the difference between Mastered and unMastered

[RichardLodge]

just wondering whether anyone who's had a track professionally mastered would be willing to upload a before and after clip?

Ive been producing for a while now and constantly reference my tracks against professional releases, but obviously these have been mastered so it's difficult to get my quite up to that standard. So having an unmastered reference would be so much help.

Here's a link to my latest tune (unmastered), would be great to know if mix-wise this is up to standard?

http://www17.zippyshare.com/v/83813530/file.html

Cheers

Richard

[_gilles]

192Kbps ?

I've the same questions... I sent my last track to be mastered and when i received it, i was a little bit disapointed. I know it was a e-mastering but i was unable to ear a difference except the dB boost :/

Should we opt for an expensive full analog mastering to hear a difference ?

[tone-def]

what were you expecting them to do?

[lcvl]

or maybe your listening environment isn't good enough to notice the differences...

[def26x]

or maybe your listening environment isn't good enough to notice the differences...

very true, whats your current sound set up?

[zongo]

You should be able to tell the difference with a good pair of headphones. If the only thing you got is a volume boost, I guess you can do this by yourself for free

[BigPoe]

I just got my first tracks mastered! And I too was a little bit disappointed but maybe my expectations were too high. To me it seemed like they just cut some of the bass (which is fair enough as I know it was too heavy and was probs killing the mix), and added some nice reverb to the higher end of the spectrum.

However, it did teach me a good lesson, which is that if you want something to sound good, don’t be lazy and expect the masterering dude to fix all your problems.

If you listen to some of the top producers unmastered work on soundcloud you can get a good reference. A lot of it sounds amazing despite not being mastered.

[PsyTox]

if you send in a mediocre product it'll still come out mediocre. I am always most impressed by the mastering when I send in something that sounds good already. Then you really hear the tiny differences that makes the sound really professional. Can be lots of things: a hint more reverb, a slight compression that makes it all sound balanced more, better eq'ing, better/wider stereo...

Btw, the dB boost is something of the most obvious things that you might indeed notice, but often enough that's actually a bad thing. Louder isn't necessairily better.

If you really want to try it out, most mastering studios do a "first time free" deal to show off their skills. Maybe you can ask one of them to do a mastering of a track you are confident about and hear the difference first hand. Because it's a bit difficult to say what "exactly" changes. There are many people claiming to do mastering, but only a few do truely great jobs and it takes quite some trial and error to find a mastering that you are happy with. In our case for vinyl it's Lawrie at Curved UK, for digital Pieter at Equus in Brussels, The Exchange in London, or distributor Feiyr's mastering service who do a pretty good job too.