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You can see how much mastering adds to a song by this. Also, the mastered version has a few changes, it has a white noise cymbal at the beginning for example.
I don't know if the stereo width was achieved by mastering here, but the synths sound much wider mastered. The first synth you hear in the unmastered version is basically mono.

I think that they did indeed do that in the mastering stage. Although I'm wondering if it is better to be done in the mixing stage, applying to different channels rather than to the master ^^

How do you have an unmastered version?

mthrfnk wrote:How do you have an unmastered version?

I was just fucking around and found it.

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You can analyze this to see what they did to advance the overall mixdown sound from mediocre to amazing. They added a lot of noise stereo cymbals in the background.

Wow, thats a huge difference.
Still, it sounds really tight before too

f1rstsense wrote:I think that they did indeed do that in the mastering stage. Although I'm wondering if it is better to be done in the mixing stage, applying to different channels rather than to the master ^^

You can't make a synth wide during mastering if it's mono in the first place. They either layered it with other synths that are really stereo, or used unison or effects like chorus or something to get that width. Cymbals are really important too. They add sparkle to the mix.

Ok I just realized something. The first vocal line "destroy them with lazers" is flat and mono in the unmastered part, and later on it is a little reverby and wide. Are they using master reverb to get that width?

mromgwtf wrote:Ok I just realized something. The first vocal line "destroy them with lazers" is flat and mono in the unmastered part, and later on it is a little reverby and wide. Are they using master reverb to get that width?

I'm still not sure that's an unmastered version tbh, it just sounds like an earlier pre-release version that they played in mixes before doing all the final tweaks.

yeah how are you sure thats an unmastered version, it still seems limited to 0db. and on laptop speakers the 'mastered' version sounds worse lol, sounds horrible! Why would a mastered engineer add white noise and cymbals and shit, and start making a mono sound stereo when i was made mono.

skimpi wrote:yeah how are you sure thats an unmastered version, it still seems limited to 0db. and on laptop speakers the 'mastered' version sounds worse lol, sounds horrible! Why would a mastered engineer add white noise and cymbals and shit, and start making a mono sound stereo when i was made mono.

KP don't use a mastering engineer, Rob does their masters which is another reason I think the first version is just an earlier release opposed to just being unmastered.

probably mixes with an L2 on the master lol

It just sounds like they had a mix then slapped Maximus on it and increased the pre gain on the highs

wow really shows how subtle mixing techniques can really change a tune. Thanks for posting man!