Pre Mastering

[The Rookie]

Hello anyone......

Do you recomend compressing and eq-ing a final mix (say on the master fader) before going to mastering?

Thanks in advance.....

 

[harvestmark]

If you truly are going to have your mixes professionally mastered, leave the eq & compression off. Let the mastering engineer decide how much of whatever to use. When I walk into the control room of the mastering engineer I use, I hear totally different things. Things I never heard in my control room. PLUS I cannot begin to duplicate the expertise & ears of the guy. That's why I'm not a mastering engineer. It would not be in my best interest to limit what he can do.

 

[MASSIVE Mastering]

I don't know if this will really help, but on the left side of THIS PAGEthere's a \"Getting the Most out of Your Mix\" download (PDF) that might help a little...

In short, EQ, and especially compression \"should\" be handled at the track level most of the time. A dB or two of compression to help \"glue\" things is okay IF the mix \"asks\" for it. Never for the sake of volume - As far as EQ is concerned, adding another pass of EQ across a mix usually indicates something lacking IN the mix. Usually...

 

[The Rookie]

Thank you so much for the input. It's cool that people are down to help out the new guys.