I think it would be great if we could hear how a a mix sounds before mastering then compare it to how it sounds after. I have trouble knowing exactly how far my mixes should go and hearing some examples would be great, preferably with
a few examples for each of the big genres.
Can we get some examples of how professional tracks should sound before and after mastering?
The only one, in MWTM, very useful, is another minute with you by CLA
no one have the same feeling about this?
Technically your mix should sound exactly as you expect it to sound in the master. Mastering is fixing or enhancing a few things that don’t impact the overall feel of the mix. There are some comparisons you can do for example if you watch the final run down of a mix video on mwtm and go to the actual original song in spotify for example. That song will be the mastered version vs the mix video audio which is the mix only audio.
I can thin of one specific one which is The Greatest Shoman session. Very vague I don’t even know what the point of that video was… it was pretty much a showcase of every plugin he used but nothing useful as to “how it was mixed”. When he plays the mix and you compare it to the original soundtrack (mastered) you can clearly tell the master has been heavily compressed and also it removed a bunch of the super harsh frequencies in the original MIX. In the original mix everything is upfront, very separated, and like I said top end was all over the place and very harsh. In the mastered version everything is very compacted together with compression. They removed the overly harsh frequencies and also the made that low mid and low end THICK. Everything sounds blended and somethings lack definition, but since it’s meant for theater I can understand why they went that route.
Your point really is a matter of actually digging in there and comparing your self. I don’t think they will be throwing a “origial mix” vs “original master” tracks for us to compare so I would say your mix should sound EXACTLY like you want your master to be heard. That way the mastering engineer will have a better result for you without destroying what you’ve done.