#133 - What's the difference between mixing and mastering?

For many years I gave a presentation at audiophile conventions and professional audio engineering shows I called "The Six Stages of Degradation" or as I sometimes referred to it as "The Six Degrees of Degradation".  Not everyone cares about sound quality, but audiophiles do. Not all audio engineers are taught or take the time to listen to what happens to the music when they record, mix or master.  And what happens after that is a mystery for just about all of us.  Sometimes, what we hear on a streaming service is nothing like the master we sent to the record label.

When you're hired to record, mix or master a project, you sometimes aren't involved beyond one of these stages.  Sometimes there's a producer guiding the project ... sometimes there's not.  Sometimes the artist barely understands much beyond writing and performing the music.  All other decisions are left to whoever else is around...  so "listening as the artist intended" can be a bit misleading if the artist didn't quite understand what they were hearing.  Hopefully, there's a professional around that is looking after the best interest of the artist's vision.  That's often the role of the producer.

Even then, after the first three stages (recording, mixing and mastering) the music leaves the hands of the artist and producer.  There are as many as 3 or more stages where sonic decisions are made that determine how the consumer hears the music.   At that point, it's out of the control of the artist or producer.  At some point, it's even out of the control of the record label.  Sometimes, when we hear what the consumer is hearing, we can be horrified.  There's a lot that can go wrong.

That said, most of the music will be 90% of what we thought we heard in the studio.  That's not bad.  But that 10% of the time is probably why most artists rarely listen back to their music after it's been recorded.  It probably sounded great in the studio to their ears.

There seems to be a lot of misunderstandings in the audiophile world about what happens in the studio or concert world during a recording.  Not all music is recorded in 2 channels with two mics, creating a perfect stereo mix.  In fact, my guess is most music that is currently sold is recorded to multiple channels.  We call that multichannel recording.  For example, there might be 8 mics for the drums, 2 for bass, 2 for guitar, 1 for lead vocals, 1 channel for a harmony vocal and 2 for piano.  That's 16 channels of "mono" sound.  

The MIX Process

The mix determines what happens to each of those channels so that the result is a 2 channel stereo recording (we'll talk about mono and immersive another time).  Each channel has decisions that affects what you hear at home.  The volume level, pan (where it sits in the stereo image), EQ and effects are determined for each of the 16 channels.  Some people want more bass (especially bass players), some people want less reverb, some people want the drummer out of the mix all together.  Rarely does anyone agree to how the final mix should sound so a compromise is eventually achieved.  The end result is a stereo mix of those 16 channels.

The MASTERING Process

While there is mastering for single tracks, I'm going to discuss the basics for mastering an album project.  

Now that the artist or label is out of money in their budget from recording and mixing (just joking, but often true), there is one last chance to 'fix' something they overlooked rather than remixing.  Let's say you have a 10 song album.  Some of the songs are louder and some softer.  In mastering you can run through an analog or digital stage to make those adjustments.  Remember, you can only adjust the final stereo mix.  So, if you think the bass is too loud, you can make a slight adjustment with EQ in mastering to see if that helps.  If the guitar needs to be louder and it happens to be on the right side of the stereo, you can bring the volume on the right side up a bit.  If the vocal is too loud at the chorus, you can bring the entire mix down a db or two.

Bottomline is you have to listen...  did you really fix the issues?  Many times you can in mastering.  Of course, going back to the mix is the best way to handle it, but often not possible.  Mastering is the last stage the artist, label or producer has to change the sound for the better.

DSD Re-Mastering Workshop 2022

The response has been tremendous for this workshop.  If you're interested to learn more about the specifics for mastering and remastering in DSD, fill out this form.  We'll be getting back to everyone shortly about the workshop agenda.  We hope to do more of these in the future.

https://forms.gle/NAR6ept1btrPy2Ch9

Enjoy your music!

Cookie Marenco
Founder and Producer 
Blue Coast Records and Music