What is the difference between recording and mixing

We all tend to understand the concept of mixing music, but then we hear about mastering, which leads to wondering what's the difference between mixing and mastering. What is this other process and why is there all of this intrigue, mystery, and warnings of not trying it yourself? Let's dig in and find out We've all heard the difference between an amateur recording captured in your buddy's garage and a professional recording tracked in a recording studio equipped with all of the best gear available.

But that only affects the clarity of the song in general. Those differences in recording environments and access to gear is like the difference between working with a puzzle where the pieces were cut out by a computer with a laser versus a hyperactive 3rd grader and a pair of scissors. Mixing is the act of putting the puzzle pieces together to form the actual desired picture.

Mixing engineers can take a horrible set of tracks and 're-cut the pieces' so they fit together better. But fitting them together is the act of mixing, which leads all the way up to the puzzle being fully completed and laid out on the table in all of its glory. So where does that leave room for the process of mastering? Mastering comes after mixing is completed. To continue with the puzzle analogy, mastering is like carefully flipping the puzzle over and gluing on a piece of cardboard so you can frame it behind glass and hang it on the wall.

Mastering is the final polish that makes the puzzle ready for presentation. That gives you the general idea of what we're going to talk about today, but below we're going to dig into the specifics of mixing and mastering so we can understand what techniques and goals are involved in each stage.

Before we start comparing and contrasting these two activities, let's look at what each one is in isolation. As we mentioned above, the better of a job of recording you do, the easier a time you'll have with mixing. And the better of a job you do with mixing, the easier a time you'll have with mastering. That's because they occur in that sequence and build on the progress of the previous step.

A mixing or mastering engineer can only do so much to salvage a disaster. The reason for this will become clear as we continue with the discusion. What is Mixing? This includes balancing levels, panning instrument positions in the stereo field, equalizing and compressing each track, and adding in effects like reverb and delay.

Once you're done mixing by doing things like making sure the bass guitar and the kick drum aren't interfering with each other and making sure the guitar isn't overpowering the vocals in volume and in the frequency spectrum, you'll move on to the next step. What is Mastering? This includes the same activities performed on every song in an album so that they sound like they belong together, in frequency characteristics and volume.

Once mastering is completed, each song sounds great in isolation, competing in volume, clarity, and warmth with other songs on the market, and sounds great as a package with the other songs in the album. Mastering provides a unifying feel in frequency response and volume across an entire record. Let's create a quick scenario of the process that a mix engineer will take before passing a song off to the mastering engineer.

It's generally suggested that a separate engineer perform each step, rather than one doing both, because it's easy to lose perspective and become 'too close' to a song. The recording engineer will have helped capture the sounds into individual tracks using microphones, MIDI data, and direct inputs into a mixer or audio interface.

The mixing engineer then steps in. He or she will first begin by cleaning up noises manually using automation or noise gates. Next, balancing levels while mixing in mono so that each instrument is at the right volume in relation to each other is performed, then we follow it up with panning and some volume compensation done on the hard panned tracks. Next, each track will have equalization applied in solo mode as well as a whole so that each is clear and intelligible at their respective volumes in relation to one another.

Once clarity is achieved, compression is applied to ensure the dynamic range of each track doesn't vary too much. You don't want the listener needing to reach for the volume knob on their car stereo or headphones, so you provide consistency in the overall amplitude this way.

You already spent a lot. Click the button to learn more about the services we offer. Search for: Search. My account My Cart. Skip to a paragraph: Mixing and mastering definitions How do they differ? What is audio mixing? What is audio mastering? Our online mixing and mastering service can help you reach that crisp professional standard of audio you want. How do the engineer's work differ? How do mixing and mastering tools differ? What is sidechaining?

Read more. What is a noise gate? Mixing marks the start of post-production, where an engineer carves and balances the separate tracks in a session to sound good when played together. Mastering is the final stage of audio production —the process of putting the finishing touches on a song by enhancing the overall sound, creating consistency across the album, and preparing it for distribution.

The mixing engineer is the editor, helping the author frame their project in the best light. The mastering engineer is the copyeditor, minding the Ps and Qs.

So what do they really do in a musical context? This is where the mixing engineer comes in. With tools like EQ, compression, panning, and reverb at their disposal, mix engineers reduce clashes between instruments , tighten grooves, and emphasize important song elements. In some cases, they might even layer drum hits with samples from outside the session or mute redundant instrument parts. Mix engineers EQ instruments to shine over other instruments, or to fit into the right context.

They compress individual tracks to reign them in, or to punch them up. They add all sorts of crazy effects when necessary—reverb, delay, modulation, pitch fx, anything that serves the material. You give them three to tracks of material, and they give you a cohesive song. A mastering engineer is your last line of defense before your song, single, EP, album, or mixtape hits the world.

They are the QC—the quality control—and their job boils down to tasks best delineated in contrast to mix engineers. A mixing engineer balances ten, twenty, or upwards of a hundred tracks into a single song, one that sounds great in their studio. Mastering engineers predominantly work with a single stereo track before sequencing and metadata tagging , and they do everything in their power to make this track shine on every conceivable playback system. Their goal is often translational and relational: they want to make each song fit with every other song in the project.

They also aim to make your entire project compete with and hopefully trounce similar material by established artists in the genre. They want to make sure this competitive edge holds on every single playback media under the sun, as best they can—and often, they do their best to make the result timeless, both in terms of sonics a song that will stand the test of time in tone , and file delivery giving you everything you need going forward to re-release your project as the media landscape changes.

The tools to accomplish this go beyond EQ, compression, and limiting. In a mastering context, the room they master in is arguably one of the most important tools, helping the mastering engineer catch any potential problems and fix them on the spot. The speakers, in conjunction with the room, are also vital: a mixing engineer often does just fine with a pair of NS10s.

A mastering engineer will likely utilize a full-range, perfectly-tuned monitor configuration in a perfectly-tuned room. This helps them hear and feel every aspect of the music. For the final QC pass the Quality Control pass , they might use the best headphones they can afford to catch any artifacts before the song goes to market. A good deal of mastering these days involves purging problems on an artifact level using tools such as RX Pro for Music. Mixing engineers, caught up in the swell of things, might not catch random ticks, pops, plosives, distortions, or spectral anomalies.

A mastering engineer is expected to do this. This means carefully positioning the start and stop points so the album has the right flow. Whether your material seamlessly segues from one tune to another, or requires specific pacing to get you out of one mood and into another vibe, it falls on the mastering engineer to execute these moves. ISRC numbers, UPN codes, song titles, artist information, all of it must be collated and imbued into the file, usually handled by the mastering engineer.

Keep in mind that there are a lot of different delivery systems out there. Streaming platforms may sometimes prefer a high res sample rate and a bit resolution, but CDs require Some aggregators call for premade mp3s, and how these are encoded makes a big difference RX, again, has a great MP3 encoder that naturally fights distortion.

Your mastering engineer keeps track of all these formats, as well as conventions behind modern day deliveries. Each set of files is quality-controlled to ensure no glitch gets through. Now, with generalized definitions out of the way, we can cover what differentiates mixing from mastering in a more granular way. While I cannot speak for all mixing and mastering engineers, there are some key differences in workflow between these disciplines, regardless of genre.

Because mixers receive multiple tracks, a chunk of their job, at least in the earliest stage, is organizational in nature—labeling and color-coding tracks, ordering them hierarchically in a DAW, and creating instrument groups and submixes. Once this is done, a mixer will proceed to the more creative tasks of mixing—EQing, compressing, transient shaping, effectuating, and more.