Is Mastering Dead? A Pro Mixer’s Opinion

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The music tech industry has been taking aim at mastering engineers for years.

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With tools like ozone, online, platforms like Lander, and what seems to

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be daily advancements in AI. Is the battle finally coming to an

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end? Is mastering dead?

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My name is Travis Farrants, a Grammy nominated recording engineer and mixer. And I started

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this show to help equip music professionals like yourself with the

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tools and mindsets you need to build a career in this business. Now, I might

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not be a household name like Manny or ClA, but I do make my

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living mixing records and have well over a quarter billion streams to my credit. And

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because I'm not one of those household names, and because I'm not mixing label

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projects every day, when it comes to mastering, budgets can

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vary wildly. And so my mixes are being mastered by a wide range of

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engineers. Now, I obviously have my preferences for favorite

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engineers, but I'm not always gonna be involved in the decision. And over

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the last few years, I've noticed an increasing trend in just

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plain bad mastering. If a project is not done by

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one of the top mastering houses or by one of my preferred engineers,

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then it's starting to become more likely that I just don't really like the end

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result. And it's made me start to wonder, why is mastering seem

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like it's no longer playing the role that it once did? What's

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different about now? Well, for one, technology is

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different. Like I mentioned, the tools are being democratized. But

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that's. That's not the only thing. It's also the perception of

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mastering in 2024. So if you're a musician wondering if mastering is

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necessary, or a mix engineer that feels like you just maybe want to

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start mastering your own mixes, I've got a few hot takes that I think you're

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going to want to hear. If you're a mastery engineer, you probably currently hate

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me, but you're not going to feel that way at the end. Trust me now,

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because I know there is at least one person asking, what is mastering? And I

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also think the backstory is important. To my point, here is the world's fastest

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breakdown of the history of audio mastering. If you want to skip ahead, there are

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chapter markers down below. So, up until about 1948, recording was done in

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what was called direct to disc recording. The engineer would mic the band with

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a very limited number of inputs. That band would then balance themselves while

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playing live in the room because there were no overdubs and there were very few

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microphones. The engineer would then capture that recording, cutting it

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directly to vinyl with a lathe as the band played.

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This all began to change when Ampex released the Model 200 tape machine,

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which provided the ability to record to magnetic tape, resulting in an increase in

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sonic fidelity. And now, because that tape machine would never be a

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consumer playback device, that recording eventually had to make it

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back to the medium of choice. At the time, which was vinyl, this was

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the advent of a new type of engineer called the transfer engineer, whose job

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would transform over the years to what we now think of as a mastering

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engineer. The transfer engineers would apply corrective EQ to a recording to be

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sure that the needle would not pop out of the record because of too much

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low end. They would also adjust levels to be sure that all the program material

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that needed to be fit on a side was able to do so. As

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technology progressed, so did the job of the master engine. They began to

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take a more creative role in the process, adding dynamic

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processing and additional EQ to enhance the choices already made

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by the mixing engineer. Then, when digital came on the scene in the eighties,

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the increased headroom opened the door for masters to become louder

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and louder. And anybody that has ever listened to music knows that

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louder is always better. So, with that in mind, every artist

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wanted their CD to be the loudest, most exciting CD on the

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desk of the local radio dj. This was the dawn of the loudness wars,

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which would continue into the digital and streaming era, despite the fact that

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the DSPs employ loudness normalization. So that's how we got here.

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But where is here? Here is that, unfortunately, the

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average musician's understanding of what mastering does is summed up into

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two louder, brighter. And while

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there may be a lot of truth to that statement, I think it's also the

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reason that there's a lot of lackluster mastering going around. And this is where

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technology comes into play. As I mentioned earlier, the tools of mastering are

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becoming more democratized by the day. A process that was once

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as analog as it could possibly be has become almost

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entirely digital. Even for some of the top engineers. Emulations of

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high end gear have become so good that people are selling their analog and going

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digital. And plugins like isotope ozone have gone from what a producer

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might throw on to make a rough mix to being the actual mastering

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processor for a final release. And then there's a whole new set of tools

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that I'm just going to call algorithmic tone shapers, things like golf offs, which

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are applying thousands of little EQ changes to a mix so that a frequency response

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more closely resembles some predetermined curve, for better or

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for worse. And so the increase of access to mastering grade tools,

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combined with this oversimplified assumption of what mastering is,

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I think is actually threatening to ruin mastering altogether.

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Why do I think that? I think that because we're defining

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what we will buy as mastering. We buy louder and

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we buy brighter. I can take ozone eleven, throw it on my mix bus, and

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hit master assistant, and I will get something that is for sure louder and

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for sure brighter. But will it be better? Or would I consider it

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mastered? So far? In my experience, definitely

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not. And don't get me wrong, the individual tools within ozone are

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amazing, and I use them every day. But I've yet to hit that button. And

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here's something I would consider keeping. I actually think it was more useful years ago

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when it did less. There'd always be like a couple dynamic EQ points I

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might keep. But now it sounds like an inexperienced master engineer that's

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just doing something because they think they have to. So what about the

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fully AI side of this? Before filming this video, I tossed a mix into

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lander as well as the waves online mastering platform. Both

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came back, you guessed it, louder and brighter. But

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neither came close to to the human master that had been done previously.

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Now, all three were competitively loud. All three

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were brighter than the mix was. But the human master was changed

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thoughtfully. There was vocal clarity without harshness. There

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was a glue in like a life, but there was minimal compression or

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limiting artifacts. It's clear that the human master was done in

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support of what was already there. And that's what mastering

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is about. Mastering has never been about making changes, been about making

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the right changes. A transfer engineer in 1948 did

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not EQ the low end unless they had to. That's the spirit of mastering

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that engineers have carried for the last 80 years, and that's what should

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continue to carry for the next 80. Every step of the record making

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process has always been, or should always be about honoring the

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previous steps, taking the vision of everybody that touched

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a project before you, and supporting it. And that's why this

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technology driven era of matching a specific EQ

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curve or doing something for the sake of doing something, is, in my

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opinion, hurting mastering as a whole. So to answer the question is

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mastering dead? Do you still need to pay for mastering? The answer

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is simple. If you are price shopping for the most economical

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way to make something louder and brighter, then to you,

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mastering is kind of dead. You can easily use a one click

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mastering plugin or any AI platform, and likely be

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satisfied. But if you're looking for one last collaborator,

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if you are willing to search for a mastering engineer that fits your sonic

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tastes and wants to support your vision, then to you, mastering

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is very much still alive and very much worth it. The

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more technology improves and continues to democratize, the more important

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each person's individual sonic taste is going to become. You'll be able to get

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a technically great mix or a master from plenty of people, or maybe

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even plenty of machines. But what is the X Factor that

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makes a collaboration really click? That's what you should be looking for in a

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mastering engineer, or for anybody that's going to work on your project.

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Because the reality is, what's happening in mastering at the moment is going to

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happen in every aspect of the music industry. The advancement of

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tools is going to even the playing field pretty much

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everywhere. The thing that will separate you from others in the industry is

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no longer going to be your specific skills. It's going to be your taste

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and your sonic identity. That's what we're ultimately going

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to all get hired for. And when you do get hired, if you feel like

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you're struggling to figure out what the best rate to charge for your services is,

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then you'll probably want to check out this video next.