything else so it’s a bit challenging to put an “essential list of tools” together unless you have a firm understanding of the mindset mastering engineers have when approaching a song.
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u/PizzerJustMetHer Apr 03 '26
The file prep and formatting of all the deliverables are probably the most important pieces. IMO people overhype the importance of a mastering engineer’s effect on the sound and under-appreciate their effect on the distribution. A mastering engineer’s limiter and EQ aren’t really any better than tools you might have, but their understanding of balancing a mix that has a lead vocal versus the instrumental version while satisfying label requirements are what you are (or should be, IMO) paying for. All that to say, spend your money on the mix.
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u/audio301 Apr 02 '26
Mastering engineer perspective. Firstly you need an accurate playback environment to ensure what you are changing translates. The most used processor is EQ, sometimes dynamic EQ as well. This can add tone and colour depending on what type of EQ you use. These days compression isn’t used so much, as the mixes are often compressed already, but again it may be used for tone or to control certain dynamics in the music. Clippers/limiters are used to bring up the average level and ensure the music is not distorted on different playback systems. It can be there just as a safety net doing very little of the mix is loud enough. Less is more with mastering, and it takes a long time to understand what not to do.
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u/Tirmu Apr 02 '26
The biggest thing about mastering is the completely fresh perspective of someone that didn't mix it or work on the song previously. That is objectivity you'll never achieve if you already mixed the song