About to send a rock EP out for mastering....

[carpekd]

I'm about to send my debut EP out for mastering, but I'm pretty sure it's lacking in the level mixing department. So far, it's all been done with my cheap sennheiser eH150 headphones. I know they are way off because I've exported audio out before and listened to it in the car and it definitely didn't sound right. My thought was to get a pair of rokit 5s or something similar and adjust the track levels with that, but I'm really not even sure if I have the ear to do it correctly.

What do you guys suggest? Should I let a professional mixing service take a look at it?

[Tarekith]

Many times a mastering engineer will make suggestions on how a mixdown can be improved if they think an issue could be better addressed on your end, versus in the mastering. Depends on the mastering engineer though, some will work with whatever you give them regardless.

That said, if you think or know there's some issues with the mixdown, then you're likely wasting your money getting it mastered at this point, since you already know there's problems that need to be addressed still. Certainly a mixing service can help with that, or you cna do what what a lot of people do and play your songs on many different systems and make the corrections yourself. Really comes down to how much you want to spend, and how good of results you want as well.

[carpekd]

Thanks for the advice Tarekith