Pre Mastering Tips?

[staticcast]

the mastering engineers job is just to maximise the loudness, add a bt of depth to the mix amongst many other things.

uhmmmmm...

[macc]

Sounds spot on to me, except i dont get the bit about the reverb tails... Thats an artistic choice really, its hard to control reverb tails from a 2 track stereo bounce, unless you have the stems!

Just meant that when you bounce to a stereo mix it's easy to accidentally set the start and end markers too short and clip off the end of whatever might be reverbing away at the finish..

This makes me facepalm every single time. I get it ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL the time.

if you have anything on the master that you think should be there because you heard it on an interwebs forum, take it off.

It's simple dudes - just don't limit or clip your master channel. Make it sound the bollocks without all that shit. Distort your distorted distorto-delay reverb distortion channel in the mix if that sounds cool and you like it. Make it sound how you want. Just don't make anything clip.

Next - If you have a compressor on the master, then why? To make it loud? Turn it off. To make it bump (at the same loudness!)? Leave it on but send an uncomped version too and tell your engineer about what and why.

[paravrais]

you could just move it one bar up AFTER you finish everything else

This leads to me then going back into the project to do the inevitable extra tweaks that will need doing and going WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON HERE?!? XD cos lets face it, a track is never done the first time you think it is. Or maybe that's just me :\

[Littlefoot]

Some very good points made.

Here's a more obscure one which always gets me:

Some combinations of software, for example Cubase and Reason rewired can cause a glitch at the first beat of the first bar, so if you export from the first MIDI note, you get a drop out which can heavily effect how the tune starts and how DJs work with it.

Also someone mentioned leaving space at the end of the track: so important yet so neglected! I don't know if this applies to everyone, but as a DJ I sometimes like something to work "out of" and when it just drops it makes my mixing sound poor, and as a Mastering Engineer I am listening for the macro dynamics and any sudden drop out makes me feel like the music has disappeared without warning.

Joe Caithness / Subsequent Mastering

[Littlefoot]

Sounds spot on to me, except i dont get the bit about the reverb tails... Thats an artistic choice really, its hard to control reverb tails from a 2 track stereo bounce, unless you have the stems!

Just meant that when you bounce to a stereo mix it's easy to accidentally set the start and end markers too short and clip off the end of whatever might be reverbing away at the finish..

This makes me facepalm every single time. I get it ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL the time.

Oh god, you know this Macc

[joegrizzly]

Some useful information in here, I'm about to rip my hair out though on this mix though, I feel like im over thinking everything