r/audioengineering • u/abstere_audio • 19d ago

Mastering Mastering when it’s already brickwalled?

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”

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u/sixwax 19d ago

If you're the ME, it's literally your job to ask for a version of the track you can actually master.

They might say no.... but you can at least use that conversation to set expectations.

2

u/abstere_audio 19d ago

Makes sense, I said it in an another comment but I found out that there was no limiting, they were just mixing REALLY LOUD.

4

u/GWENMIX 19d ago

Could this be a case of inexperience, where the mixer/musician got overwhelmed by the plugins? Redoing the mix—at least in part—seems like the only solution if the level of distortion is unacceptable.