REASONS FOR DISAPPOINTMENT

It all begins with the breath-taking picture of the mastering studio on a website. This is followed by the column of glamorous major label artist names and gushing testimonials from happy clients. All this entices you to gather all your hard-earned money from the band members and scamper off to the FedEx office to mail out your precious cargo of mixes to be mastered. The anticipation is torturous as you anxiously await the arrival of your beloved masterpiece. The master finally arrives, and you pop it into your CD player, hit play and……. Huh!? What happened? It doesn’t sound as good as you expected it to. You paid good money for this, damnit, and this is what you get back?

Well, let’s take a look at what happened.

Did the studio rip you off? No, not at all. Far from it. As a matter of fact, what this studio was able to do with your mix was about the best you could ever hope to get from the mix as you had it. There was nothing whatsoever wrong with the studio with all those major label credits and fancy gear. The problem, it turns out, was your expectations and misunderstandings about what mastering is and your belief in the misinformation that mastering can overcome the deficits of everything wrong with your mix. Listened to in a different context, the new mastering job is actually quite good and sounds much better than not mastering it at all (or having it mastered at a ‘lesser’ studio).

Consider the scenario of a budding actor hiring a celebrity photographer for a photo shoot. The actor locates the photographer’s website on the internet with descriptions of expensive gear and pictures of celebrities like Brad Pitt, Denzel Washington, Halle Berry, and Angelina Jolie on the walls, along with dozens of glowing reviews and testimonials from many happy clients. The actor, who is 50 pounds overweight, badly out of shape, and with a bald patch and crooked teeth, books a photo session for the upcoming weekend. He does the photo shoot, and a couple of weeks later, picks up the DVD with all the images from the shoot. Even though the pictures look great, they somehow fail to meet his expectations and leave him disappointed. Of course, there was nothing wrong with the photographer’s equipment, talent, or credentials. What happened was that the photographer, even with all that talent and equipment, was unable to overcome the deficits presented by the actor’s condition on the day of the shoot.

When the budding actor reviewed the images on the website, he failed to adequately take into account all that went into making Brad Pitt look so good prior to the shoot. To his advantage, Brad Pitt had good genes, dieted and worked out extensively for many months prior to the shoot with professional dieticians and personal trainers, (may have) performed cosmetic surgery, (may have had) hair implants, dental work, wardrobe tailored to fit by a top designer, tanning, had his hair and make-up (yes, make up) done by a professional stylist, and so on. He also budgeted generously for exotic props and assistants, and booked the necessary time to get all the shots that were needed. In addition, a graphic design artist performed some additional ‘cleanup’ using Photoshop in order to get everything perfect. In the end, the photographer certainly had a lot to do with the final results, but their contribution did not constitute 100% of the result.

In the same way, the mastering session does not contribute a 100% improvement to the mix. The contribution is closer to 20%, which is actually quite significant if your mix is already at 80% quality rating or so, yet still falls short if your mix is starting at a dismal 30% rating (which a surprising majority of independent projects arrive at). Many things go into the making of a great-sounding master, and most of the important contributions happen far back in the process beginning with the selection of the instruments and other sound sources and moving all the way up through the recording, editing and mixing stages. Good techniques employed by experienced engineers and quality equipment used in the tracking/recording and mixing stages will contribute 80% or more to the final quality of the master. Even with the best mastering, the maximum improvement to a bad recording and mix will be limited. If your mix sounds really good, an experienced mastering engineer using professional gear will provide the finishing touches to create a great-sounding master. Otherwise, if you choose to do things sloppily in the recording, editing and mixing stages, and wait to ‘fix it in the mastering’, you will be in for a great deal of disappointment even if you use a high-end mastering house with glamorous pictures, polished samples and gushing testimonials.

With said all this, having your music mastered by a professional will raise the quality of the mixes in every instance.  However, in order to overcome potential disappointment, get a sample mastering of one of your songs so that you can hear what the level of improvement will actually be. That will help keep things in a realistic and proper perspective and allow you to enjoy the benefits of mastering, which are indeed many.