Beat practise on mixing and mastering

[saschamichel]

Hello,

I am just wondering if its better to record all my MIDI tracks raw into audio i.e no pan/compression/eq/levels

And rather mix these all in audio with a final mastering chaing on the master?

[pulpicon]

Of course it is more flexibel and more ideal to record "dry". Only drawback: it is more effort.

[TLW]

Using pan, compression, eq etc. on tracks and groups is usually considered part of the mixing process.

Mastering is different, the conventional way to do it is to first mix the music and export it as audio then create a new project for the mastering stage and load the track(s) you want to master into that. Mastering is as much about making stuff you want to put on an album sound coherent and not have big unwanted volume changes between tracks as it is everything else. Unless you’re mastering for vinyl, in which case you have to ensure the music is compatible with the vinyl manufacturing and playback processes. Vinyl imposes quite a lot of limitations, especially regarding bass levels and transients, that digital playback doesn’t.

Trying to mix and master a track at the same time can be very hard work and cause a lot of unwanted issues, especially if the plugins on the master bus are fighting the ones on the tracks. It makes creating a coherent “whole” sounding mix more difficult than it needs to be, at least in my experience.

[saschamichel]

Thanks for the tips so far.

I guess I am still pondering if I shoukd be adjusting volume, eq and adding compression at the early stages of idea creation i.e before exporting all my midi tracks to audio?
Or should I do that all in audio?

[Tarekith]

Honestly it doesn't matter at all, it's just a workflow preference and what works better for you. There's no right or wrong way to do that.