PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production Soundcloud/Dolby $5.00 Mastering

a) if you have decent ears and gear you will be able to hear and see differences in level, EQ etc. THAT's the learning point if you're inclined to pay a fiver for this sort of thing.

b) MASTERING has, traditionally, been preparing a finished mono, stereo or surround sounds track for reproduction. many M.E.s will happily STEM MASTER for a client - a blend of correcting sonic errors of the stems and mastering the end result of that and CAN, if requested/advised and agreed, involve a little rebalancing of those stems to make a better end result and therefore a better product for reproduction. I've asked for stem mastering many times and learnt an HUGE amount from it. I haven't had that done for quite a while because I learnt plenty that improved my mixes as well as tracking. It's obviously more time intensive and costs more. A good M.E. will let you know if you need to fix stuff before they'll touch your song - they don't want to be associated with something that is a bad end result.

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c)that's mixing...there're lots of folk who will mix via up n download for you but it's pretty expensive. Most will allow a few revisions with the cost package and may even master the end result for you.

Having a realistic expectation of your skills as a cook, a chef's skills and what an automated sausage maker can do is always a good thing.

If you REALLY want to find out the difference save up a little then invest in having a mix of yours mastered by a M.E. and by one of those up n download processes then compare the differences.
It'll let you know a lot about your song, your recording and what can be done with it. All up you might be out AUS$60, (I wouldn't recommend using an expensive or NAME M.E. 1st time but you'll KNOW.

I get my stuff mastered IF I think the song's good enough becasue I don't have the ears, room or gear to master effectively and I'm easy pray to ALL of the psychoacoustic tricks employed by shysters and the automated lot.

SOME folk can self master because they have decent ears, lots of experience AND patience. Bud, above, is one of them but I only know three home recordists who have what it takes to make a master sound like a master.

I still have two Yamaha FourTrack cassette machines (MT100s) and a VERY old stereo reel to reel machine. I do use them when I'm in the mood OR want THAT sound. I'm not keen on using a tape saturation plug when I can saturate a reel of tape and use the outs from that, (cassettes don't REALLY do the tape saturation thing though running them into the red does sound good often). I even have an outboard Dolby tape processor to do the NR thing. Working ITB isn't bad though - particularly when a 24 channel deck & machine aren't in the room.