"nat hawks" <natbot@hotmail.com> asked:
quoted 3 lines alright,>alright,
>so, what's a good mastering price? obviously, like anything, they
>run the spectrum, but can you get a decent job for $100 or so?
even the cheaper mastering guys who use protools will charge $45 an
hour. mastering an entire album takes time and skill. even a quick
mastering job would take more than two hours and be no better than
what you could do with a few plug-ins. less time and money than that
and it's not even worth going to someone else.
mastering jobs have cost me between $500 and $800 for a 50-minute
album. interestingly enough, the cheaper per hour, the more time you
will end up spending, because the person does not have the tools or
expertise the more expensive guys have. $150 an hour and years of
experience is probably sufficient, although the top mastering
engineers can charge $350 an hour. but regardless, you may find that
after listening to the project, you have to go back in and tweak a
few issues on another day. your ears just get tired hearing the same
hour's worth of material for hours and hours, and you lose
perspective.
i will say that the price may end up being cheaper if you send it off
instead of sitting in the room, but you also don't have the option of
hearing and fixing things that bother you musically and sonically.
basically the better they are, the faster they can zero in on any
issues you have and some you didn't know existed until you got in a
really good room with a variety of monitoring choices and a good RTA
(real-time analyzer) on your mix. also, at some point running the
mix out into a super-expensive analog compressor/limiter and back in
again is something the better guys do, and that real-time transfer
adds up. but it's worth it - assuming they have the best A-D
converters available.
quoted 3 lines the only time i really notice-notice good mixing is when an album>the only time i really notice-notice good mixing is when an album
>sounds similar on a shitty boom-box with one speaker working, a nice
>car stereo, and average headphones.
and also if the volumes don't jump wildly from track to track
unintentionally, or that one song makes that one pair of speakers
flip out.
quoted 3 lines i've only ever 'mastered' my own stuff on headhpones. the $20 sony>i've only ever 'mastered' my own stuff on headhpones. the $20 sony
>ones. seems to work alright, for what it is. would love to get
>something mastered someday though.
it makes a huge difference.
d.
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