They’re two of the most important stages in the music production process, but when you’re new to the game, the differences between the closely related arts of mixing and mastering can be hard to understand, appreciate and, ultimately, capitalise on. After all, both deal with the ‘sound’ of the track, rather than its constituent notes, instrumentation or arrangement, and both require the carefully considered application of similar signal processing devices: EQs, compressors, etc. Here, we’ll break down the concepts and technicalities of mixing and mastering, and tell you what you need to know to get started with both.
Written by EVO
What is mixing?
Once you’ve recorded and/or programmed all the instrumental and vocal parts for a track, edited them to get them individually sounding how you want, and arranged them into a song structure if they aren’t already, the next stage is to mix them. Mixing involves balancing the volume levels, frequency content and stereo placement of all the tracks in a project, and applying effects, in order to get it sounding solid, punchy and emotionally engaging.
Working towards that overarching goal, the mix engineer needs to address all manner of audio specifics and snags, including ensuring that the low frequencies (kick and bass, mostly) don’t overwhelm everything else; keeping instruments in the same frequency ranges out of each other’s way; and bringing the best out in each element of the track without detracting from their collective quality.
All of this is done using the volume faders, pan pots and auxiliary sends in the mixer (the virtual one in your DAW, a hardware board or a combination of both), and a variety of plugins and/or outboard effects, chief among them compression, EQ, distortion, reverb and delay. A mix isn’t a static thing, either, as the primary focus of a song will change as it progress: the vocals in the verses and choruses, guitars in the middle eight, drums and bass in the intro, etc. Using your DAW’s automation system, mixer and plugin parameters can be shifted over time as required, transforming the mix into a living, breathing, reactive entity.
Mixing a track usually takes between a few hours to a day, depending on the complexity and length of the project, and the experience and confidence levels of the engineer. The end product should be a bounced or rendered stereo mix that sounds essentially ‘finished’, with the numerous parts of the song coming together as a cohesive whole and no problems to be resolved.
What is mastering?
If, as we’ve just described, your rendered stereo mix could basically serve as the finished track, why does it then need to be mastered? Well, the mastering stage is all about final polishing, and implementing broad-strokes frequency and dynamics shaping to make sure the track sounds as good as it possibly can on any and every potential playback system; setting the volume and dynamic range of the track to adhere to the various loudness standards required by Spotify, Apple Music and other streaming services; and getting multiple album tracks sounding like they belong together. What you can’t and shouldn’t even be trying to do at the mastering stage is fix actual issues with the mix, which, as we said, should be done and dusted by this point. If any such problems come to light while mastering the track, you’ll need to go back and mix it again.
Whereas the mixing process can get positively microscopic in terms of attention to detail and making small tweaks, mastering demands more of a ‘zoomed out’ approach, dealing with the bigger picture of the track as a whole, and, if multiple tracks are being mastered for an album or EP, the continuity between them. EQs, limiters, multiband compressors and – crucially – loudness meters are the main tools at the mastering engineers’s disposal, sometimes joined by mid-side widening/narrowing and reverb effects. And since all the heavy-handed work should have been done at the mixing stage, tweaks are always very subtle: wide EQ boosts of no more than 1-2dB to add ‘air’, weight and/or presence; low ratio compression and transparent brick wall limiting to ‘glue’ everything together and up the perceived loudness; perhaps the lightest touch of barely audible reverb for front-to-back spatialisation…
Despite the seemingly minor changes being made at the mastering stage (which might take anywhere between 30 minutes and a couple of hours to complete), the resulting improvements will be qualitatively apparent in the track’s depth, impact and overall sonic appeal, and it should sound great on everything from a phone or laptop speaker to a high-end hi-fi or big club PA system, as well as earbuds and headphones.
Monitoring: the common factor
One thing you absolutely must have for both mixing and mastering is a set of high quality monitor speakers. If your monitors aren’t relaying an accurate representation of your music to your ears, you won’t hear certain issues that are already there or – worse – being introduced by your level-, frequency- and imaging-related adjustments. These days you can get all manner of incredibly high-spec monitors for less than £1000 a pair, and if you’re at all serious about your music, you’ll want to assign at least that much of your setup budget to this most essential piece of equipment.
The acoustic properties of your studio space will also have a major impact on your ability to assess what you’re doing when mixing or mastering, and there are various easy and affordable things you can do to help with this, including positioning your desk correctly, and installing bass traps and foam absorption panels.
While you can certainly get your home studio sounding good enough for working up effective mixes and masters, a big part of the reason many producers pay to get their tracks mixed and – especially – mastered by professional engineers (alongside their skill, experience and top-notch outboard gear and plugins, of course) is that they have access to absurdly expensive monitoring setups in perfectly treated rooms. This is always worth thinking about when you have a track that you reckon merits the outlay, and there are plenty of great mixing and mastering services to be found online, at a range of prices, including Landr and eMastered, and those offered by world famous studios such as Metropolis, Abbey Road and Real World.
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They’re two of the most important stages in the music production process, but when you’re new to the game, the differences between the closely related arts of mixing and mastering can be hard to understand, appreciate and, ultimately, capitalise on. After all, both deal with the ‘sound’ of the track, rather than its constituent notes, instrumentation or arrangement, and both require the carefully considered application of similar signal processing devices: EQs, compressors, etc. Here, we’ll break down the concepts and technicalities of mixing and mastering, and tell you what you need to know to get started with both.
Written by EVO
What is mixing?
Once you’ve recorded and/or programmed all the instrumental and vocal parts for a track, edited them to get them individually sounding how you want, and arranged them into a song structure if they aren’t already, the next stage is to mix them. Mixing involves balancing the volume levels, frequency content and stereo placement of all the tracks in a project, and applying effects, in order to get it sounding solid, punchy and emotionally engaging.
Working towards that overarching goal, the mix engineer needs to address all manner of audio specifics and snags, including ensuring that the low frequencies (kick and bass, mostly) don’t overwhelm everything else; keeping instruments in the same frequency ranges out of each other’s way; and bringing the best out in each element of the track without detracting from their collective quality.
All of this is done using the volume faders, pan pots and auxiliary sends in the mixer (the virtual one in your DAW, a hardware board or a combination of both), and a variety of plugins and/or outboard effects, chief among them compression, EQ, distortion, reverb and delay. A mix isn’t a static thing, either, as the primary focus of a song will change as it progress: the vocals in the verses and choruses, guitars in the middle eight, drums and bass in the intro, etc. Using your DAW’s automation system, mixer and plugin parameters can be shifted over time as required, transforming the mix into a living, breathing, reactive entity.
Mixing a track usually takes between a few hours to a day, depending on the complexity and length of the project, and the experience and confidence levels of the engineer. The end product should be a bounced or rendered stereo mix that sounds essentially ‘finished’, with the numerous parts of the song coming together as a cohesive whole and no problems to be resolved.
What is mastering?
If, as we’ve just described, your rendered stereo mix could basically serve as the finished track, why does it then need to be mastered? Well, the mastering stage is all about final polishing, and implementing broad-strokes frequency and dynamics shaping to make sure the track sounds as good as it possibly can on any and every potential playback system; setting the volume and dynamic range of the track to adhere to the various loudness standards required by Spotify, Apple Music and other streaming services; and getting multiple album tracks sounding like they belong together. What you can’t and shouldn’t even be trying to do at the mastering stage is fix actual issues with the mix, which, as we said, should be done and dusted by this point. If any such problems come to light while mastering the track, you’ll need to go back and mix it again.
Whereas the mixing process can get positively microscopic in terms of attention to detail and making small tweaks, mastering demands more of a ‘zoomed out’ approach, dealing with the bigger picture of the track as a whole, and, if multiple tracks are being mastered for an album or EP, the continuity between them. EQs, limiters, multiband compressors and – crucially – loudness meters are the main tools at the mastering engineers’s disposal, sometimes joined by mid-side widening/narrowing and reverb effects. And since all the heavy-handed work should have been done at the mixing stage, tweaks are always very subtle: wide EQ boosts of no more than 1-2dB to add ‘air’, weight and/or presence; low ratio compression and transparent brick wall limiting to ‘glue’ everything together and up the perceived loudness; perhaps the lightest touch of barely audible reverb for front-to-back spatialisation…
Despite the seemingly minor changes being made at the mastering stage (which might take anywhere between 30 minutes and a couple of hours to complete), the resulting improvements will be qualitatively apparent in the track’s depth, impact and overall sonic appeal, and it should sound great on everything from a phone or laptop speaker to a high-end hi-fi or big club PA system, as well as earbuds and headphones.
Monitoring: the common factor
One thing you absolutely must have for both mixing and mastering is a set of high quality monitor speakers. If your monitors aren’t relaying an accurate representation of your music to your ears, you won’t hear certain issues that are already there or – worse – being introduced by your level-, frequency- and imaging-related adjustments. These days you can get all manner of incredibly high-spec monitors for less than £1000 a pair, and if you’re at all serious about your music, you’ll want to assign at least that much of your setup budget to this most essential piece of equipment.
The acoustic properties of your studio space will also have a major impact on your ability to assess what you’re doing when mixing or mastering, and there are various easy and affordable things you can do to help with this, including positioning your desk correctly, and installing bass traps and foam absorption panels.
While you can certainly get your home studio sounding good enough for working up effective mixes and masters, a big part of the reason many producers pay to get their tracks mixed and – especially – mastered by professional engineers (alongside their skill, experience and top-notch outboard gear and plugins, of course) is that they have access to absurdly expensive monitoring setups in perfectly treated rooms. This is always worth thinking about when you have a track that you reckon merits the outlay, and there are plenty of great mixing and mastering services to be found online, at a range of prices, including Landr and eMastered, and those offered by world famous studios such as Metropolis, Abbey Road and Real World.
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