Once it’s time to cross that finish line and prepare your music for mastering, you may be wondering if you should hire an outside engineer or just do it yourself (or have the mixing engineer do it). This is an important time because if everything has been done right to this point, you don’t want to mess it up on the last step. Here are some things to consider when making this decision.
Is the Mix Top Notch?
Before you go down the road of shelling out the money to hire an independent mastering engineer, you want to know that the product you are sending them is already in great shape. Has the recording been well done, editing just the way it should be, with a mix that sounds like a massive commercial release? If the answer is yes then it might make sense to bring in someone from the outside to polish that project just a bit more. However, you may already have those skills in house…
Do You or the Mixing Engineer Have Experience?
Mastering is kind of an odd black box, with the experts having their own detailed tools that allows them to get a great result from a quality master. However, the high level concepts are fairly basic. You want to be able to shape EQ and compression to get a nice smooth and transparent result, with the final volume level putting it on par with all the other pro records that get released. If you or the mixing engineer have a solid comfort level with those tasks, it can be done internally (probably for a relatively small additional fee for the mix engineer). But the challenge is not to get carried away and do too much. That’s where the danger of screwing up the final step is.
This is where you ask if you understand the true goals of the mastering process. If you have a clear vision of what you are trying to accomplish and don’t misapply the tools, then success can be found on your own.
What Format is the Release?
If you are just putting up songs for streaming online (Spotify, Apple Music, etc.) then that would be a good case for mastering yourself or by the mix engineer. Those services have level balancing where the turn up or down songs to keep the overall volume consistent between songs. However, if you are thinking about a variety of physical release products (CD, vinyl, cassette) then a mastering engineer can bring their expertise to master in a way that is appropriate for each one of those. To me this is one of the key items where a mastering engineer can really help a record out.
How Large is the Project?
Are you just doing a single? Then it could be overkill to bring in outside help. However, large albums can really benefit from a mastering engineer because of the way they can use their skills to create smooth transitions and consistency between different tracks. This is a huge benefit when different songs can feel out of place together when just taking into account how the mix sounds. If there is one place where I think hiring a mastering engineer makes the most sense, it’s with the album or EP project. When considering how much time, effort and money is spent on large album projects up to this point, the mastering expense isn’t that much more.
Automated Mastering
There are now services available (i.e. Landr) that can provide a master for your mix with just very high level inputs. While these services were terrible at the beginning, they have become more common over time. It’s entirely possible that they continue to improve and become even more acceptable in the future. I am probably biased, but I don’t think a computer can completely replace this service. Listening to music creates an emotional response in the listener and crafting music that magnifies that can’t easily be replicated by a computer. However, I will say that mastering is the portion of the song creation process that makes the most sense for this sort of automation. We will just have to wait and see where technology leads.
Hopefully these thoughts help give you a good frame of reference to make your decisions about mastering. As always, if you ever have questions about your musical projects, feel free to reach out and see how I can help you.