How should my record sound?

How Should My Masters sound? Mastering World Blog

 

This is completely up to you, but the mastering engineer will be able to gauge what kind of thing you want. It’s important to remember when mastering that this process is the refining process, it’s the tidying up and clarity element of your mixes.

So, usually just by listening to your tracks, the mastering engineer will have a good idea of how he or she should go about mastering the tracks.

With mastering, there is no one-size fits all preset, so every single job is different, the key thing you need to have post-mastering is a brilliant sounding track, that you are super happy with.

If you are particular and have some great reference ideas of what you want the end result to be, that’s great. With online mastering it’s important that there is great communication between you and your mastering engineer, this way you get your tracks back sounding exactly how you wanted them too.

So how should they sound when you get your tracks back?

They should sound crisp, detailed, cleaner and the overall level of the track will also be louder. The whole point of mastering is to refine the mixes of a track, to tidy up the loose ends and tighten up the overall sound. Does your track tick all of the boxes I just mentioned? Great, your track will sound perfect.

 

What if I’m not sure on how the mastered track sounds? 

That’s fine, you can get back in touch with your engineer through the Mastering World email tool and let them know what you would like to hear different. We also suggest that you give the mastered tracks a few plays on different sets of speakers, and over a couple of days to a week or so. This way you know exactly what you like and don’t like, it also lets you hear the tracks as your listeners would.