It has been a while since I had a song mastered. I've either been happy with the results of my master channel signal chain or I've sent off remixes where the mastering was going to be taken care of.
I'm not a fan of unattended mastering. It makes me uneasy that someone may impart heavy processing on something I've worked hard at. Many hours of work can easily be destroyed by a half hour mastering job performed by someone who doesn't share (or know, or care about) my vision. I like to take full responsibility for my sound - after all, it's my name attached to the product. If the song is clipping and distorted because the mastering engineer got a little eager with a limiter, it reflects poorly on me, not them.
Anyway, here are a few things to be considered when we get our songs mastered:
1) Attended session or not?
In these days of cheap internet mastering this is becoming more difficult. I much prefer to sit in the room when my song is being mastered, to talk to the engineer about the result I'm looking for. I take in a reference CD with several great sounding songs, in the ballpark of what I'm aiming for. The mastering engineers who have worked on my songs have all been happy to do attended sessions. I can understand that some may not be so keen - I'm not sure how I'd feel if I had someone looking over my shoulder while I was putting together a mix. It would depend on the person and the types of contributions they make during the process.
If attending the session isn't a practical option, provide as much detail as possible about the result you're looking for. Some engineers will ask for reference songs. Hopefully you'll have some ready to send. I assume most people compare their songs to others in the same style. It'd be very difficult to to gauge the mix otherwise.
2) How loud should it be?
If you have a particular position on dynamics, let the engineer know this. Let them know you want it as loud as possible, or that you don't want your song squashed to death. If you've heard other examples of their work in the same style, maybe you can trust that they'll push it hard, but not too hard. In any case, it can't hurt to let them know how hot you want your song to be.
3) Where does the mixing process end and the mastering process begin?
I often put a touch of EQ on the master channel of my song. I'm happy to take off the limiter when I send it off to get mastered somewhere unknown, but I'll often leave my EQ touches on there. They're part of my creative vision and there's no guarantee that the mastering engineer will share that vision. So we need to work out where we draw the line - which decisions are essential parts of the creative process for a given song, which ones we're happy to leave in someone else's hands. Perhaps our song fades out at the end and we're happy to leave the fade to the mastering engineer. It's up to each of us.
4) What bit rate and sample rate should the song be?
Mastering engineers generally are quite upfront about the format they prefer to work in. If not, a good rule of thunb is to use the same sample rate that the final song will be in. It doesn't hurt to double it (so 88.2 kHz for songs going to 44.1 kHz, or 96 kHz for songs going to 48 kHz), but going from everything that I've read, working at higher sample rates makes no audible difference when the song is converted down to the final sample rate. Bit rates are a different matter - here it does make an audible difference when converting down to the final bit rate. I provide 24 bit files when the mastering engineer will end up delivering a 16 bit master. If the final output were 24 bits, I'd send a 32 bit file (though I've never been in this situation).
5) It doesn't sound amazing after mastering. Why not?
The first thing we should consider is: did it sound amazing before mastering? If not, then the solution is to keep practicing our mixing skills until our songs sound the way we want them to before they're sent off to be mastered. In my early days of mixing I expected the mastering process to help make my songs sound better, that somehow I and this professional engineer would be a team in delivering a great sounding song. That isn't the case. Mastering will make our songs sound more correct, will push the gain up cleanly, but it won't fix the fact that we've chosen the wrong kick sample or that we've turned our pad up too loud in the mix.
If the song sounded great before mastering, then discuss the issues with the engineer. The engineers I've worked with were happy to rectify issues. I wouldn't push too hard though - if the second version is still nowhere near optimal, leave some time before going to that engineer again. For me, this gave me enough time to learn that all the issues with the finished song came down to my inferior mixing skills!
I hope this has been helpful for some of you. Bear in mind that not every artist has their songs mastered. Some of them like to be responsible for the process from start to finish. Once again, we all make our own decisions. I can see the benefit in running a song through another set of ears in an optimal listening environment, but I also totally embrace the mindset of complete responsibility!
Keep making great music!
Fabian
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