Mixing and Mastering - self or professional?

[djs]

I have read mixed reviews whether or not to mix and master by self or to hire a professional. On one hand I read that mixing and mastering requires a sound treated space with a keen ear in all levels of frequencies. Headphones are not the best source of mixing, included the high end one. On the other hand, hiring a professional is expensive and can up to $100 - 400 a song. What are your thoughts?

What are some resources to learn mixing and mastering in reason? I have found several, but would like to learn more.

Reason Manual
https://ask.video/course/reason-106-mix ... UE9iRUh2Ap
https://www.facebook.com/groups/5692870 ... 881063693/

[jlgrimes]

Depends on budget and skill.

While mixing on headphones aren't ideal, people are doing it and doing a decent job. It is a learning process.

Most important thing is to use reference mixes.

When it comes to mastering, it's best to go professional or get someone who you trust and competent to do it.

As for mixing, it is hard but you will never get better if you dont try.

If you got the budget though get someone else to do it but it is generally best to sit in the session esp if you are the producer. As a good engineer with no direction can often do a worse job than a person who has the song vision but limited skills as they might not understand the concept of song.

[DrGOA®]

For mixing - I will recommend this book:

The Art of Mixing

[tibah]

I would say that it really depends on the material you have and the resources available. If you have some songs that you feel could be something and you have the budget for external mastering, go for it. Nowadays, it's a nice idea to try to be good at everything, simply because everyone has access to the tools needed, but to realize which things you're good at and which things you should leave to others is a process even more important.

[normen]

If you are a rock band in the widest sense (i.e. you make acoustic music mainly and play "real" sampled instruments on the computer) - get a mixer and a mastering guy, preferably separate people.

If you are an EDM producer you'll probably pretty much mix while you're creating the music so unless you have a really bad room / monitoring system then giving away your tracks for mastering should suffice - the mastering engineer will be able to remedy any dents and bumps you might have introduced due to your system.

If you can be honest to yourself and accept that any amount of mixing or mastering probably won't make your song, arrangement or performance any better and that if the song doesn't rock your socks off now it won't after it has been mixed and mastered - save the money and keep making tracks until they rock

[Oquasec]

Doesn't matter what daw you use but if you doin that professionally you might need to learn protools.

[Djstarski]

The most important part of mixing imo is your vision of your track . How would you like your track to sound in the end . Not just how your kick sounds or what EQ did dave pensado use on those vocals or CLA said that hes plugin by waves is great for getting punchy drums . Focus on the music . What does the track need to get it to sound like you hear it in your head , then grab the correct instrument , effects and processing tolls to get you there .

I agree with jlgrimes , reference track helps a great deal because they help keep you focused on your vision for your track .

You can be a professional mixing and mastering engineer one day with knowledge and patients , patients , patients .

Find a course on the fundamentals of mixing and mastering not on how great a plugin is .

Any DAW will do when it comes to mixing and mastering . Use what ever you want and yes that includes Reason .

just my 2 cents

[djs]

Thanks for the tips. Ill check out the book. I have the mix and mastering rig 3 and learning how to use each of the rack extensions. I have tried using a reference track, but when I try to mimic the song in reason, it just doesn't render out the same.

[Mr. Watts]

I think that learning how to mix well is essential for all producers. Simple mixing concepts such as adjusting track volumes, panning, and low cutting can go a long way in improving the quality of how a song sounds. Learn a little bit about eq and compression and even stereo widening and reverb and you are on your way to having some good mixes. Mastering is kind of like the icing on the cake, except you can essentially ruin your cake if you don't know how to apply the icing properly. Given this, I suggest either having your tracks mastered by someone who is capable, or at the very least learn some very basic concepts that can get you somewhat close to your desired results (until you are able to have it done professionally). I've found this approach to be the best for me as a bedroom producer on a budget. I can get my mixes to sound good and apply some basic mastering to improve loudness and give it a "bigger" sound. I mostly do trap and hip hop and am usually not having to mix a bunch of recorded material other than vocals and the occasional guitar/bass or hardware synth riffs so I can't really speak to what will be good for someone recording bands and stuff like that. Either way I think everyone can benefit from learning basic mixing principals at the very least.

[candybag]

I'm under the impression that mastering is pointless if you are mastering your own tracks. It's a bit like proof reading - you want someone else to do it for you. The errors you find is better off adjusted in the mix.

One exception would be if you release a DIY album and want consistent levels and fades across all tracks.

Do yourself a favor and focus 100% on mixing, that's where the magic happens.

[RobC]

If you can achieve exactly what you imagined, there's no need to ask anyone else.

[Marc64]

I mix and master all my own tracks (with headphones) I'm no means an expert but if I'm happy with the result then there is no need for a professional mix/mastering expert.
I also send the tracks to some friends with good speakers so they can give me some advice on what to change or not.

A good tip is to listen to tracks that has similar sounding to what you want to accomplish for reference.

[NekujaK]

The only way to get good at mixing is to do it... a lot (along with some good reading and tutorials) . So if it's a skill you want to develop, then definitely do your own mixes. You'll probably experience some frustrating moments when your mixes don't turn out the way you want, but just keep at it and don't give up.

Mastering is a whole other beast that you probably shouldn't tackle until you have a decent grasp of mixing. But in the meantime, there are plugins out there (mostly VSTs as opposed to REs) that can automate most of the mastering processes to give you halfway decent results with just a twist of a few knobs. You might want to play around with some of those to start learning how the sound is affected during the mastering process.

Good luck!

[jlgrimes]

Doesn't matter what daw you use but if you doin that professionally you might need to learn protools.

Disagree as it is fairly easy to export your stems as 24 bit wav files to load in any DAW.

[Oquasec]

You don't need it to be a professional I'm saying it might be required for professional workplaces.