What Is Mixing And Mastering? (Turning Tracks Into Songs)
Are you looking to improve the quality of your music tracks and turn them into polished, professional sounding songs? Understanding the basics of mixing and mastering is essential to achieving that goal. This guide will explain the significance of these processes and how they can greatly improve your music production. Keep reading to learn the secrets of creating outstanding audio masterpieces.
What Is Mixing?
Mixing is the process of blending individual audio tracks to create a cohesive final mix, ensuring clarity and impact. This involves technical manipulation such as adjusting levels, panning, equalization, compression, and reverb.
Balancing all elements in the mix is crucial, with each instrument or vocal having its own space. Mixing allows for creative expression while meeting technical standards. Mastering prepares the finalized mix for distribution by enhancing clarity, loudness, consistency, and cohesiveness across an entire album or EP, building upon the well-balanced mix provided during mixing.
What Is Mastering?
Mastering is the final step in the post-production process that enhances a mixed track to its fullest potential. It involves a skilled mastering engineer using specialized equipment and / or software to refine the overall sound of a song or album. (Of course you can master your own music, but this comes with some risks)
The primary goals of mastering include achieving cohesive flow between songs, optimal loudness levels, balanced frequencies, enhanced clarity and depth, and addressing any minor imperfections in the mix.
Mastering also involves preparing tracks for distribution on various platforms and ensuring they meet industry standards for different formats. Mastering serves as the final polish before a song or album is released into the world, ensuring that each track translates well across different playback systems while maintaining artistic integrity.
Many consider it the final quality check before distribution.
What's the Difference Between Mixing and Mastering?
When it comes to audio production, it's essential to understand the difference between mixing and mastering. Mixing involves blending individual tracks, adjusting volume levels, and adding effects to create a balanced stereo mix. On the other hand, mastering focuses on optimizing the final mix for distribution across various playback systems and enhancing the overall sonic characteristics of the song. These two stages work together to create a polished final product for listeners to enjoy on any playback system.
Is Mastering Necessary?
Mastering is a crucial step in music production, ensuring that audio translates well across different playback systems. It adds clarity, depth, and cohesion to tracks, addressing any lingering issues from the mixing stage.
Without mastering, songs may lack a professional sheen and loudness that sets them apart. Ultimately, mixing shapes individual elements within each track while mastering shapes how those tracks work together at an album level.
Generally speaking, loudness levels between -8 and -5 dB LUFS are generally the accepted current standard. XOu can grab a great free LUFS meter here: https://youlean.co/youlean-loudness-meter/
Why Are Mixing and Mastering Important?
Mixing and mastering are vital processes in creating high-quality music. Mixing blends individual tracks to create a cohesive sound, while mastering enhances the overall sonic quality. Both processes ensure the final product is optimized for various playback systems and formats, and they are essential for achieving professional-grade audio productions.
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Common Mixing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
Over-Mixing
Over-mixing or over-production is when excessive processing leads to a cluttered, unnatural sound with a loss of clarity and definition. It can cause fatigue and hinder creativity. Trust your instincts, set clear objectives, establish processing boundaries, and take regular breaks to avoid over-mixing. Maintaining a disciplined approach ensures a polished final product without sacrificing musicality or emotional impact.
Neglecting Phase Issues
Addressing phase issues in the mixing process is crucial for maintaining the overall sound quality of a track. This is particularly important when using multiple microphones to record a single source, as misalignment can lead to phase discrepancies that affect the coherence and depth of the sound. This can also happen with DAW generated sounds hitting at the same time. (Kick and bass canceling each other out is the prime example)
Monitoring the correlation meter on your audio interface or within your digital audio workstation (DAW) can help ensure that all elements in the mix are working together harmoniously and that unintended phase cancellations are avoided.
Additionally, utilizing tools like polarity inversion switches on mixer channels / plugins or dedicated plugins can help mitigate phase issues during mixing. (In case you are using the Ableton Utility plugin to reverse phase, always make sure you reverse BOTH channels, otherwise once side will be 180 degrees out of phase!). Once you have reversed both channels’ phase, check the phase relationship against the kick etc.
Maintaining proper phase relationships between tracks enhances the clarity and definition of individual elements and contributes to a cohesive, powerful mix.
By addressing and rectifying phase issues during mixing, you create a solid foundation for mastering engineers to further enhance the overall audio quality.
In a nutshell: on a scope like the one below, if your audio is a vertical line it is mono, if it is a horizontal line it is very wide stereo or even anti-phase if a flat line. The best is to see what your reference tracks look like on the scope and compare it to yours.
Ignoring the Low-End
The low-end frequencies are crucial in defining a track's warmth, depth, and power during mixing and mastering. Neglecting the low-end can result in a muddy and boomy sound. Utilizing proper equalization techniques and controlling the low-end during mastering can bring out the full impact of a track. Understanding how different elements interact in the low-frequency spectrum is crucial for achieving a well-rounded mix and master.
As a general rule of thumb: You need MUCH less low end than you think! Always listen to a reference track while producing to make sure you are not adding too much low end. A tool like ADPTR AB is great for this. Check the frequency plots of your reference track against your track using the “overlay” function and you will clearly see if you have too much bass.
Be warned, that having a low end heavy mix means it will be very difficult if not impossible to make a loud master from it.
Our template includes a complete workflow to monitor reference tracks without having to buy any additional plugins!)
Forgetting About Mono
Remember to consider mono compatibility during the mixing process. Neglecting mono compatibility can lead to phase cancellation issues, resulting in a loss of clarity and impact when played on mono devices. Check your mix in mono regularly to identify and address any problems. If large portions of your mix or certain instruments are hard to hear when you switch to mono, you know there are phase cancellation issues. Stereo widening plugins can lead to this, so be careful with extreme settings.
Ensuring clarity in both stereo and mono environments creates a professional listening experience. Neglecting mono compatibility can lead to an unbalanced and hollow sound, undermining the hard work put into crafting a polished mix.
Audition your mix in both stereo and mono (One single Auratone cube or similar is the most common way to do these kinds of checks, but any small single speaker will do) to ensure clarity and impact across various playback systems, enhancing its overall quality and appeal to listeners.
Ignoring Reference Tracks
Using reference tracks during mixing and mastering is crucial for achieving high-quality audio. They provide benchmarks for levels, balance, imaging, dynamics, and sonic quality. Reference tracks ensure consistency within a mix and guide decisions during mastering. Always reference against WAV files and you can use a tool like ADPTR AB to hear the tracks at equal loudness. Our templates offer a built in monitoring functionality that achieves the same result without having to buy any additional plugins.
Neglecting them can lead to subpar results that fall short of industry standards. Especially if you are just starting out or your room and speakers are not perfect (whose are?), it's essential to use reference tracks to achieve professional-grade sound quality.
How Much Time Does It Take to Mix or Master Music?
Mixing and mastering music are complex processes that require time, skill, and attention to detail. The time required can vary based on project complexity and personnel expertise. Factors such as the number of tracks, specific mastering tasks, and the experience level of the audio engineer can impact the duration.
However if you want to significantly reduce the time it takes to mix and master your music, consider getting our Rapid Flow template. It eliminates the guesswork on all the core elements of electronic music as all the settings for typical sounds are already done! All you have to do is add your MIDI.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Should a Mix Sound Like Before Mastering?
Understanding how a mix should sound is crucial before mastering. A balanced mix with clear separation, even frequencies, and smooth dynamics prevents issues during mastering and preserves the original audio's integrity. You can also tell a lot by looking at your mix on a spectrum analyser. We use FLUXX and ADPTR AB.
Can Mastering Ruin a Mix?
The concern arises from whether mastering might ruin a mix by making excessive adjustments. Mastering can introduce unwanted artifacts, reduce dynamics, or cause tonal imbalances if not done carefully.
Over-processing with heavy equalization, compression, or limiting without considering the original mix elements can compromise clarity, warmth, and dynamics. Additionally, improper use of stereo widening effects or excessive loudness maximization can introduce unnatural artifacts and distortion, impacting the mix's integrity.
Good mastering engineers will usually do the minimum amount possible to obtain a professional sounding end result.
Can a Song Be Good Without Mastering?
Many musicians and producers debate whether a song can be considered good without mastering. While a well-mixed song can stand on its own, mastering adds polish and coherence to the sound, enhancing clarity, depth, and cohesion.
In a nutshell, if you send out mixes without mastering, they will sound very low in volume compared to mastered tracks. The final polish will also be missing. You can find great mastering engineers starting around $20 per track on SoundBetter. There are semi automated tools like Izotope Ozone, and the fully automated mastering service included in SoundCloud paid subscriptions that actually does a really good job. There are now also countless AI mastering services, the best is to research which would best suit your budget and needs.
Mastering also ensures consistency across an EP or album. Investing in professional mastering services can enhance a song's commercial viability and overall quality.
Conclusion: From Raw Recordings to Release-Ready Songs
Mixing and mastering are crucial in turning raw tracks into polished, professional songs. Balancing and enhancing different elements within a composition can significantly improve the music's overall sound quality and impact. With the right tools and expertise, artists can create a high-quality sound that captivates listeners and sets them apart in the competitive music industry.
Say goodbye to long hours spent on mixing and mastering – simplify your music production journey with the cutting-edge Ableton Live Rapid Flow Template. This innovative solution streamlines the entire process and enables artists to quickly create club-ready tracks with precision and efficiency. Whether you are an experienced music producer or new to the field, the Rapid Flow Template is your key to unlocking boundless creativity and taking your music to new heights.