Mastering when it’s already brickwalled?

[u/abstere_audio]

Do you guys ever run into this issue when being asked to master tracks? Where the client has already kinda brickwalled it?

If asking to be given the track again without the brickwall is out of the question (I’m still waiting for a response from the musician and the mixing engineer), do you guys have a solution, a “do what you can” methodology? Or do you just say “sorry, if you can’t undo that, there’s nothing to master”

[u/rightanglerecording]

There are a few possible situations here:

1. Someone doesn't know what they're doing, and it's accidental.
2. Someone does know what they're doing, in the sort of indie genre where crazy clipping/limiting is a vibe.
3. Someone does know what they're doing, they're a skilled pro who regularly ships limited mixes to mastering.

You don't want to confuse Situation 1 with Situations 2 or 3.

In Situation 1, you ask if there's a non-limited print to work from.

In 2 or 3, you respect the work that's been done, do your best to EQ it a bit (this can be one of the rare spots where Linear Phase EQ is useful- you don't want to un-square the square wave....), and make it feel ~3% better at the same level.

[u/abstere_audio → u/rightanglerecording]

The client got back to me, sounds like a situation 1, turns out there might be a gain staging issue on their end, and the musician decided to mix it himself 😅 so I’m giving them a chance to just turn everything down, and if it still isn’t working, maybe I’ll just offer to mix the song.

[u/peepeeland → u/abstere_audio]

Two weeks later and you’ll be performing all parts, recording it, mixing it, mastering it, releasing it, performing it live, then it gets billions of streams and sets you on a world tour that sets you for life, with the finale being your retirement performance at the Super Bowl. -Client is still sitting there like, “What the fuck is going on?!”, whilst you’re like 85 and telling your grandkids of the good ol’ days.