I thought it would be nice to get some discussion on this.
What, in your opinion, differentiates a good mix/master from a bad one?
And maybe a side question: What differentiates a great mix/master from an average?
Would love to hear everyone's thoughts.
I'm personally not great at mixing/mastering but I've recently been trying to improve a lot. But fro what I've learned so far... I would say a good mix/master is personal to each recording, and would fit the context and compliment what the artist is trying to convey. Like speaking of context for example, I think a classical performance would not sound that great with a heavy felt sound and background noise.
Hi! Thanks @Francisco Casarotti to introducing me to the conversation ;) I'll share some of my thoughts but keep in mind that another sound engineer might see it otherwise ! For me a Mixing & Mastering are simultaneously an Art and a Science. There's some part of it which is less subjective. Everything about the ''theory of the sound'' (frequency, wavelenght, harmonics, etc.) could be learned and should allow you to avoid big audio mistake that would make a song un-easy to listen to. So, to answer your question about ''What differentiates a great mix/master from an average?'', I think one part of the answer is your track has to reach a certain level of ''industry standards'' : listenability + dynamic + loudness + stereo imaging, etc. Once that being said, the other part is the real Hard part haha It's the subjective side and emotional response to your audio choices. That's the ''Art'' part of mixing. And this is where 2 professionals mixing engineer might do 2 totally different choice on the same recording. For me a good engineer is someone who learned his craft but more importantly, who can be guided by emotion while mixing. Hope that might help :) @Edin Kaso
I think our newest member @Arnaud Spick-Saucier could share some thoughts on this!? He's a mixing & mastering engineer so i'd be curious to know!
There is 2 very different topics for me, let’s start first with the mix:
There is no right and wrong except the balance between frequencies and the choice of mics position that needs to match the performance you try to capture and style/direction of your sound. Compression need to adjust accordingly to the style/genre of the piece and also the spatial (stereo fields) and distance you want the listeners to feel. So mixing piano or neoclassical pieces is mostly done before the mixing stage, mostly through performance and recordings techniques.
The goal of the mix engineer is to balance out, lower resonances or possible peaks in the music, and also aim at the album homogeneity or the global wish of the artist.
Now the mastering:
There is only bad mastering where the mix was already good but the loudness was the only goal of the engineer, thus going way louder than -14lufs (which is way more common that you might think). good master engineer need to respect the mix but also need to enhance it, in a subtle way, that doesn’t destruct the core of the piece and emotional goal (let’s say destructing dynamics and thus losing key passages of the piano pieces)
Honestly bad mixes are very quickly found in classical or neoclassical pieces, often with bad recordings first and then the mix engineer not willing to be honest about it and not asking to redo the process first to the client (us).
I would generally say, listen to classical and well-known pieces in neoclassical, famous composers, then check what you got out of your recordings and then worry about mixes. Mastering shouldn’t destroy those 2 steps and meet the streaming, cd or vinyl technicalities without you «hearing » the difference too much.