December 24, 2024 • 38 mins
In this episode of Inside the Mix, we dive into the world of DIY mastering. Whether you're curious about mastering music fundamentals, the basic steps of mastering, or simply want to understand what mastering a song really is, this episode has you covered.
Join me as I sit down with mastering engineer Eric Mitchell to uncover the techniques, tools, and insights needed to achieve professional-quality results, even in a home studio. Learn about gain staging, overcoming the limitations of home mastering setups, and why experience plays a critical role in achieving the perfect sound.
What you’ll learn in this episode:
- Understanding the feasibility of DIY mastering in home studios
- Importance of ear training and room acoustics
- Common pitfalls, such as poor gain staging
- Mastering workflow tips and essential tools
- The significance of reference tracks in mastering
- Addressing misconceptions about loudness and streaming
- Eric’s approach of using project files instead of stereo mixes
- Advice for those wanting to pursue a career in mastering
- The need for patience and dedication in developing mastering skills
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Bill (00:00):
Inside the mix.
What's up?
It's Bill, I just watched yourepisode on the 1176 into the
LA-2A, one of my go-to's.
I'm using my Apollo right nowinside console.
I got an odd combination goinghere.
I'm using a TubeTec CL-1B intoa Distressor, into a Pultec
Curious how it's going to soundin that speak pipe app.
(00:21):
Anyways, I subbed and likedkiller content.
Man, I could watch that stuffforever.
I'll be looking out for you,thanks.
Eric Mitchell (00:28):
Like we're talking about all these like ads
, like you'll see somebody wholike bought soothe because they
saw an ad but the signal runningin the soothe is like 60 B in
the red.
It's like soothe can't do itsbest job when it's being fed
signals like that.
So it's really just educatingthem on why it matters and how
to keep track of the gains andstuff.
Bill (00:52):
You're listening to the Inside the Mix podcast with your
host, Mark Matthews.
Marc Matthews (00:57):
Hello and welcome to the Inside the Mix podcast.
I'm Mark Matthews, your host,musician, producer and mix and
mastering engineer.
You've come to the right placeif you want to know more about
your favourite synth musicartists, music engineering and
production, songwriting and themusic industry.
I've been writing, producing,mixing and mastering music for
over 15 years and I want toshare what I've learnt with you.
(01:18):
Merry Christmas, folks, andwelcome to the Inside the Mix
podcast.
Ho ho ho.
It is December the 24th, 2024,and I hope you are gearing up
for an amazing Christmas.
I know I am for certain.
So a big welcome to the newlisteners.
Make sure you hit follow onyour podcast player of choice
(01:38):
and, if you're watching this onYouTube, hit subscribe and the
notification bell so you getnotified of new episodes.
And to the returning listeners,always a huge welcome back.
This episode is a rerun.
I don't do this often, but itis December the 24th and this
episode is the most popularepisode of 2024.
So a huge thank you toeverybody who's listened and
(02:00):
supported the podcast this year.
I've spoken to some amazingpeople, made some great friends,
both on the podcast and you,the listeners, as well.
So huge thank you to everyone.
I can't wait to see what 2025brings as well.
I get my words wrong here.
I'm too excited for Christmas.
I love the festive season.
Anyway, this is episode 143 andit dropped in the spring of 2024
(02:25):
.
And it's my discussion withmastering engineer Eric Mitchell
and it's titled the art of DIYmastering tips and strategies to
master your own music.
In this episode, we discuss DIYmastering and home studio
limitations, the evolution ofmastering techniques, which DAW
is best for mastering, thepurpose of a reference track,
the benefits of gain staging andthen mastering and workflow
(02:48):
advice for you folks.
So, without further ado, let'sdive into my chat with Eric
Mitchell of Eric Mitchell Audioand have a great Christmas and a
happy new year when it arrives.
Folks.
Hey, folks, in this episode.
I'm very excited to welcome myguest today, the brains behind
Eric Mitchell Audio fromConnecticut.
(03:08):
Eric Mitchell Hi, eric, how areyou and thanks for joining me
today.
Good, how are you?
Man?
Great to be here.
Yeah, I'm good.
I was just saying off air thatI've got a toasted face, haven't
been sunburnt, but apart fromthat, I'm doing all right.
I thought I might get struck bysome sort of heat stroke or
something, but thankfully Ididn't.
But apart from that, I'm good,yeah, yeah.
So we were chatting off airthat we actually put this in the
(03:29):
calendar about six-plus monthsago, so I've been excited to
chat with you about all thingsmastering.
It's a nice topic, as it alwaysis mastering, but it fits in
nicely to the sort of curatedepisodes I've put together.
Recently.
I've had numerous masteringengineers, more this year than
any other year in this sequenceof episodes, so it's really,
(03:50):
really cool.
So I'm just going to read a bitfrom your bio for the audience
who might not be familiar withyourself.
So, contrary to a large portionof the people with careers in
the industry, who tend tospecialize in one area, eric has
all the bases covered, equallyskilled across the board, with a
well-seasoned history ofsuccess to back it up
songwriting, music production,tracking, mixing, mastering,
live sound, commercial audio, etal.
(04:11):
So the largest portion oferic's clients are electronic
artists and labels, and if anylisteners are fans of glass jaw,
I remember listening to glassjaw, um, when I was going
through my sort of metal metalstage.
I still am.
To be honest, eric's beenresponsible for how they sound
since well live, since 2018, andhe's also remastered the 20th
anniversary vinyl box set.
(04:31):
That's so cool.
In addition to theaforementioned, eric also
educates through production,songwriting and DAW lessons
workshops in person and remotely, and in this episode we're
going to be unlocking thesecrets to preparing mixes for
mastering and just generalmastering how-to DIY in
(04:51):
particular.
So I thought, eric, it'd bequite cool if you could talk a
bit about DIY mastery.
Can artists this is quite adivisive question can artists
achieve good results masteringtheir music in a home studio
environment?
Maybe if you could talk aboutsome limitations versus working
with a professional masteringengineer.
What are your thoughts?
Eric Mitchell (05:12):
Sure, I think I mean the short answer is yes, I
think it's possible for artiststo master their own music, but I
think the the most importanttool there, which most people
don't focus enough on, is justthe ears, and I think that's the
biggest difference you getbetween, like a DIY master that
(05:37):
somebody is just kind ofdeciding to do themselves,
versus somebody who is actually,you know, traveled the path, uh
, to put the time in with theirears, to be one um, and you know
, with that also comes with alot of the, the things that you
learn once you put that yourtime in, like having the room
tuned and set up a certain wayso that your, you know, your,
(06:01):
your response and everything iswhat you expect.
And and I just see a lot ofpeople who do want to do this
themselves, like they seem to belooking for that, like silver
bullet plug-in, or they spend alot on plug-ins because you know
they're they're falling victimto like all the marketing now,
like this one plug-in is whatyou need for the best master on
(06:22):
the planet, and you know allthose instagram ads we get all
the time and and so I reallyjust think the biggest gap there
is just like that experienceand the time, um, you know,
between somebody who's you knowthey say 10 000 hours plus you
need to be a pro or whatever, um.
So, that being said, I thinkpeople, people can definitely do
(06:44):
it themselves, but you have to,or at least for me, when I
first started doing this,because it wasn't even
intentional, was like realizingjust how much time that 10,000
hours is, and like how muchsacrifice in your life and
everything that you kind of haveto put in to be able to afford
(07:05):
yourself that putting that timeinto to train your ears and
everything.
So, um, I would just say youknow people that do want to do
it themselves.
Don't be looking for the silverbullet plugin.
You could, you should be ableto do a good master with stock
dot plugins at the end of theday, and, um, just be putting
your, your time in and howeveryou want to do that, whether
(07:28):
it's your own stuff, masteringfor your friends, for practice,
whatever you know, there's lotsof services online where they'll
give you a project or somethingto test master.
You know.
Just, you just need the timewith the ears.
Marc Matthews (07:39):
So, uh, 10 000 hours.
This is that's the same withany sort of discipline, isn't it
?
You sort of need to put inthose 10,000 hours and it sounds
like a lot, but you have to doit.
It's like it's like they'reexercising that creative muscle
and like the more you do it, thebetter you're going to get.
And I think is our focus.
I've written that here for youin my notes as you were talking.
There is really reallyimportant.
And the silver bullet youmentioned as well, because, like
(08:01):
you say, you get, you getbombarded with emails.
You go on YouTube and thealgorithm is what it is and then
every advert is just oh man,you need this plugin.
This sounds so good and I justhave my head in my hands every
time I see it.
It's like, every time it's like, oh, this is the best thing
ever, and it's just like you'renot helping.
(08:21):
Well, I guess you are,otherwise it would do it in a
way.
It kind of like I don't know.
It's just it doesn't seem to melike that.
It's really gonna be of thatbenefit if everybody is saying
like this silver, this is thesilver bullet not just in
mastering but music productionin general period, like creating
a chord progression.
This will do it for you.
This will create the beat foryou.
This will make mix it for you.
(08:42):
Yeah, this will improve the lowend.
It's just like yeah you cantell yeah I could just go on a
rant for about an hour aboutthat and it's saying right you
know, but I won't.
I won't because the listenerswill get a bit bored of me doing
that.
But I've got a question off theback of what you said there
about the room being tuned,which is really, really
important.
When you were starting out inin this mastering game, what was
(09:05):
your first sort of focus thatyou really wanted to dial in?
Was it like the, the listeningand being able to critically
listen and use your ears, or didyou focus on getting the room
right first?
Which one would you do first?
Eric Mitchell (09:18):
uh well, what I would do now is is definitely
like focus on the room.
And you know like I made themistake, like a lot of people do
, and at the start I didn'tconsider like my monitors in the
room one thing.
I was just thought of them aslike the monitors in my room,
but the monitors are what theyare in that room, so it's kind
(09:42):
of like the room and thespeakers are one thing
themselves and you, you know,you can go to a different room
with the same speakers and youget a different response.
So, starting to consider thewhole environment as one one
unit that needs to be, you know,considered all those aspects
together and that's likespeakers conversion and the room
.
I think of all that as onething.
(10:04):
When I started it was just theears and so I was on like cheap
speakers in an untreated roomand I was like do you know,
doing the car tests after everymaster and you know all that
kind of stuff and you know,thankfully, car tests is like a
distant memory.
But you know and I guess that'sanother thing, that's actually
(10:25):
a good gauge.
It's like if you as an engineer, if you're still, you know, you
got to do car tests after everymix and like check your stuff.
Um, I would say like that's anindicator that you're pretty far
off from like where your earsshould be to be doing like
professional work.
You know, because there's neverany question in what I'm
(10:47):
hearing.
It just goes straight to theclient.
There's never a card test.
Marc Matthews (10:52):
Yeah, it's interesting you mention that,
because I've had thisconversation a few times now
this year and the end of lastyear, because, once again, this
goes back to a lot of the thingsyou read online about how you
test it in X, y, z scenario, andthe feedback now that I hear
more and more of is like is istrust.
What you're hearing out yourspeakers, that's where you're
working out most of the day,isn't it?
So that's the, the platformyou're listening on and like
(11:14):
when you so, when you send it toa client for them to audition,
are you um instructing them tolisten to it on the playback
medium they use the most, or doyou tell them to listen to it on
various different platforms?
Eric Mitchell (11:26):
I just send it.
I don't even tell them what tolisten.
Like it's.
I mean it should.
A good master should sound theway that it's intended, no
matter what they're listening on.
I mean, obviously, like laptopto it.
Something with sub bass will bea big difference, but you,
generally speaking, um, themaster should stand up to
whatever.
Marc Matthews (11:43):
So I just I just send it and wait for the
feedback I'm a bit of a tangenthere, so you I asked you a
question there about, uh, usingyour ears and the treatment of
the room just like quickly.
Could you just tell ouraudience a bit?
I mean, this is, I shouldprobably ask this right at the
beginning how did you get intomastering?
What was what initially spurredyou on to pursue it as your
main focus?
Eric Mitchell (12:05):
It was necessity when I say necessity is the
mother of all invention, so it'slike I was actually an artist
first.
I've been an artist since I wasa kid.
I started out playing guitarand everything in hardcore metal
bands playing guitar andeverything in hardcore metal
(12:27):
bands and at that time we paidother engineers to do everything
for us and towards the end ofthat I started in our sessions
with other engineers.
They started letting me gethands-on on the boards and one
(12:48):
of our albums we did wasactually on the the same console
.
That queen's record wasrecorded on the old, uh, flying
fader like massive, large formatconsole, which was pretty cool
to get to be on that.
But um, I went from that toelectronic music and, like you
know, heavy EDM, electro, andthis was like in uh, I don't
know, maybe 15, 10 to 15 yearsago when that EDM boom first
(13:11):
really started to take off andwe we did an album and I was
still working with, like my rockengineer peers at the time, and
so he referred us to go to aprominent mastering engineer
(13:34):
that was out of Massachusettsand so we went there and this
mastering session essentiallyled us to walking away with like
a master that we weren't happywith and it basically just we
couldn't get it, or the engineercouldn't get it loud enough,
and he was kind of trying tosteer us away from loudness,
(13:57):
which for EDM you can't reallydo.
And so, long story short, I Iwas like, okay, well, I'm going
to have to just learn how to dothis on my own.
I guess, you know, because mostof the other mastering
engineers at the time I wastalking to were laughing at the
kind of levels that we weretrying to get to, which I know
(14:20):
they've seen, but you know it'sjust part of the course with EDM
, know they're ever seen, butyou know it's just part for the
course with edm.
So I um just forced myselfthere to start figuring out the,
the mastering side, which withedm and loudness, it's really
kind of tied to the, the mix.
It's like you can't take justany old mix and and crank it to
those levels via mastering and,uh, expect it to sound good.
(14:44):
So like it kind of pushed me toevolve to this very peculiar
system which, as far as I cantell, I don't think anybody else
is working this way.
But and I'm not sure how youfeel about it, this might be
opening a can of worms, but Iessentially every single I
(15:06):
shouldn't say every single like95% of the work that I do for my
clients.
They're sending me theirproject file Not a bounce, not
stems, but their actual DAWproject file, and I'm opening it
natively.
So I have a metric F ton ofplugins to be able to open
(15:27):
whatever anybody sends me, evenif it's stuff that I don't use
on my own, because I have to beable to open their project.
And so the reason that Ievolved to do this is because,
like I said, especiallyelectronic music has to be so
loud, the mix has to beengineered for that, and what
was happening was, most of thetime, people's mixes were not
(15:50):
appropriate for what they wanted.
In the end, and you know a lotof mastering engineers that will
say to me oh, you're notmastering, you're mix during
your, or you're mixing andmastering, which might be
partially true, but the thething I find interesting is that
they'll say that doing that isis a fault because I'm I'm
(16:10):
taking myself out of themastering perspective and I'm
going into the mixingperspective.
Well, my argument for that andwhy, ultimately, this came to be
more efficient for me, is thatif somebody sends me a stereo
file and I open it and the mixisn't appropriate for what
they're asking for.
I now have to stop and ask theclient can you send me a new mix
(16:36):
and can you do X, y, z?
So now I'm stopping, I'm takingmyself out of the moment where
I just listened and it's freshand I got to stop my flow and
now I got to ask for stuff andhope they get it right when they
send it back.
And that to me was a very likeconvoluted slowdown which you
know.
You just sat down, you're readyto do this.
(16:57):
Now you stop and ask forrevisions.
So ultimately, I just startedsaying send me your project file
.
So ultimately, I just startedsaying send me your project file
.
And now, if, when I open thatproduct file, I hit spacebar and
hit play, there's no differentto my ears whether I'm listening
to a stereo mix or or stems ortheir project file.
I'm still hearing the samething.
At the first time.
It's just now.
(17:17):
I don't have to stop and askfor changes if I hear oh, the
kick low end is fighting thebass, I just fix it directly on
those things.
Proceed with the master.
I'm not stopping the mix orchange the way the song sounds.
I'm just it's a no compromiseapproach, like whereas you know,
on a stereo master oftentimesyou have to compromise one thing
(17:39):
to fix another, because so thisway I'm not making any
compromise, another because sothis way I'm not making any
compromise it's all fixeddirectly there and I can
engineer what's feeding themastering for the loudness, so
it kind of all goes hand in hand.
Marc Matthews (17:54):
It's like one process for me that's uh, that's
a really interesting work forme, I've not, I've not that that
is.
I mean you must have quite thearsenal of plugins.
Eric Mitchell (18:03):
Yeah, it's a lot.
Marc Matthews (18:04):
A lot of people use different stuff.
What about DAWs then?
Does that mean you're?
Are you open to any DAWsubmissions?
So someone says you LogicAbleton, reason, cubase,
whatever it may be.
Eric Mitchell (18:15):
Yep.
Bill (18:16):
I literally have them all.
Marc Matthews (18:17):
Wow, you must be pretty like au fait with all
those different DAWs then.
Eric Mitchell (18:22):
Yeah, it forced me to get familiar with all of
them.
The one that I haven't got onboard with is FL, but that one I
just never wanted to jump inthere.
So if someone's in FL, Ihaven't sent me stems, but even
(18:44):
if they're not sending me aproject file, you know, most of
the time it's at least stems.
Marc Matthews (18:47):
Very, maybe like a half a dozen times a year I'm
mastering a stereo mix wow,that's interesting what you
mentioned about fl, becausehaving chatted to a number of
sort of artists who, uh, whosort of move in that realm, they
, they love fl and they.
But I guess it depends on theindividual, doesn't?
Eric Mitchell (19:04):
it's subjective yeah, the few times I've been in
it, it just you know how theyall kind of things either click
or don't.
Yeah, that they.
You know even ableton.
At first I guess I didn't likeit.
I called it on on ableton, um,which is actually.
I prefer ableton actually formastering.
That's like my dot that I liketo use.
But, um, you know, fl, forwhatever reason, it just never
(19:26):
clicked with me and I was justlike we'll, we'll skip that one,
but, um, oh, the other thing Iforgot to say too is another
reason why I really like doingthat is because even if somebody
sends me stems, uh, a lot oftime when people, even when I
just go into their project orI'm listening to the stems,
there's processing that they'veput on, that's baked in, and so
(19:50):
if it's a stem I can't take itoff.
But if I'm in the project fileI can remove the bad processing
directly, like if I passeverything in the project or you
know what I mean, like theweird isms you see when you're
in there and that stuff that Ican avoid.
Marc Matthews (20:07):
Yeah, I know what you mean when you look into a
project and you see some veryweird stuff.
Eric Mitchell (20:11):
Yeah.
Marc Matthews (20:12):
What you mentioned now about high-passing
stuff.
I see that a lot.
Yeah, when people arehigh-passing, they're like I'm
not entirely sure why you'vedone that.
I don't know, maybe it's arunning theme for this episode,
but again, it's things you seeonline and they've done as a
result of, like, a TikTok or areal video.
Eric Mitchell (20:28):
Yeah, oh yeah, you've tiktok or a real video,
yeah oh yeah, you got to do thisso you can clean up your low
end, put a high pass on everychannel, like oh, yeah, yeah,
yeah, great, now I've gotnothing in the mastering.
Marc Matthews (20:38):
Yeah, it's completely dead down there yeah,
I know it's interesting, that,isn't it?
So with regards to that then,like if they're sending you a
mix and you're going in and youcan alter these bits and pieces,
are you having a conversation?
Do you let them know beforehand, before you master it?
Because what, like what, ifthey were to turn around and say
, well, that's my, I supposeit's devil's advocate, what the
(20:59):
what?
That's my creative vision there.
I've put that there, excludingthe high pass, because that is
what it is but it's maybesomething else.
They're like oh no, I wantedthat in there, it's that's what
I wanted as part of thearrangement of my creative
vision.
Right like how is thatconversation?
And um, and what does thatentail?
Eric Mitchell (21:15):
luckily I can.
I can't really think of anytimes well, maybe once or twice
over, like my whole time doingthis, where somebody was like,
oh, like this and that changedand we need to get it back.
But I think that's becauseusually I'm a part of the
process.
So if it's a new client for thefirst time, I always have them
send me two to three referencetracks.
(21:35):
And something I also mentionedwith them, which a lot of people
I feel like don't talk about,especially for electronic music,
excuse me, is that thereference should be in the same
key.
Because if you and I've eventhis has come up a lot with
(21:56):
people that use, like you know,ozone, ai, assisted mixing or
whatever, these plugins thatanalyze and do stuff for you, if
you, if they're putting in atrack for that plug-in to
reference and analyze and eqmatch or whatever, and it's a
different key, especially withelectronic music, because it's
so sub bass centric, if you know, if you're listening to a track
(22:17):
in the sub bass fundamental,and this one's at 40 and the sub
bass fundamental, this one's at50, the EQ curves for those are
going to look very different.
So they so I'll make sure thatthe references they're giving me
, are in the same key, so thatit's an apples to apples
comparison.
And so then from there it'sreally just like, I guess, my
experience in hearing the thingsthat are congruent through
(22:41):
their references, like what'sthe DNA of what they're going
for and then I just engineeredtheir song into that vein.
So I guess it's kind of like aone-stop shop kind of approach,
like give me, you write the songand tell me what your intention
was in the end, and then I'llmake it match the intention
(23:04):
that's a really good one.
Marc Matthews (23:05):
I like I'd never on hand on.
I never considered actuallysaying make sure it's in the
same key and audience listening.
You're probably going to seethat a lot now when this
episode's released as anextraction from this episode on
Instagram.
Now, when it comes to top, tipfor this week's episode.
That's amazing.
As soon as you said that, assoon as you said make sure it's
(23:25):
in the same key, my immediatethought was fundamental
frequencies and I was like ofcourse that makes perfect sense
was like fundamental frequenciesand I was like, of course that
makes like perfect sense, itmakes total sense that to do
that.
Um, that's that's so good.
I absolutely love that.
Going back to daws, I do oftengo on tangents in this.
Um, because you've used so manylike for mastery, because you
say you use ableton primarilyright for mastery, would you say
(23:48):
then, if you were to recommenda daw for its native plugins for
mastering, would you say ab.
If you were to recommend a DAWfor its native plugins for
mastering, would you say Abletonwould be your recommendation or
would it be another?
Eric Mitchell (23:56):
So my recommendation would be to use
whichever one you find the mostefficient and inspiring to you.
I don't think the DAW matters,I just think you know it's like
a car.
You know every car will get youfrom A to B, it's just the
experience while you're in thereon that drive is different.
(24:17):
You know some people want aMercedes, some people are fine
with a Ford Focus, like it.
Just they're all fundamentallydifferent and so whichever one
fits you best, you should runwith that.
The only caveat there is thatfiguring on that that out means
you kind of gotta give a littletime to each one to give it a
fair shot.
And and like I said at first,when I so I was primarily when I
(24:42):
first learned it was like onpro tools, cakewalk, um, okay,
yeah, yeah, which turned intosonar, which, and then I went
from there to Reason and soAbleton was like so foreign and
like weird and I hated it atfirst.
But with EDM I had no choice.
(25:04):
I had to be in there forclients and so after I gave it
time, all the things I hatedabout it and we're like why do
they do it this way?
I understand because it was forworkflow, and now that workflow
is very efficient for me and Ilove it.
So it's it's kind of like thesong you listen to.
The first time you don't like,but you listen to it a bunch, it
grows on you I know what youmean.
Marc Matthews (25:25):
I did that with logic because I primarily use
logic and I went from logic 9and then I went to pro tools and
then I came back to Logic.
I dabbled quite a bit withAbleton when I went through this
phase of using Max MSP and Iwas creating plugins and doing
all bits and pieces.
Man and you could bring it intoAbleton and create interfaces
and stuff and it was great andit is a DAW that I'd like to
extend more time to because itdoes look good.
(25:48):
But you mentioned reason.
Then did you use reason priorto the thing?
Because it's not always beenaccessible?
Well then, you've not alwaysbeen able to use third-party
plugins in reason.
Yes, did you use it before?
Eric Mitchell (26:00):
or after you were able to do before and we were
actually.
I got endorsed by propellerheads oh nice um, so like we had
a whole thing on their site forthat was like the one you're
talking about, the old one,before they added the external
plug-in stuff.
So we I was using it, uh, forthe, the edm project I was in,
actually we were writing all ourmusic and mixing and mastering
(26:20):
it in there um, but they had,like I think they had just
started doing those rackextensions, so it wasn't wasn't
like you could just use vsts butyou could buy, like they had
that shop for rack extensionswhere some people made like
plug-ins for it.
Marc Matthews (26:35):
Yeah, I mean I dabbled with it once again.
It's like you said at thebeginning, when I started out I
was trialing all these differentDAWs and this was around the
time of when you can do that.
I remember using Thor a lot.
I mean I really enjoyed usingthat.
I was also like the educationside of things.
I was teaching a class of theseprimary school kids how to use
Reason and I caught my fingers.
(26:57):
But really quick there, becausethis was before I knew anything
about teaching.
I was like yeah, it'll be fine,I'll show them once and they'll
get it, and like no, as youprobably know when it comes to
teaching.
But what you've mentioned thereabout like they're sending you
projects, you're going in, youcan do X, Y, Z in there before
you get to the mastering phase,I thought it might be quite cool
.
I've got a question here withregards to what are the most
(27:18):
frequent issues.
We mentioned about the low passand whatnot.
What are the most frequentissues you encounter when
mastering tracks that areoriginated in home studio
environments?
Eric Mitchell (27:29):
Number one worst offender, I, I would say, would
be like game staging, and bythat I don't mean, you know,
making sure that your masterisn't over zero.
I mean, that's an obvious one,but like, I'm just talking like
channel to channel, plug in toplug in, um, a lot of times I'm
(27:50):
seeing producers.
They're just, you know, they'rewriting electronic music or even
metal and stuff, and they'rejust dragging in, you know, drum
samples or using like druminstruments and all this stuff
in which the sound is alreadyset up to be very loud, or the
samples are already at peak, andthey're dragging them into
their projects and they'releaving all the channels at zero
(28:11):
.
And so the master's in the redand they just like throw a
limiter or something on thereand think, oh, I'm all set, my
meter's not red anymore.
It's like, well, it's not redthere, but it's red in front of
your limiter.
You know what I mean.
So they don't understand thegain staging.
And and even you know, likewe're talking about all these
like ads, like you'll seesomebody who like bought soothe
(28:33):
because they saw an ad but thesignal running in the soothe is
like 60b in the red.
It's like soothe can't do itsbest job when it's being fed
signals like that.
So it's really just educatingthem on why it matters and and
how to keep track of of thegains and stuff.
Marc Matthews (28:51):
That's interesting.
You mentioned that about gainstaging because I remember I saw
this on TikTok and it was maybethis sort of time last year and
there was so many videos ofpeople calling out other people
for getting the definition ofgain staging wrong and it kind
of alludes what you said thereabout, like, because that's
essentially what they were doing.
But with regards to gainstaging then, like, what would
(29:17):
your perfect description of itbe?
If you were to explain it tosomeone who is new to mixing
production?
What would your like sort ofdefinition, perfect definition,
of gain staging be?
Eric Mitchell (29:25):
well, the way, the way I like to do it is like
when I'm writing is I just start.
When I open up a project freshto start, I just set it up right
from the get-go to have abuffer like.
So you know, typically if youbring in your kick to start or
whatever the loudest thing, I'llset that channel like minus 10
db and that's like my zero.
(29:45):
So if I know that the kick isgoing to be the loudest thing
and that's at minus 10, anythingelse shouldn't be going over
that.
And so you know, once all mychannels are combining at the
end, that usually gives meenough room.
Um, I'm not one of those peoplethat's like oh, you need, it
needs to be 60b under zerobefore you send me the master,
whatever.
I'm just like, as long as it'sunder zero and it's not clipping
(30:07):
, that's fine, like.
And it's especially finebecause I'm going into the mix
anyway and have the ability tofix the gain staging if it's
wrong.
But ultimately, yeah, it's justlike make sure you just have
the headroom.
And you know, I find like the10 db, 10 db down start point
leaves enough headroom that bythe end of a track, um, where I
(30:28):
should be, um, that that's good.
Marc Matthews (30:30):
I think that's a very, very good sort of tip to
give out there with regards tobecause I often get asked that
question.
It's like where should I start?
I mean, you know there's thetop-down approach, isn't there?
You can start with vocal and gothe other way, but once again,
I think depending on music mighthave an impact on that.
So a nice little segue fromsort of gain staging and this
(30:50):
comes for want of a better wayof putting it and sort of
clarity for streaming.
So you mentioned there aboutEDM, and what would your advice
be to someone who is sort ofmastering their own music and
they are obviously going to bereleasing it on a streaming
platform?
Because there is the constantdiscussion online with regards
(31:10):
to streaming platform and minus14 laughs, blah, blah blah.
And the audience have probablyheard that many times now.
What's your advice for someonewho is doing it themselves?
Eric Mitchell (31:20):
um, with regards to sort of levels for streaming
platforms, well, this is anothercan of worms, probably, but
yeah, um, I mean, I feel like,um, it needs to.
The masters now need to becompetitive, like especially, uh
, you know, in loud genres likemetal, rock, edm, especially,
(31:44):
obviously.
And I do think it's importantto consider streaming, but I
feel like most of the whole, uh,master for streaming, target
speak is overflow from when itfirst, when spotify like first
came out, because originally ifyour track was too loud, it was,
(32:09):
they had a limiter that theywould put on it and it would be
limited and you know.
So now, at that point, you'rethe way your track sounds to the
listener.
You're at the mercy of, likeSpotify's random algorithm
limiter which could change yoursound.
But then they changed it.
So now all they're doing isjust turning it down.
And what that means and what Itell my clients when they say,
(32:31):
well, should I have a master forstreaming and a master to hand
out to DJs?
It's like no, just do yourmaster master the song for what
it is, it make it as loud as thetracks you're referencing make
you know, so that when you handit out to a dj and they put it
in their usb to go on the cdjslike the.
It's competitive and loud andas long as it still sounds the
(32:52):
way you want at that loud volume, it's going to sound exactly
the same on spot.
Just turn it down and who cares, because they're using the same
measurement algorithm for everytrack, so it's not like it's
going to go from yours tosomebody else's and even though
yours is turned down it will bequieter.
It's just be turned down tomatch the quiet ones.
Marc Matthews (33:13):
I think that's really important, because what
you mentioned there about howwhen Spotify started out and
they were using the limiter andthen they changed it, I think
that's important to realize thatif you are going to do it for
that particular level, for astreaming platform, they could
change the goalposts at anypoint and then your master is
not fit for purpose there.
So, yeah, that's really goodbecause it's nice.
(33:33):
I said at the beginning of thisepisode I've got this curated
series now for mastering andwhat the audience hopefully are
hearing is just that it's got tobe competitive and it's just
got to be complementary to themusic.
Don't worry about what Spotifyis going to do to it, because
ultimately it's just going toturn it down and like the same
with Apple and Tidal and whatnot.
(33:53):
So, yeah, key pieces ofinformation.
So with regards to that, um,we're sort of coming towards the
end now.
So, final words of advice, aswe call it, for aspiring
producers and artists working inhome studios.
What's one key piece of adviceyou would offer to help them
elevate their mastering, dro,mastering workflow?
Eric Mitchell (34:14):
um, I think the key, key, most key piece of
advice would just be going backto what we were talking about
earlier, which is just to to bereal with yourself about what
it's going to take like to sitthere and say I want to be a
mastering engineer.
(34:35):
What you're really saying toyourself is I want to make a
bunch of sacrifice because I'mgoing to have to put a ton of
time in my life into learningthis and doing thousands of
mixes before I even get good.
You know what I mean.
Like it's you, you have tounderstand what you're signing
up for, because, at least for me, once I decided, okay, I want
(34:57):
to make a living from music, myown, uh, goal posts were always
like years too short.
You know.
I was like, okay, in threeyears from now I'll be doing
this.
And then it's like three yearsand I'm like man, I'm only this
far, like what the heck?
And then it's like, okay, okay,well, five years.
And you know, long story short,I it took probably like to be
(35:21):
sitting here talking to youcomfortably doing this for a
living.
Almost two decades, like a longtime.
You know what I mean, and so,um, and it's also just not
fooling yourself that, likethere's no magic gear, there's
no magic anything, it'sliterally just your ears, that's
it, and just managing that,because pursuing your passion in
(35:48):
a way that can afford youmaking a living is challenging.
It does take a lot of likemental gymnastics at least at
least my experience was likeit's hard to turn this into a
career, and so if that's, ifthat's really what you want to
do, just you'll save yourself alot of stress and depression and
and struggle if you can just behonest with yourself at what
(36:10):
it's going to take yeah, I thinkthat's really important.
Marc Matthews (36:12):
You got to put in the reps.
Ultimately, you got to beprepared to do in it for the
long haul, in it for the longhaul, put in the reps, and there
will be knockbacks and therewill be moments where you're
thinking actually is this right?
But?
Eric Mitchell (36:25):
you've just got to keep.
What did I do with my life?
Yeah, yeah, it could have beenso different.
Marc Matthews (36:30):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Really, really good stuff, eric, it's been a pleasure chatting
with you today.
If our audience want to findmore about you and what you do,
where should we send them?
Eric Mitchell (36:42):
You can go on Instagram.
It's at Eric Mitchell Audio orericmitchellaudiocom.
Fantastic.
Marc Matthews (36:50):
Audience.
I will put that in the shownotes, so please do go follow
Eric on Instagram and also checkout the website as well and
learn more about what he's doingwhat he's done in the past as
well.
Really, really good stuff, eric.
It's been an absolute pleasure.
I'm glad we've been finallyfinally been able to chat.
It's been a while and, yeah,yeah.
And I will catch up with yousoon.
Awesome man Sounds good.
Folks, before you go, I want tohear from you.
(37:12):
I want to know your favoriteepisode of the Inside the Mix
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Alternatively, you could justreview this episode.
Click the SpeakPipe link in theepisode description and you can
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(37:33):
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(37:55):
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Inside the mix.
What's up?
It's Bill, I just watched yourepisode on the 1176 into the
LA-2A, one of my go-to's.
I'm using my Apollo right nowinside console.
I got an odd combination goinghere.
I'm using a TubeTec CL-1B intoa Distressor, into a Pultec
Curious how it's going to soundin that speak pipe app.
(00:21):
Anyways, I subbed and likedkiller content.
Man, I could watch that stuffforever.
I'll be looking out for you,thanks.
Eric Mitchell (00:28):
Like we're talking about all these like ads
, like you'll see somebody wholike bought soothe because they
saw an ad but the signal runningin the soothe is like 60 B in
the red.
It's like soothe can't do itsbest job when it's being fed
signals like that.
So it's really just educatingthem on why it matters and how
to keep track of the gains andstuff.
Bill (00:52):
You're listening to the Inside the Mix podcast with your
host, Mark Matthews.
Marc Matthews (00:57):
Hello and welcome to the Inside the Mix podcast.
I'm Mark Matthews, your host,musician, producer and mix and
mastering engineer.
You've come to the right placeif you want to know more about
your favourite synth musicartists, music engineering and
production, songwriting and themusic industry.
I've been writing, producing,mixing and mastering music for
over 15 years and I want toshare what I've learnt with you.
(01:18):
Merry Christmas, folks, andwelcome to the Inside the Mix
podcast.
Ho ho ho.
It is December the 24th, 2024,and I hope you are gearing up
for an amazing Christmas.
I know I am for certain.
So a big welcome to the newlisteners.
Make sure you hit follow onyour podcast player of choice
(01:38):
and, if you're watching this onYouTube, hit subscribe and the
notification bell so you getnotified of new episodes.
And to the returning listeners,always a huge welcome back.
This episode is a rerun.
I don't do this often, but itis December the 24th and this
episode is the most popularepisode of 2024.
So a huge thank you toeverybody who's listened and
(02:00):
supported the podcast this year.
I've spoken to some amazingpeople, made some great friends,
both on the podcast and you,the listeners, as well.
So huge thank you to everyone.
I can't wait to see what 2025brings as well.
I get my words wrong here.
I'm too excited for Christmas.
I love the festive season.
Anyway, this is episode 143 andit dropped in the spring of 2024
(02:25):
.
And it's my discussion withmastering engineer Eric Mitchell
and it's titled the art of DIYmastering tips and strategies to
master your own music.
In this episode, we discuss DIYmastering and home studio
limitations, the evolution ofmastering techniques, which DAW
is best for mastering, thepurpose of a reference track,
the benefits of gain staging andthen mastering and workflow
(02:48):
advice for you folks.
So, without further ado, let'sdive into my chat with Eric
Mitchell of Eric Mitchell Audioand have a great Christmas and a
happy new year when it arrives.
Folks.
Hey, folks, in this episode.
I'm very excited to welcome myguest today, the brains behind
Eric Mitchell Audio fromConnecticut.
(03:08):
Eric Mitchell Hi, eric, how areyou and thanks for joining me
today.
Good, how are you?
Man?
Great to be here.
Yeah, I'm good.
I was just saying off air thatI've got a toasted face, haven't
been sunburnt, but apart fromthat, I'm doing all right.
I thought I might get struck bysome sort of heat stroke or
something, but thankfully Ididn't.
But apart from that, I'm good,yeah, yeah.
So we were chatting off airthat we actually put this in the
(03:29):
calendar about six-plus monthsago, so I've been excited to
chat with you about all thingsmastering.
It's a nice topic, as it alwaysis mastering, but it fits in
nicely to the sort of curatedepisodes I've put together.
Recently.
I've had numerous masteringengineers, more this year than
any other year in this sequenceof episodes, so it's really,
(03:50):
really cool.
So I'm just going to read a bitfrom your bio for the audience
who might not be familiar withyourself.
So, contrary to a large portionof the people with careers in
the industry, who tend tospecialize in one area, eric has
all the bases covered, equallyskilled across the board, with a
well-seasoned history ofsuccess to back it up
songwriting, music production,tracking, mixing, mastering,
live sound, commercial audio, etal.
(04:11):
So the largest portion oferic's clients are electronic
artists and labels, and if anylisteners are fans of glass jaw,
I remember listening to glassjaw, um, when I was going
through my sort of metal metalstage.
I still am.
To be honest, eric's beenresponsible for how they sound
since well live, since 2018, andhe's also remastered the 20th
anniversary vinyl box set.
(04:31):
That's so cool.
In addition to theaforementioned, eric also
educates through production,songwriting and DAW lessons
workshops in person and remotely, and in this episode we're
going to be unlocking thesecrets to preparing mixes for
mastering and just generalmastering how-to DIY in
(04:51):
particular.
So I thought, eric, it'd bequite cool if you could talk a
bit about DIY mastery.
Can artists this is quite adivisive question can artists
achieve good results masteringtheir music in a home studio
environment?
Maybe if you could talk aboutsome limitations versus working
with a professional masteringengineer.
What are your thoughts?
Eric Mitchell (05:12):
Sure, I think I mean the short answer is yes, I
think it's possible for artiststo master their own music, but I
think the the most importanttool there, which most people
don't focus enough on, is justthe ears, and I think that's the
biggest difference you getbetween, like a DIY master that
(05:37):
somebody is just kind ofdeciding to do themselves,
versus somebody who is actually,you know, traveled the path, uh
, to put the time in with theirears, to be one um, and you know
, with that also comes with alot of the, the things that you
learn once you put that yourtime in, like having the room
tuned and set up a certain wayso that your, you know, your,
(06:01):
your response and everything iswhat you expect.
And and I just see a lot ofpeople who do want to do this
themselves, like they seem to belooking for that, like silver
bullet plug-in, or they spend alot on plug-ins because you know
they're they're falling victimto like all the marketing now,
like this one plug-in is whatyou need for the best master on
(06:22):
the planet, and you know allthose instagram ads we get all
the time and and so I reallyjust think the biggest gap there
is just like that experienceand the time, um, you know,
between somebody who's you knowthey say 10 000 hours plus you
need to be a pro or whatever, um.
So, that being said, I thinkpeople, people can definitely do
(06:44):
it themselves, but you have to,or at least for me, when I
first started doing this,because it wasn't even
intentional, was like realizingjust how much time that 10,000
hours is, and like how muchsacrifice in your life and
everything that you kind of haveto put in to be able to afford
(07:05):
yourself that putting that timeinto to train your ears and
everything.
So, um, I would just say youknow people that do want to do
it themselves.
Don't be looking for the silverbullet plugin.
You could, you should be ableto do a good master with stock
dot plugins at the end of theday, and, um, just be putting
your, your time in and howeveryou want to do that, whether
(07:28):
it's your own stuff, masteringfor your friends, for practice,
whatever you know, there's lotsof services online where they'll
give you a project or somethingto test master.
You know.
Just, you just need the timewith the ears.
Marc Matthews (07:39):
So, uh, 10 000 hours.
This is that's the same withany sort of discipline, isn't it
?
You sort of need to put inthose 10,000 hours and it sounds
like a lot, but you have to doit.
It's like it's like they'reexercising that creative muscle
and like the more you do it, thebetter you're going to get.
And I think is our focus.
I've written that here for youin my notes as you were talking.
There is really reallyimportant.
And the silver bullet youmentioned as well, because, like
(08:01):
you say, you get, you getbombarded with emails.
You go on YouTube and thealgorithm is what it is and then
every advert is just oh man,you need this plugin.
This sounds so good and I justhave my head in my hands every
time I see it.
It's like, every time it's like, oh, this is the best thing
ever, and it's just like you'renot helping.
(08:21):
Well, I guess you are,otherwise it would do it in a
way.
It kind of like I don't know.
It's just it doesn't seem to melike that.
It's really gonna be of thatbenefit if everybody is saying
like this silver, this is thesilver bullet not just in
mastering but music productionin general period, like creating
a chord progression.
This will do it for you.
This will create the beat foryou.
This will make mix it for you.
(08:42):
Yeah, this will improve the lowend.
It's just like yeah you cantell yeah I could just go on a
rant for about an hour aboutthat and it's saying right you
know, but I won't.
I won't because the listenerswill get a bit bored of me doing
that.
But I've got a question off theback of what you said there
about the room being tuned,which is really, really
important.
When you were starting out inin this mastering game, what was
(09:05):
your first sort of focus thatyou really wanted to dial in?
Was it like the, the listeningand being able to critically
listen and use your ears, or didyou focus on getting the room
right first?
Which one would you do first?
Eric Mitchell (09:18):
uh well, what I would do now is is definitely
like focus on the room.
And you know like I made themistake, like a lot of people do
, and at the start I didn'tconsider like my monitors in the
room one thing.
I was just thought of them aslike the monitors in my room,
but the monitors are what theyare in that room, so it's kind
(09:42):
of like the room and thespeakers are one thing
themselves and you, you know,you can go to a different room
with the same speakers and youget a different response.
So, starting to consider thewhole environment as one one
unit that needs to be, you know,considered all those aspects
together and that's likespeakers conversion and the room
.
I think of all that as onething.
(10:04):
When I started it was just theears and so I was on like cheap
speakers in an untreated roomand I was like do you know,
doing the car tests after everymaster and you know all that
kind of stuff and you know,thankfully, car tests is like a
distant memory.
But you know and I guess that'sanother thing, that's actually
(10:25):
a good gauge.
It's like if you as an engineer, if you're still, you know, you
got to do car tests after everymix and like check your stuff.
Um, I would say like that's anindicator that you're pretty far
off from like where your earsshould be to be doing like
professional work.
You know, because there's neverany question in what I'm
(10:47):
hearing.
It just goes straight to theclient.
There's never a card test.
Marc Matthews (10:52):
Yeah, it's interesting you mention that,
because I've had thisconversation a few times now
this year and the end of lastyear, because, once again, this
goes back to a lot of the thingsyou read online about how you
test it in X, y, z scenario, andthe feedback now that I hear
more and more of is like is istrust.
What you're hearing out yourspeakers, that's where you're
working out most of the day,isn't it?
So that's the, the platformyou're listening on and like
(11:14):
when you so, when you send it toa client for them to audition,
are you um instructing them tolisten to it on the playback
medium they use the most, or doyou tell them to listen to it on
various different platforms?
Eric Mitchell (11:26):
I just send it.
I don't even tell them what tolisten.
Like it's.
I mean it should.
A good master should sound theway that it's intended, no
matter what they're listening on.
I mean, obviously, like laptopto it.
Something with sub bass will bea big difference, but you,
generally speaking, um, themaster should stand up to
whatever.
Marc Matthews (11:43):
So I just I just send it and wait for the
feedback I'm a bit of a tangenthere, so you I asked you a
question there about, uh, usingyour ears and the treatment of
the room just like quickly.
Could you just tell ouraudience a bit?
I mean, this is, I shouldprobably ask this right at the
beginning how did you get intomastering?
What was what initially spurredyou on to pursue it as your
main focus?
Eric Mitchell (12:05):
It was necessity when I say necessity is the
mother of all invention, so it'slike I was actually an artist
first.
I've been an artist since I wasa kid.
I started out playing guitarand everything in hardcore metal
bands playing guitar andeverything in hardcore metal
(12:27):
bands and at that time we paidother engineers to do everything
for us and towards the end ofthat I started in our sessions
with other engineers.
They started letting me gethands-on on the boards and one
(12:48):
of our albums we did wasactually on the the same console
.
That queen's record wasrecorded on the old, uh, flying
fader like massive, large formatconsole, which was pretty cool
to get to be on that.
But um, I went from that toelectronic music and, like you
know, heavy EDM, electro, andthis was like in uh, I don't
know, maybe 15, 10 to 15 yearsago when that EDM boom first
(13:11):
really started to take off andwe we did an album and I was
still working with, like my rockengineer peers at the time, and
so he referred us to go to aprominent mastering engineer
(13:34):
that was out of Massachusettsand so we went there and this
mastering session essentiallyled us to walking away with like
a master that we weren't happywith and it basically just we
couldn't get it, or the engineercouldn't get it loud enough,
and he was kind of trying tosteer us away from loudness,
(13:57):
which for EDM you can't reallydo.
And so, long story short, I Iwas like, okay, well, I'm going
to have to just learn how to dothis on my own.
I guess, you know, because mostof the other mastering
engineers at the time I wastalking to were laughing at the
kind of levels that we weretrying to get to, which I know
(14:20):
they've seen, but you know it'sjust part of the course with EDM
, know they're ever seen, butyou know it's just part for the
course with edm.
So I um just forced myselfthere to start figuring out the,
the mastering side, which withedm and loudness, it's really
kind of tied to the, the mix.
It's like you can't take justany old mix and and crank it to
those levels via mastering and,uh, expect it to sound good.
(14:44):
So like it kind of pushed me toevolve to this very peculiar
system which, as far as I cantell, I don't think anybody else
is working this way.
But and I'm not sure how youfeel about it, this might be
opening a can of worms, but Iessentially every single I
(15:06):
shouldn't say every single like95% of the work that I do for my
clients.
They're sending me theirproject file Not a bounce, not
stems, but their actual DAWproject file, and I'm opening it
natively.
So I have a metric F ton ofplugins to be able to open
(15:27):
whatever anybody sends me, evenif it's stuff that I don't use
on my own, because I have to beable to open their project.
And so the reason that Ievolved to do this is because,
like I said, especiallyelectronic music has to be so
loud, the mix has to beengineered for that, and what
was happening was, most of thetime, people's mixes were not
(15:50):
appropriate for what they wanted.
In the end, and you know a lotof mastering engineers that will
say to me oh, you're notmastering, you're mix during
your, or you're mixing andmastering, which might be
partially true, but the thething I find interesting is that
they'll say that doing that isis a fault because I'm I'm
(16:10):
taking myself out of themastering perspective and I'm
going into the mixingperspective.
Well, my argument for that andwhy, ultimately, this came to be
more efficient for me, is thatif somebody sends me a stereo
file and I open it and the mixisn't appropriate for what
they're asking for.
I now have to stop and ask theclient can you send me a new mix
(16:36):
and can you do X, y, z?
So now I'm stopping, I'm takingmyself out of the moment where
I just listened and it's freshand I got to stop my flow and
now I got to ask for stuff andhope they get it right when they
send it back.
And that to me was a very likeconvoluted slowdown which you
know.
You just sat down, you're readyto do this.
(16:57):
Now you stop and ask forrevisions.
So ultimately, I just startedsaying send me your project file
.
So ultimately, I just startedsaying send me your project file
.
And now, if, when I open thatproduct file, I hit spacebar and
hit play, there's no differentto my ears whether I'm listening
to a stereo mix or or stems ortheir project file.
I'm still hearing the samething.
At the first time.
It's just now.
(17:17):
I don't have to stop and askfor changes if I hear oh, the
kick low end is fighting thebass, I just fix it directly on
those things.
Proceed with the master.
I'm not stopping the mix orchange the way the song sounds.
I'm just it's a no compromiseapproach, like whereas you know,
on a stereo master oftentimesyou have to compromise one thing
(17:39):
to fix another, because so thisway I'm not making any
compromise, another because sothis way I'm not making any
compromise it's all fixeddirectly there and I can
engineer what's feeding themastering for the loudness, so
it kind of all goes hand in hand.
Marc Matthews (17:54):
It's like one process for me that's uh, that's
a really interesting work forme, I've not, I've not that that
is.
I mean you must have quite thearsenal of plugins.
Eric Mitchell (18:03):
Yeah, it's a lot.
Marc Matthews (18:04):
A lot of people use different stuff.
What about DAWs then?
Does that mean you're?
Are you open to any DAWsubmissions?
So someone says you LogicAbleton, reason, cubase,
whatever it may be.
Eric Mitchell (18:15):
Yep.
Bill (18:16):
I literally have them all.
Marc Matthews (18:17):
Wow, you must be pretty like au fait with all
those different DAWs then.
Eric Mitchell (18:22):
Yeah, it forced me to get familiar with all of
them.
The one that I haven't got onboard with is FL, but that one I
just never wanted to jump inthere.
So if someone's in FL, Ihaven't sent me stems, but even
(18:44):
if they're not sending me aproject file, you know, most of
the time it's at least stems.
Marc Matthews (18:47):
Very, maybe like a half a dozen times a year I'm
mastering a stereo mix wow,that's interesting what you
mentioned about fl, becausehaving chatted to a number of
sort of artists who, uh, whosort of move in that realm, they
, they love fl and they.
But I guess it depends on theindividual, doesn't?
Eric Mitchell (19:04):
it's subjective yeah, the few times I've been in
it, it just you know how theyall kind of things either click
or don't.
Yeah, that they.
You know even ableton.
At first I guess I didn't likeit.
I called it on on ableton, um,which is actually.
I prefer ableton actually formastering.
That's like my dot that I liketo use.
But, um, you know, fl, forwhatever reason, it just never
(19:26):
clicked with me and I was justlike we'll, we'll skip that one,
but, um, oh, the other thing Iforgot to say too is another
reason why I really like doingthat is because even if somebody
sends me stems, uh, a lot oftime when people, even when I
just go into their project orI'm listening to the stems,
there's processing that they'veput on, that's baked in, and so
(19:50):
if it's a stem I can't take itoff.
But if I'm in the project fileI can remove the bad processing
directly, like if I passeverything in the project or you
know what I mean, like theweird isms you see when you're
in there and that stuff that Ican avoid.
Marc Matthews (20:07):
Yeah, I know what you mean when you look into a
project and you see some veryweird stuff.
Eric Mitchell (20:11):
Yeah.
Marc Matthews (20:12):
What you mentioned now about high-passing
stuff.
I see that a lot.
Yeah, when people arehigh-passing, they're like I'm
not entirely sure why you'vedone that.
I don't know, maybe it's arunning theme for this episode,
but again, it's things you seeonline and they've done as a
result of, like, a TikTok or areal video.
Eric Mitchell (20:28):
Yeah, oh yeah, you've tiktok or a real video,
yeah oh yeah, you got to do thisso you can clean up your low
end, put a high pass on everychannel, like oh, yeah, yeah,
yeah, great, now I've gotnothing in the mastering.
Marc Matthews (20:38):
Yeah, it's completely dead down there yeah,
I know it's interesting, that,isn't it?
So with regards to that then,like if they're sending you a
mix and you're going in and youcan alter these bits and pieces,
are you having a conversation?
Do you let them know beforehand, before you master it?
Because what, like what, ifthey were to turn around and say
, well, that's my, I supposeit's devil's advocate, what the
(20:59):
what?
That's my creative vision there.
I've put that there, excludingthe high pass, because that is
what it is but it's maybesomething else.
They're like oh no, I wantedthat in there, it's that's what
I wanted as part of thearrangement of my creative
vision.
Right like how is thatconversation?
And um, and what does thatentail?
Eric Mitchell (21:15):
luckily I can.
I can't really think of anytimes well, maybe once or twice
over, like my whole time doingthis, where somebody was like,
oh, like this and that changedand we need to get it back.
But I think that's becauseusually I'm a part of the
process.
So if it's a new client for thefirst time, I always have them
send me two to three referencetracks.
(21:35):
And something I also mentionedwith them, which a lot of people
I feel like don't talk about,especially for electronic music,
excuse me, is that thereference should be in the same
key.
Because if you and I've eventhis has come up a lot with
(21:56):
people that use, like you know,ozone, ai, assisted mixing or
whatever, these plugins thatanalyze and do stuff for you, if
you, if they're putting in atrack for that plug-in to
reference and analyze and eqmatch or whatever, and it's a
different key, especially withelectronic music, because it's
so sub bass centric, if you know, if you're listening to a track
(22:17):
in the sub bass fundamental,and this one's at 40 and the sub
bass fundamental, this one's at50, the EQ curves for those are
going to look very different.
So they so I'll make sure thatthe references they're giving me
, are in the same key, so thatit's an apples to apples
comparison.
And so then from there it'sreally just like, I guess, my
experience in hearing the thingsthat are congruent through
(22:41):
their references, like what'sthe DNA of what they're going
for and then I just engineeredtheir song into that vein.
So I guess it's kind of like aone-stop shop kind of approach,
like give me, you write the songand tell me what your intention
was in the end, and then I'llmake it match the intention
(23:04):
that's a really good one.
Marc Matthews (23:05):
I like I'd never on hand on.
I never considered actuallysaying make sure it's in the
same key and audience listening.
You're probably going to seethat a lot now when this
episode's released as anextraction from this episode on
Instagram.
Now, when it comes to top, tipfor this week's episode.
That's amazing.
As soon as you said that, assoon as you said make sure it's
(23:25):
in the same key, my immediatethought was fundamental
frequencies and I was like ofcourse that makes perfect sense
was like fundamental frequenciesand I was like, of course that
makes like perfect sense, itmakes total sense that to do
that.
Um, that's that's so good.
I absolutely love that.
Going back to daws, I do oftengo on tangents in this.
Um, because you've used so manylike for mastery, because you
say you use ableton primarilyright for mastery, would you say
(23:48):
then, if you were to recommenda daw for its native plugins for
mastering, would you say ab.
If you were to recommend a DAWfor its native plugins for
mastering, would you say Abletonwould be your recommendation or
would it be another?
Eric Mitchell (23:56):
So my recommendation would be to use
whichever one you find the mostefficient and inspiring to you.
I don't think the DAW matters,I just think you know it's like
a car.
You know every car will get youfrom A to B, it's just the
experience while you're in thereon that drive is different.
(24:17):
You know some people want aMercedes, some people are fine
with a Ford Focus, like it.
Just they're all fundamentallydifferent and so whichever one
fits you best, you should runwith that.
The only caveat there is thatfiguring on that that out means
you kind of gotta give a littletime to each one to give it a
fair shot.
And and like I said at first,when I so I was primarily when I
(24:42):
first learned it was like onpro tools, cakewalk, um, okay,
yeah, yeah, which turned intosonar, which, and then I went
from there to Reason and soAbleton was like so foreign and
like weird and I hated it atfirst.
But with EDM I had no choice.
(25:04):
I had to be in there forclients and so after I gave it
time, all the things I hatedabout it and we're like why do
they do it this way?
I understand because it was forworkflow, and now that workflow
is very efficient for me and Ilove it.
So it's it's kind of like thesong you listen to.
The first time you don't like,but you listen to it a bunch, it
grows on you I know what youmean.
Marc Matthews (25:25):
I did that with logic because I primarily use
logic and I went from logic 9and then I went to pro tools and
then I came back to Logic.
I dabbled quite a bit withAbleton when I went through this
phase of using Max MSP and Iwas creating plugins and doing
all bits and pieces.
Man and you could bring it intoAbleton and create interfaces
and stuff and it was great andit is a DAW that I'd like to
extend more time to because itdoes look good.
(25:48):
But you mentioned reason.
Then did you use reason priorto the thing?
Because it's not always beenaccessible?
Well then, you've not alwaysbeen able to use third-party
plugins in reason.
Yes, did you use it before?
Eric Mitchell (26:00):
or after you were able to do before and we were
actually.
I got endorsed by propellerheads oh nice um, so like we had
a whole thing on their site forthat was like the one you're
talking about, the old one,before they added the external
plug-in stuff.
So we I was using it, uh, forthe, the edm project I was in,
actually we were writing all ourmusic and mixing and mastering
(26:20):
it in there um, but they had,like I think they had just
started doing those rackextensions, so it wasn't wasn't
like you could just use vsts butyou could buy, like they had
that shop for rack extensionswhere some people made like
plug-ins for it.
Marc Matthews (26:35):
Yeah, I mean I dabbled with it once again.
It's like you said at thebeginning, when I started out I
was trialing all these differentDAWs and this was around the
time of when you can do that.
I remember using Thor a lot.
I mean I really enjoyed usingthat.
I was also like the educationside of things.
I was teaching a class of theseprimary school kids how to use
Reason and I caught my fingers.
(26:57):
But really quick there, becausethis was before I knew anything
about teaching.
I was like yeah, it'll be fine,I'll show them once and they'll
get it, and like no, as youprobably know when it comes to
teaching.
But what you've mentioned thereabout like they're sending you
projects, you're going in, youcan do X, Y, Z in there before
you get to the mastering phase,I thought it might be quite cool
.
I've got a question here withregards to what are the most
(27:18):
frequent issues.
We mentioned about the low passand whatnot.
What are the most frequentissues you encounter when
mastering tracks that areoriginated in home studio
environments?
Eric Mitchell (27:29):
Number one worst offender, I, I would say, would
be like game staging, and bythat I don't mean, you know,
making sure that your masterisn't over zero.
I mean, that's an obvious one,but like, I'm just talking like
channel to channel, plug in toplug in, um, a lot of times I'm
(27:50):
seeing producers.
They're just, you know, they'rewriting electronic music or even
metal and stuff, and they'rejust dragging in, you know, drum
samples or using like druminstruments and all this stuff
in which the sound is alreadyset up to be very loud, or the
samples are already at peak, andthey're dragging them into
their projects and they'releaving all the channels at zero
(28:11):
.
And so the master's in the redand they just like throw a
limiter or something on thereand think, oh, I'm all set, my
meter's not red anymore.
It's like, well, it's not redthere, but it's red in front of
your limiter.
You know what I mean.
So they don't understand thegain staging.
And and even you know, likewe're talking about all these
like ads, like you'll seesomebody who like bought soothe
(28:33):
because they saw an ad but thesignal running in the soothe is
like 60b in the red.
It's like soothe can't do itsbest job when it's being fed
signals like that.
So it's really just educatingthem on why it matters and and
how to keep track of of thegains and stuff.
Marc Matthews (28:51):
That's interesting.
You mentioned that about gainstaging because I remember I saw
this on TikTok and it was maybethis sort of time last year and
there was so many videos ofpeople calling out other people
for getting the definition ofgain staging wrong and it kind
of alludes what you said thereabout, like, because that's
essentially what they were doing.
But with regards to gainstaging then, like, what would
(29:17):
your perfect description of itbe?
If you were to explain it tosomeone who is new to mixing
production?
What would your like sort ofdefinition, perfect definition,
of gain staging be?
Eric Mitchell (29:25):
well, the way, the way I like to do it is like
when I'm writing is I just start.
When I open up a project freshto start, I just set it up right
from the get-go to have abuffer like.
So you know, typically if youbring in your kick to start or
whatever the loudest thing, I'llset that channel like minus 10
db and that's like my zero.
(29:45):
So if I know that the kick isgoing to be the loudest thing
and that's at minus 10, anythingelse shouldn't be going over
that.
And so you know, once all mychannels are combining at the
end, that usually gives meenough room.
Um, I'm not one of those peoplethat's like oh, you need, it
needs to be 60b under zerobefore you send me the master,
whatever.
I'm just like, as long as it'sunder zero and it's not clipping
(30:07):
, that's fine, like.
And it's especially finebecause I'm going into the mix
anyway and have the ability tofix the gain staging if it's
wrong.
But ultimately, yeah, it's justlike make sure you just have
the headroom.
And you know, I find like the10 db, 10 db down start point
leaves enough headroom that bythe end of a track, um, where I
(30:28):
should be, um, that that's good.
Marc Matthews (30:30):
I think that's a very, very good sort of tip to
give out there with regards tobecause I often get asked that
question.
It's like where should I start?
I mean, you know there's thetop-down approach, isn't there?
You can start with vocal and gothe other way, but once again,
I think depending on music mighthave an impact on that.
So a nice little segue fromsort of gain staging and this
(30:50):
comes for want of a better wayof putting it and sort of
clarity for streaming.
So you mentioned there aboutEDM, and what would your advice
be to someone who is sort ofmastering their own music and
they are obviously going to bereleasing it on a streaming
platform?
Because there is the constantdiscussion online with regards
(31:10):
to streaming platform and minus14 laughs, blah, blah blah.
And the audience have probablyheard that many times now.
What's your advice for someonewho is doing it themselves?
Eric Mitchell (31:20):
um, with regards to sort of levels for streaming
platforms, well, this is anothercan of worms, probably, but
yeah, um, I mean, I feel like,um, it needs to.
The masters now need to becompetitive, like especially, uh
, you know, in loud genres likemetal, rock, edm, especially,
(31:44):
obviously.
And I do think it's importantto consider streaming, but I
feel like most of the whole, uh,master for streaming, target
speak is overflow from when itfirst, when spotify like first
came out, because originally ifyour track was too loud, it was,
(32:09):
they had a limiter that theywould put on it and it would be
limited and you know.
So now, at that point, you'rethe way your track sounds to the
listener.
You're at the mercy of, likeSpotify's random algorithm
limiter which could change yoursound.
But then they changed it.
So now all they're doing isjust turning it down.
And what that means and what Itell my clients when they say,
(32:31):
well, should I have a master forstreaming and a master to hand
out to DJs?
It's like no, just do yourmaster master the song for what
it is, it make it as loud as thetracks you're referencing make
you know, so that when you handit out to a dj and they put it
in their usb to go on the cdjslike the.
It's competitive and loud andas long as it still sounds the
(32:52):
way you want at that loud volume, it's going to sound exactly
the same on spot.
Just turn it down and who cares, because they're using the same
measurement algorithm for everytrack, so it's not like it's
going to go from yours tosomebody else's and even though
yours is turned down it will bequieter.
It's just be turned down tomatch the quiet ones.
Marc Matthews (33:13):
I think that's really important, because what
you mentioned there about howwhen Spotify started out and
they were using the limiter andthen they changed it, I think
that's important to realize thatif you are going to do it for
that particular level, for astreaming platform, they could
change the goalposts at anypoint and then your master is
not fit for purpose there.
So, yeah, that's really goodbecause it's nice.
(33:33):
I said at the beginning of thisepisode I've got this curated
series now for mastering andwhat the audience hopefully are
hearing is just that it's got tobe competitive and it's just
got to be complementary to themusic.
Don't worry about what Spotifyis going to do to it, because
ultimately it's just going toturn it down and like the same
with Apple and Tidal and whatnot.
(33:53):
So, yeah, key pieces ofinformation.
So with regards to that, um,we're sort of coming towards the
end now.
So, final words of advice, aswe call it, for aspiring
producers and artists working inhome studios.
What's one key piece of adviceyou would offer to help them
elevate their mastering, dro,mastering workflow?
Eric Mitchell (34:14):
um, I think the key, key, most key piece of
advice would just be going backto what we were talking about
earlier, which is just to to bereal with yourself about what
it's going to take like to sitthere and say I want to be a
mastering engineer.
(34:35):
What you're really saying toyourself is I want to make a
bunch of sacrifice because I'mgoing to have to put a ton of
time in my life into learningthis and doing thousands of
mixes before I even get good.
You know what I mean.
Like it's you, you have tounderstand what you're signing
up for, because, at least for me, once I decided, okay, I want
(34:57):
to make a living from music, myown, uh, goal posts were always
like years too short.
You know.
I was like, okay, in threeyears from now I'll be doing
this.
And then it's like three yearsand I'm like man, I'm only this
far, like what the heck?
And then it's like, okay, okay,well, five years.
And you know, long story short,I it took probably like to be
(35:21):
sitting here talking to youcomfortably doing this for a
living.
Almost two decades, like a longtime.
You know what I mean, and so,um, and it's also just not
fooling yourself that, likethere's no magic gear, there's
no magic anything, it'sliterally just your ears, that's
it, and just managing that,because pursuing your passion in
(35:48):
a way that can afford youmaking a living is challenging.
It does take a lot of likemental gymnastics at least at
least my experience was likeit's hard to turn this into a
career, and so if that's, ifthat's really what you want to
do, just you'll save yourself alot of stress and depression and
and struggle if you can just behonest with yourself at what
(36:10):
it's going to take yeah, I thinkthat's really important.
Marc Matthews (36:12):
You got to put in the reps.
Ultimately, you got to beprepared to do in it for the
long haul, in it for the longhaul, put in the reps, and there
will be knockbacks and therewill be moments where you're
thinking actually is this right?
But?
Eric Mitchell (36:25):
you've just got to keep.
What did I do with my life?
Yeah, yeah, it could have beenso different.
Marc Matthews (36:30):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Really, really good stuff, eric, it's been a pleasure chatting
with you today.
If our audience want to findmore about you and what you do,
where should we send them?
Eric Mitchell (36:42):
You can go on Instagram.
It's at Eric Mitchell Audio orericmitchellaudiocom.
Fantastic.
Marc Matthews (36:50):
Audience.
I will put that in the shownotes, so please do go follow
Eric on Instagram and also checkout the website as well and
learn more about what he's doingwhat he's done in the past as
well.
Really, really good stuff, eric.
It's been an absolute pleasure.
I'm glad we've been finallyfinally been able to chat.
It's been a while and, yeah,yeah.
And I will catch up with yousoon.
Awesome man Sounds good.
Folks, before you go, I want tohear from you.
(37:12):
I want to know your favoriteepisode of the Inside the Mix
podcast.
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(37:55):
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