You've heard the expression, "wearing multiple hats", right?
The last time you shopped for a recording studio, do you recall the number of times when you found a local listing or website that stated, "recording, mixing, and mastering"? At first, one might surmise the likelihood that there exists multiple engineers in the studio who perform these disparate functions. In a major studio, such as Abbey Road in the UK, this would absolutely be true. They employ experienced engineers completely engulfed in those three separate functions. They might even utilize other experts to enhance the senior engineers' workflows.
What about the local studio advertising a sole engineer? Can a single engineer handle all three functions? Certainly! And they do this all the time. In fact, in school or training, they're encouraged to grasp all three functions (and more) to become a better, more rounded audio engineer. There's no problem with that.
Now, traditionally, this would sound proper, because mastering in it's original form wasn't to make subjective changes to the sound. It was to assemble and encode the music onto a physical medium, perform quality control, and produce "masters", which, for example, in vinyl, are lacquer cuts from which vinyl plates are ultimately made from.
In modern times, mastering has devolved (yes, I said that) into tweaking the mix to sound better, and exporting the "new" mix to deliver to a client. It's up to the client to lay down the "masters" onto some medium or upload them to a streaming platform. Yes, mastering has become a finalization process, often involving some EQ, some compression, saturation, and limiting. Then, saving the file.
"I've tweaked your mix. Do what you want with it."
Largely, mastering (de-)evolution stems from the waning popularity of physical playback sources, such as CDs or vinyl. In my opinion, modern mastering should be dubbed, pre-mastering. But alas...
Still with me?
Let's consider the single engineer who performs both mixing AND mastering. If the engineer's mix is perfect, what else needs to be done? If the mix sounded amazing and correct to begin with, why would it require an extra step of mastering (a step you pay extra for as a client)?
More often than not, I find many mix engineers producing a mix, exporting it, then importing that same mix back into the DAW as a new project. Then, slapping on an EQ, compressor, and limiter, the engineer smashes the mix to make it loud. Voila! You have a mastered mix!
Technically, that might be correct, but what's wrong with this picture? Again, why is the mix engineer suddenly switching roles (or hats) to suddenly become a mastering engineer, charging clients an extra "mastering" rate to add some final EQ, compression, and limiting? Why couldn't that be done at the mix stage? After all, it's often on the same computer, in the same room on the same set of speakers, right?
Trust me, I've done this in the past, but I learned I was duping my clients into believing they were gaining extra value from my "triple-ality". I would record at one rate, mix at another, and after the mixes were accepted, I would master them. Still sound reasonable?
See, this is where the gray-ish area of these roles clash with each other. If I were a knowledgeable client, but one who couldn't afford the likes of Abbey Road, I would focus on exactly how my mixes were being mastered, because if the mix engineer has mastering skills, the mastering could ideally be done in the mix stage. Let me state that again clearly:
If the mix engineer will also master, then "mastering" could be done while mixing!
Some might rebut this point, while others might agree. You have to fully understand what mastering IS, and what it ISN'T. That's the only way we'll make any sense of these multiple hats worn by the engineer.
There's a term I coined, which is called, collapsed mastering, which simply means the mastering tweaks are all on the final mix bus and mixing is performed through that mastering chain. Is that recommended by professionals? Perhaps not, but on a budget, it can be done. It can also be done after the mix is complete, but in the same DAW project on the master bus.
I have some tips that could help keep a client from being duped into paying extra for nothing.
If the studio has experienced mix engineers who only mix and separate experienced mastering engineers who only master, then this is fine. The extra rate might very well be worth it. Plus, you get the best talents in both areas.
If the mix engineer will finalize the mix to it's final sonic performance, and considers mastering the process of assembling and printing the final product onto a medium from which duplication or distribution may occur, that's probably worth the extra cost, but it should not be the same expensive hourly or song rate as mixing. Not even close!
If you think mastering is tweaking the sound to taste and making it louder, and your mix engineer is also going to master the mix, there's no additional mastering required! If the engineer charges you extra for more "mastering" tweaking of the sound, you're probably being duped into extra unnecessary cost!
It's not unusual for those wearing the multiple hats to be entrepreneurs, or self-employed engineers hoping to one day split these roles among multiple people. There's really no harm in one engineer performing all these duties. My warning is to watch out for a mix engineer who charges an extra rate to slap on some final processing and merely saving the file(s) as .wav.
Again, if a mix engineer is experienced in mastering, and the speakers (and the room) they listen to are capable of mastering, then, there's little cause to separate these duties. Even if the engineer has an outboard analog mastering chain to use, all mixes could e passed through those merely charging a small additional rate for playback time through that chain.
As many in the industry will recommend, always, always, ALWAYS use a separate mastering engineer. Yes, a mix engineer can master, but the benefits of a separate experienced mastering engineer cannot be overstated. Anyone who's been listening to a mix for days or weeks, sometimes months, can no longer be objective. Too much acceptance and attachment has been formed to how the mix already sounds. Often, the only way this can be righteously accomplished is for the mix engineer to take a long vacation from the mix, completely wrecking your release date.
A dedicated mastering engineer offers multiple things:
Understands how to make a mix translate onto all speaker systems.
Masters in a room that's properly treated and tuned.
Listens on audiophile or reference-level speakers, powered by the same super high quality amplifier(s), all of which reveal even the most delicate, minute details. Often a listening environment isn't solely to make the audio sound amazing, but to brutally reveal what's wrong with it.
Masters with fresh, objective ears, that are not emotionally attached to the mix.
Understands how to make the master loud.
Understands formats and assembly of the final product.
Is an extra pair of ears to critically listen to the mix, detecting glitches, clips, hum, and anything else the mix stage might have missed.
After all, mastering is your final chance to get it right!
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