Produce,mix and Master in one session

[alekst1923]

I was just wondering if anyone else produces by putting all you song elements into the mix and then throwing a limiter with 24bit dither on the master track then exporting the song? What steps do you go through when producing your music? Please share, along with links to your productions.

[kanuck]

if i was mastering the track myself then yes.. a limiter at the end would all i would do.

[Dragonbreath]

I do everything in ableton.

Mostly for convenience. Its quicker and its all at the same place.

I will produce in ableton either live band recordings or produced beats.

I will mix and arrange it

Then on master I will add gentle compression
then gentle an mostly broad eq (Low shelf and high shelf, a roll off on the very low end mostly)
then I use a limiter

Sometimes I will use a multiband eq depending on the feel of the song

On export I usually go 16 bit 44,1
since thats the best quality anyone will probably end up listing too
I dont dither

[c33]

On export I usually go 16 bit 44,1
since thats the best quality anyone will probably end up listing too
I dont dither

But is this really the best quality to export? Opinions? Doing final mix-downs and mastering tracks is extremely difficult (/practically impossible) for me at this point.

[lunabass]

i like to separate my mixing and mastering. i just get better results that way. most of my stuff gets mastered by others now anyway but i still master everything i create to use as a reference. i can then also put my master up against the professional job to see where i could improve

i create, arrange and mix in one session then export a 24bit 44.1k file with no dither. there is no limiter or processing on my master track.

in mastering i eq (rarely) into single band comp, into a multiband comp and then a limiter (i dont use lives multiband, comp or limiter for this as i prefer other vsts for this task). export file as 16bit, 44.1k with pow-r3 dither wav.

track links in my sig

[abl385]

I usually mix and master in the same session. I have heard however that it's better if you export the audio first and then master it, maybe because when you are doing everything in one session you are tempted to go back and change stuff, and you're likely to end up making mistakes.