Differences Mastering & Mix

From what I've read:  First comes the mix... eq'ing and compression where necessary  Then comes the mastering... preferably on a rendered file > eq on the master and if necesarry more compression and/or limiting  But perhaps someone can give a more clear answer then this :)

As far as I see mixing concerns the song itself (the balance of the tracks in the song) and mastering how to translate that song into a bigger environment. You can master tracks for pressing on CD (meaning you check if every track from the CD is in the same concept as the other. Same amount of presence bass etc. where you gonna have to "Mix" the track again if it doesn't fit). You have to master tracks differently for pressing on Vinyl f.i. for pressing on CD I allways put in a little less bass because pressing "compresses" the track naturally and that means that for keeping the "room-space" in your tracks you can lower the overall compression or lower the bass frequencies (what gives more presence and compensates the loss on the pressed CD). I mastered my own CD "Messierobjekten" (in E-shop). And it was a learning process.

When i get home from work I'll show you a good master link

I do it in three stages:

1. mixing: making sure every sound is well eq'd, has its own place in the mix, is panned, compressed, doesn't collide with other sounds etc
2. bouncing/rendering of your mix but, split up in groups: the result is 4-6 big wave files (the length of your song) of for example all the snares together, kick+bass, leads, soundefx.  Then you get the peaks out, make sure nothing clips, compress where possible/needed.

3.  Then there is the actual mastering.  This is done on your final mixdown.  You multibandcompress your wav (in the right way, look nfor tutorials for that), you eq a bit (like a bit of HP above 30hz, some attenuation of higher frequencies etc), you check your stereofield, if necessary you limit and compress the whole.

after 4 years of inituative working this is what i do:

i synthezise or sample my diffrent sounds with for every sound a track, add eq and fx sepperatly on each track, i make sure there is no clipping, then i bounce each track + parts with alot of automation also sepperatly. then i rearrange my tracks, remix, readd eq on the tracks and a adaptive limiter on the master et voila, final bounce

more or less the same as bandarlog i suppose

wauw, i really dont know what you guy are talking about :d i just put an multiband compressor on my master channel in the "mastering 6db" preset :d

Originally posted by : MDeMmA

wauw, i really dont know what you guy are talking about :d i just put an multiband compressor on my master channel in the "mastering 6db" preset :d

LOL, laughing my ass off here :d :d :d :d

but i guess doing anything more would easely take the agression and energy out yur tracks, but if you do it right, you might just improve your tracks. that's the problem with me, once i start mastering it goes from bad to worse to crap :p after 20min i'm most likely to forget what i've don, so i have a shitload of troubles bringing it all back to the original settings, if i forgot to save on a new file that is ---> important

Originally posted by : IskaRiot

but i guess doing anything more would easely take the agression and energy out yur tracks 

au contraire... taking the peaks out and carefully compressing gives you so much more energy! But it's not easy.

yeah but havent had any complaints about my mastering so far :d so dont really know why i should put more effort in that

That's because you produce hardcore.  They don't do that shit cause it has to sound like shit :))

hmz, i mostly send all my sounds to diffent tracks for eq and stuff. but I put all the faders of the mixer pretty low (so I have a rather quiet volume), and then put a multiband + limiter on masterbus to push the volume back up... i presume that's not too correct either?