7 Crucial Questions to Ask Before Mastering Your Music

Ask yourself these questions before having your next release mastered.

There’s still quite a bit of mystery around mastering, even for experienced musicians and engineers. Most know that they’re supposed to master their music—even if they don’t necessarily understand what mastering is really all about.

To put it simply, mastering is technically just the process of making a “master copy” of a release, from which all other duplicates are created. So, if you export a song from your digital audio workstation (DAW) and upload that file to streaming services, then congratulations! The file you’ve uploaded is considered the master file.

But today, when people talk about “mastering”, that’s not usually what the they mean. They are usually referring to the final pass of audio sweetening and quality control that a specialized mastering engineer may do at the very end of the production process, in order to enhance the tonal balance of the music, to get get the songs to the appropriate level, to make sure they flow well from one to the other, and to generally make the final mixes sound even better than they were.

Whether you choose to create masters yourself or get someone else to do it for you, there are some essential questions you need to ask yourself. Below, we’ll run you through seven important questions to consider before mastering your music.

1. Are There Still Any Issues In The Mix?

Perhaps the biggest misconception about mastering is that it’s going to drastically change the quality of your song. While a good mastering engineer may be able to correct certain mix issues, provide general enhancement, and make your mix sound even better all around, it’s just no substitute for getting the best mix you can. If your mix is underwhelming or contains specific problems that you know about, then the master you receive will be lackluster as well.

The question to ask yourself first is whether there is anything specific that is still “bugging” you about your mix. If there is, then have you really tried everything you can to address the issue, or are you hoping the mastering engineer can save you? If it’s the latter, consider revisiting your mix for one more pass until you are certain that there are no more issues that you may be able to address.

2. Have You Reached The Limit of Your Abilities?

Everyone has a limit to their mixing abilities—though some mixers’ boundaries may extend further than others. Ultimately, there’s no such thing as a “perfect mix”, because art is subjective. You can obsess over a mix for an eternity, changing it day in and day out. So what you need to ask yourself is whether your mix is “good enough” for the purposes at hand.

What exactly does “good enough” mean? To me, “good enough” means I’m content with my mix, that spending more time on it won’t improve it substantially, and that further time spent on the mix isn’t going to help sell more records. In any business, time is money, and turnaround times do matter.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have standards. Of course you should. It just means that once you reach the standard that you know yourself to be capable of, you should start getting ready to call it a day. Pushing your boundaries is good, but at a certain point, further mixing just ends up making a track sounding different—not necessarily better or worse.

3. Have You Checked Your Mix on Multiple Monitors?

Mastering engineers listen to your mix in rooms with a near-flat frequency response, making it easier for them to tell how your mix will translate across a variety of systems and adjust accordingly. But the better you can get it before they even touch it, the better the end results will be.

If you don’t have access to a studio like a mastering engineer might work in, you can check the playback compatibility of your song by listening to the mix across different systems. This will help give you an idea of how your mix will translate to other systems.

It can also help to get outside of your room to hear your work. In the beginning, as you learn the quirks of your mixing environment, the more systems you can test your mix on the better.

It’s also good to think about where your mixes are going to be listened to by most people. Typical consumer playback devices include earbuds, laptop speakers and car stereo systems. It’s important that you make sure your mixes translate to consumer speakers, because not everyone has thousand dollar studio monitors.

Knowing the general frequency response of any monitors you’re listening on can be helpful as well. For example, if you know that the cheap consumer monitors you test your mixes on are heavy in the midrange, you don’t necessarily need to be concerned that your vocals feel more present than on other monitors. However, if the vocals feel sharp or harsh in a way that is out of character for that system, then it is something you want to make adjustments on. But what you’re really looking for are issues that are common across multiple playback systems.

4. Should You Hire a Mixing Engineer First?

If you’re still new to mixing, you may rarely get to the point where you’re happy with your mixes. Everyone who tries their hand at mixing goes through this period of frustration, and those that stick with it long enough can generally make it out to the other side. But in the meantime, being stuck in mixing limbo can be quite a confidence killer. And whether you’re an artist or a recording engineer, you may have projects you want to release that deserve a better mix job than you can do yourself right now.

If you have mix issues that you can’t deal with yourself—or standards that are higher than your current abilities—consider hiring a mixing engineer. If you’re really intent on mixing it yourself, but need some extra help, you can call up a local studio and book a session with a more experienced engineer there to help you work out the kinks in your almost-finished project.

The most important thing in hiring a good mixer is that you find one who understands your aesthetics and has a track record for putting out finished work that sounds good to you. Often, producers already have a general idea of how they want their track mixed, and it can be disheartening if a mixing engineer takes your project in a direction that’s way out in left field relative to where you want to be.

Finding an engineer who will allow you to attend a mixing session can be incredibly beneficial, both for making sure the track ends up where you want it to, and for learning some techniques you can take into your own work. You can help guide them in the direction you want, while they can offer up the technical abilities and experience to make your vision a reality.

Most producers have some level of mixing ability, and you may have been mixing as you go along. That’s OK. Scrapping all your processing to allow someone else to have a go at from scratch isn’t always necessary, or beneficial. Many established mixers may ask you to leave on all your most important processing, even if they also want access to raw, untreated versions of your tracks where available.

5. Will a Simple Limiter Get the Job Done For Now?

Mastering engineers offer a great service, but sometimes, you don’t need to send your mix off for mastering just yet.

If a label requires a demo immediately, or if you’re sending out a rough mix to a vocalist, they’re going to be able to hear the direction of the track without a full mastering job. This holds especially true if you already have an assortment of work published that’s of high quality. In a spur-of-the-moment situation like this, you can usually get away with just applying some light compression and a limiter to your master bus for reference purposes.

Sometimes, a mastering engineer’s rates can change depending upon how quickly you need your mastered files back. It’s OK just to limit a track and bounce the file if you’re still waiting on masters. Just be sure to tell whoever you hand the files out to that the mastered files are on the way; most people are going to be understanding.

On the other hand, if this is your one chance to make an important first impression, going to a professional before you send any tracks off could be an essential part of that process.

6. Will Mastering Increase the Value of Your Project?

A good mastering engineer can almost always make your tracks sound better than they do now. That’s a given. With that already in mind, it’s worth asking whether or not that is going to add value to what you are doing.

At the hobby level, will getting your music professionally mastered provide you with increased satisfaction? Passion projects are great, and even just making something to be heard by yourself, family and friends can be a wonderful creative outlet. In many cases, no less work goes into a creative project like this, than a professional one.

Will investing in good mastering make you feel better about the outcome of all that work? If so, it could be a good value. On the other hand, will spending the money on the mastering just make you bummed about how much it all cost, or detract from the feeling of having done it all yourself? If so, you don’t have to do it just because you’re “supposed” to. In either case, asking yourself the question consciously and you can make your decision with more confidence and certainty.

At a commercial level, ask whether better mastering will help you sell more records. Most people putting out commercial releases are going to spend at least $60 per track or more on professional mastering. Some of the better mastering engineers may cost $100, $150, or even more than that per track. At the upper end, $300 for a single track or more isn’t unheard of.

Successful businesses trim expenses that have no positive effect, and they seek to spend money on the things that really matter. If you’re pursuing this as a profession, think seriously about what price level makes sense for your projects, and how good “good enough” is in your context. It could be at the lower end of the scale, or it could be a “sky’s the limit” situation.

7. Have You Listened to the Work of the Mastering Engineer You Want to Use?

Every mastering engineer’s process is slightly different and may even be dependent on the particular track they’re mastering. The specific techniques that a mastering engineer uses don’t really matter however, as long as in your opinion, the results they produce are of consistently good quality. The easiest way to determine whether or not you like a mastering engineer’s style is by having a listen to their work.

One way a lot of mastering engineers get their clients is from friends of other clients. If you have a friend or close colleague who has put out a release you were really impressed with, or who you know has been really satisfied with how much their mastering engineer improved their project, consider asking them for a referral.

Many mastering engineers will make a portfolio of their work available on their website, or will have compiled a playlist containing songs they’ve mastered. A mastering engineer’s past work is a pretty good indication of what they’re capable of.

Some engineers will provide before & after comparisons of songs they’ve worked on, while others won’t. But if you do listen to before & after comparisons, make sure that they have been level matched, or you will be misled by the relative difference in volume. People perceive louder sounds as being “better,” so for a fair listening comparison, you need to ensure that you take playback level into account.

The absolute best way to hear a mastering engineer’s work however, is on your own music. Consider testing one out with a single before having them do an entire release for you.

If you anticipate having a lot of mastering done over the years, you might want to investigate a number of mastering engineers and sample the work of two or three that seem like your best fits.

By sending one or more of the same songs to a couple different mastering engineers, you’ll be able to compare their masters to one another and select the mastering engineer that compliments your tastes the best. (Just make sure to level-match their results to make for a fair comparison, as adding a little bit of level to a quieter master is rarely a real problem.)

This approach will requires a bit of an upfront investment, but if you’re looking for a great mastering engineer to stick with over the long haul, it can be well worth the expense.

Charles Hoffman is a Mixing and Mastering Engineer at Black Ghost Audio. After graduating from the University of Manitoba with an English degree, Charles completed his education at Icon Collective in Los Angeles, CA.

For even more on mastering, try our Top 10 Posts on Mastering. To go deeper still, try SonicScoop editor Justin Colletti’s full-length course, Mastering Demystified.

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