Most times when you tell an artist that you his song needs to be mixed and mastered, he/ she is like..I don't understand and probably some that do pay for it don't even know what exactly they paid for. In this article I'm going to explain the difference between mixing and mastering in technical and simple terms.
What's The Difference Between Mixing And Mastering?
What Is Mixing? The definition of mixing is the combining of two or more items to make one. Mixing is the combining of audio tracks (vocals, kick drum, snare, guitars, etc.) on a physical or computer mixing board. Panning, EQ, compression, effects, automation, gain/cut and editing are applied to each track as necessary. No processing is used on the stereo out/main out. The mixing process concludes with exporting of a single stereo interleaved file of an unmastered song.
What Is Mastering? The mastering process starts with a mixed single stereo interleaved file of an unmastered song. This file is processed as a whole with compression, EQ, stereo imaging, softening, spectral enhancing, and frequency separation as deemed necessary. This is the final step in the song making process. After "good professional" mastering your song should be ready for commercial release. Since mastering processes are applied to the song file as a whole, the mastering engineer cannot just make only the vocals in the chorus louder, remove a synth or guitar part, etc. A frequency range can be raised or cut, but every sound in that frequency range would be effected. This is done at the mixing level. I hope this was useful..
Now you understand the importance of mixing and mastering right?..then go get your songs mixed and mastered.
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