#174: The Art of DIY Mastering: Tips and Strategies to Master Your Own Music with Eric Mitchell

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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Plus, one lucky reviewer will win a Starbucks voucher each month!

Chapters

• 0:00 Mastering Your Own Music
• 12:16 Revolutionizing the Mastering Process
• 18:22 Mastering DAWs and Creative Vision
• 29:13 Mastering Tips and Advice for Producers
• 37:31 Podcast Review and Giveaway Opportunity

Transcript

Bill: 0:00

Inside the mix. What's up? It's Bill, I just watched your episode on the 1176 into the LA-2A, one of my go-to's. I'm using my Apollo right now inside console. I got an odd combination going here. I'm using a TubeTec CL-1B into a Distressor, into a Pultec Curious how it's going to sound in that speak pipe app. Anyways, I subbed and liked killer content. Man, I could watch that stuff forever. I'll be looking out for you, thanks.

Eric Mitchell: 0:28

Like we're talking about all these like ads, like you'll see somebody who like bought soothe because they saw an ad but the signal running in the soothe is like 60 B in the red. It's like soothe can't do its best job when it's being fed signals like that. So it's really just educating them on why it matters and how to keep track of the gains and stuff.

Bill: 0:52

You're listening to the Inside the Mix podcast with your host, Mark Matthews.

Marc Matthews: 0:57

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 place if you want to know more about your favourite synth music artists, music engineering and production, songwriting and the music industry. I've been writing, producing, mixing and mastering music for over 15 years and I want to share what I've learnt with you. Merry Christmas, folks, and welcome to the Inside the Mix podcast. Ho ho ho.

Marc Matthews: 1:25

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 new listeners. Make sure you hit follow on your podcast player of choice and, if you're watching this on YouTube, hit subscribe and the notification bell so you get notified of new episodes. And to the returning listeners, always a huge welcome back.

Marc Matthews: 1:46

This episode is a rerun. I don't do this often, but it is December the 24th and this episode is the most popular episode of 2024. So a huge thank you to everybody who's listened and supported the podcast this year. I've spoken to some amazing people, 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 2025 brings as well. I get my words wrong here. I'm too excited for Christmas. I love the festive season.

Marc Matthews: 2:18

Anyway, this is episode 143 and it dropped in the spring of 2024. And it's my discussion with mastering engineer Eric Mitchell and it's titled the art of DIY mastering tips and strategies to master your own music. In this episode, we discuss DIY mastering and home studio limitations, the evolution of mastering techniques, which DAW is best for mastering, the purpose of a reference track, the benefits of gain staging and then mastering and workflow advice for you folks. So, without further ado, let's dive into my chat with Eric Mitchell of Eric Mitchell Audio and have a great Christmas and a happy new year when it arrives. Folks. Hey, folks, in this episode. I'm very excited to welcome my guest today, the brains behind Eric Mitchell Audio from Connecticut. Eric Mitchell Hi, eric, how are you 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 that I've got a toasted face, haven't been sunburnt, but apart from that, I'm doing all right. I thought I might get struck by some sort of heat stroke or something, but thankfully I didn't.

Marc Matthews: 3:25

But apart from that, I'm good, yeah, yeah. So we were chatting off air that we actually put this in the calendar about six-plus months ago, so I've been excited to chat with you about all things mastering. It's a nice topic, as it always is mastering, but it fits in nicely to the sort of curated episodes I've put together. Recently. I've had numerous mastering engineers, more this year than any other year in this sequence of episodes, so it's really, really cool. So I'm just going to read a bit from your bio for the audience who might not be familiar with yourself. So, contrary to a large portion of the people with careers in the industry, who tend to specialize in one area, eric has all the bases covered, equally skilled across the board, with a well-seasoned history of success to back it up songwriting, music production, tracking, mixing, mastering, live sound, commercial audio, et al. So the largest portion of eric's clients are electronic artists and labels, and if any listeners are fans of glass jaw, I remember listening to glass jaw, um, when I was going through my sort of metal metal stage. I still am. To be honest, eric's been responsible for how they sound since well live, since 2018, and he's also remastered the 20th anniversary vinyl box set. That's so cool.

Marc Matthews: 4:32

In addition to the aforementioned, eric also educates through production, songwriting and DAW lessons workshops in person and remotely, and in this episode we're going to be unlocking the secrets to preparing mixes for mastering and just general mastering how-to DIY in particular. So I thought, eric, it'd be quite cool if you could talk a bit about DIY mastery. Can artists this is quite a divisive question can artists achieve good results mastering their music in a home studio environment? Maybe if you could talk about some limitations versus working with a professional mastering engineer. What are your thoughts?

Eric Mitchell: 5:12

Sure, I think I mean the short answer is yes, I think it's possible for artists to master their own music, but I think the the most important tool there, which most people don't focus enough on, is just the ears, and I think that's the biggest difference you get between, like a DIY master that somebody is just kind of deciding to do themselves, versus somebody who is actually, you know, traveled the path, uh, to put the time in with their ears, to be one um, and you know, with that also comes with a lot of the, the things that you learn once you put that your time in, like having the room tuned and set up a certain way so that your, you know, your, your response and everything is what you expect.

Eric Mitchell: 6:03

And and I just see a lot of people who do want to do this themselves, like they seem to be looking for that, like silver bullet plug-in, or they spend a lot on plug-ins because you know they're they're falling victim to like all the marketing now, like this one plug-in is what you need for the best master on the planet, and you know all those instagram ads we get all the time and and so I really just think the biggest gap there is just like that experience and the time, um, you know, between somebody who's you know they say 10 000 hours plus you need to be a pro or whatever, um.

Eric Mitchell: 6:41

So, that being said, I think people, people can definitely do 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 realizing just how much time that 10,000 hours is, and like how much sacrifice in your life and everything that you kind of have to put in to be able to afford yourself that putting that time into to train your ears and everything. So, um, I would just say you know people that do want to do it themselves. Don't be looking for the silver bullet plugin. You could, you should be able to do a good master with stock dot plugins at the end of the day, and, um, just be putting your, your time in and however you want to do that, whether it's your own stuff, mastering for your friends, for practice, whatever you know, there's lots of services online where they'll give you a project or something to test master. You know. Just, you just need the time with the ears.

Marc Matthews: 7:39

So, uh, 10 000 hours. This is that's the same with any sort of discipline, isn't it? You sort of need to put in those 10,000 hours and it sounds like a lot, but you have to do it. It's like it's like they're exercising that creative muscle and like the more you do it, the better you're going to get. And I think is our focus. I've written that here for you in my notes as you were talking. There is really really important.

Marc Matthews: 7:58

And the silver bullet you mentioned as well, because, like you say, you get, you get bombarded with emails. You go on YouTube and the algorithm is what it is and then every advert is just oh man, you need this plugin. This sounds so good and I just have 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're not helping. 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 me like that. It's really gonna be of that benefit if everybody is saying like this silver, this is the silver bullet not just in mastering but music production in general period, like creating a chord progression.

Marc Matthews: 8:39

This will do it for you. This will create the beat for you. This will make mix it for you. Yeah, this will improve the low end. It's just like yeah you can tell yeah I could just go on a rant for about an hour about that and it's saying right you know, but I won't.

Marc Matthews: 8:53

I won't because the listeners will get a bit bored of me doing that. But I've got a question off the back of what you said there about the room being tuned, which is really, really important. When you were starting out in in this mastering game, what was your first sort of focus that you really wanted to dial in? Was it like the, the listening and being able to critically listen and use your ears, or did you focus on getting the room right first? Which one would you do first?

Eric Mitchell: 9:39

uh well, what I would do now is is definitely like focus on the room. And you know like I made the mistake, like a lot of people do, and at the start I didn't consider like my monitors in the room one thing. I was just thought of them as like the monitors in my room, but the monitors are what they are in that room, so it's kind of like the room and the speakers are one thing themselves and you, you know, you can go to a different room with the same speakers and you get a different response. So, starting to consider the whole environment as one one unit that needs to be, you know, considered all those aspects together and that's like speakers conversion and the room. I think of all that as one thing.

Eric Mitchell: 10:26

When I started it was just the ears and so I was on like cheap speakers in an untreated room and I was like do you know, doing the car tests after every master 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's another thing, that's actually a good gauge. It's like if you as an engineer, if you're still, you know, you got to do car tests after every mix and like check your stuff. Um, I would say like that's an indicator that you're pretty far off from like where your ears should be to be doing like professional work. You know, because there's never any question in what I'm hearing. It just goes straight to the client. There's never a card test.

Marc Matthews: 11:13

Yeah, it's interesting you mention that, because I've had this conversation a few times now this year and the end of last year, because, once again, this goes back to a lot of the things you read online about how you test it in X, y, z scenario, and the feedback now that I hear more and more of is like is is trust. What you're hearing out your speakers, that's where you're working out most of the day, isn't it? So that's the, the platform you're listening on and like when you so, when you send it to a client for them to audition, are you um instructing them to listen to it on the playback medium they use the most, or do you tell them to listen to it on various different platforms?

Eric Mitchell: 11:47

I just send it. I don't even tell them what to listen. Like it's. I mean it should. A good master should sound the way that it's intended, no matter what they're listening on. I mean, obviously, like laptop to it. Something with sub bass will be a big difference, but you, generally speaking, um, the master should stand up to whatever.

Marc Matthews: 12:05

So I just I just send it and wait for the feedback I'm a bit of a tangent here, so you I asked you a question there about, uh, using your ears and the treatment of the room just like quickly. Could you just tell our audience a bit? I mean, this is, I should probably ask this right at the beginning how did you get into mastering? What was what initially spurred you on to pursue it as your main focus?

Eric Mitchell: 12:26

It was necessity when I say necessity is the mother of all invention, so it's like I was actually an artist first. I've been an artist since I was a kid. I started out playing guitar and everything in hardcore metal bands playing guitar and everything in hardcore metal bands and at that time we paid other engineers to do everything for us and towards the end of that I started in our sessions with other engineers. They started letting me get hands-on on the boards and one of our albums we did was actually on the the same console. That queen's record was recorded on the old, uh, flying fader like massive, large format console, which was pretty cool to get to be on that. But um, I went from that to electronic music and, like you know, heavy EDM, electro, and this was like in uh, I don't know, maybe 15, 10 to 15 years ago when that EDM boom first really started to take off and we we did an album and I was still working with, like my rock engineer peers at the time, and so he referred us to go to a prominent mastering engineer that was out of Massachusetts and so we went there and this mastering session essentially led us to walking away with like a master that we weren't happy with and it basically just we couldn't get it, or the engineer couldn't get it loud enough, and he was kind of trying to steer us away from loudness, which for EDM you can't really do. And so, long story short, I I was like, okay, well, I'm going to have to just learn how to do this on my own. I guess, you know, because most of the other mastering engineers at the time I was talking to were laughing at the kind of levels that we were trying to get to, which I know they've seen, but you know it's just part of the course with EDM, know they're ever seen, but you know it's just part for the course with edm. So I um just forced myself there to start figuring out the, the mastering side, which with edm and loudness, it's really kind of tied to the, the mix. It's like you can't take just any old mix and and crank it to those levels via mastering and, uh, expect it to sound good. So like it kind of pushed me to evolve to this very peculiar system which, as far as I can tell, I don't think anybody else is working this way.

Eric Mitchell: 15:16

But and I'm not sure how you feel about it, this might be opening a can of worms, but I essentially every single I shouldn't say every single like 95% of the work that I do for my clients. They're sending me their project file Not a bounce, not stems, but their actual DAW project file, and I'm opening it natively. So I have a metric F ton of plugins to be able to open whatever anybody sends me, even if it's stuff that I don't use on my own, because I have to be able to open their project. And so the reason that I evolved to do this is because, like I said, especially electronic music has to be so loud, the mix has to be engineered for that, and what was happening was, most of the time, people's mixes were not appropriate for what they wanted. In the end, and you know a lot of mastering engineers that will say to me oh, you're not mastering, you're mix during your, or you're mixing and mastering, which might be partially true, but the the thing I find interesting is that they'll say that doing that is is a fault because I'm I'm taking myself out of the mastering perspective and I'm going into the mixing perspective.

Eric Mitchell: 16:38

Well, my argument for that and why, ultimately, this came to be more efficient for me, is that if somebody sends me a stereo file and I open it and the mix isn't appropriate for what they're asking for. I now have to stop and ask the client can you send me a new mix and can you do X, y, z? So now I'm stopping, I'm taking myself out of the moment where I just listened and it's fresh and I got to stop my flow and now I got to ask for stuff and hope they get it right when they send it back. And that to me was a very like convoluted slowdown which you know. You just sat down, you're ready to do this. Now you stop and ask for revisions. So ultimately, I just started saying send me your project file. So ultimately, I just started saying send me your project file.

Eric Mitchell: 17:29

And now, if, when I open that product file, I hit spacebar and hit play, there's no different to my ears whether I'm listening to a stereo mix or or stems or their project file. I'm still hearing the same thing. At the first time. It's just now. I don't have to stop and ask for changes if I hear oh, the kick low end is fighting the bass, I just fix it directly on those things. Proceed with the master. I'm not stopping the mix or change the way the song sounds. I'm just it's a no compromise approach, like whereas you know, on a stereo master oftentimes you have to compromise one thing to fix another, because so this way I'm not making any compromise, another because so this way I'm not making any compromise it's all fixed directly there and I can engineer what's feeding the mastering for the loudness, so it kind of all goes hand in hand.

Marc Matthews: 18:15

It's like one process for me that's uh, that's a really interesting work for me, I've not, I've not that that is. I mean you must have quite the arsenal of plugins.

Eric Mitchell: 18:24

Yeah, it's a lot.

Marc Matthews: 18:25

A lot of people use different stuff. What about DAWs then? Does that mean you're? Are you open to any DAW submissions? So someone says you Logic Ableton, reason, cubase, whatever it may be.

Eric Mitchell: 18:36

Yep.

Bill: 18:37

I literally have them all.

Marc Matthews: 18:39

Wow, you must be pretty like au fait with all those different DAWs then.

Eric Mitchell: 18:43

Yeah, it forced me to get familiar with all of them. The one that I haven't got on board with is FL, but that one I just never wanted to jump in there. So if someone's in FL, I haven't sent me stems, but even if they're not sending me a project file, you know, most of the time it's at least stems.

Marc Matthews: 19:08

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, because having chatted to a number of sort of artists who, uh, who sort of move in that realm, they, they love fl and they. But I guess it depends on the individual, doesn't?

Eric Mitchell: 19:25

it's subjective yeah, the few times I've been in it, it just you know how they all kind of things either click or don't. Yeah, that they. You know even ableton. At first I guess I didn't like it. I called it on on ableton, um, which is actually. I prefer ableton actually for mastering. That's like my dot that I like to use.

Eric Mitchell: 19:43

But, um, you know, fl, for whatever reason, it just never clicked with me and I was just like we'll, we'll skip that one, but, um, oh, the other thing I forgot to say too is another reason why I really like doing that is because even if somebody sends me stems, uh, a lot of time when people, even when I just go into their project or I'm listening to the stems, there's processing that they've put on, that's baked in, and so if it's a stem I can't take it off. But if I'm in the project file I can remove the bad processing directly, like if I pass everything in the project or you know what I mean, like the weird isms you see when you're in there and that stuff that I can avoid.

Marc Matthews: 20:28

Yeah, I know what you mean when you look into a project and you see some very weird stuff.

Eric Mitchell: 20:32

Yeah.

Marc Matthews: 20:33

What you mentioned now about high-passing stuff. I see that a lot. Yeah, when people are high-passing, they're like I'm not entirely sure why you've done that. I don't know, maybe it's a running theme for this episode, but again, it's things you see online and they've done as a result of, like, a TikTok or a real video.

Eric Mitchell: 20:50

Yeah, oh yeah, you've tiktok or a real video, yeah oh yeah, you got to do this so you can clean up your low end, put a high pass on every channel, like oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, great, now I've got nothing in the mastering.

Marc Matthews: 20:59

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 you can alter these bits and pieces, are you having a conversation? Do you let them know beforehand, before you master it? Because what, like what, if they were to turn around and say, well, that's my, I suppose it's devil's advocate, what the what? That's my creative vision there. I've put that there, excluding the high pass, because that is what it is but it's maybe something else.

Marc Matthews: 21:27

They're like oh no, I wanted that in there, it's that's what I wanted as part of the arrangement of my creative vision. Right like how is that conversation? And um, and what does that entail?

Eric Mitchell: 21:36

luckily I can. I can't really think of any times well, maybe once or twice over, like my whole time doing this, where somebody was like, oh, like this and that changed and we need to get it back. But I think that's because usually I'm a part of the process. So if it's a new client for the first time, I always have them send me two to three reference tracks. And something I also mentioned with them, which a lot of people I feel like don't talk about, especially for electronic music, excuse me, is that the reference should be in the same key.

Eric Mitchell: 22:10

Because if you and I've even this has come up a lot with people that use, like you know, ozone, ai, assisted mixing or whatever, these plugins that analyze and do stuff for you, if you, if they're putting in a track for that plug-in to reference and analyze and eq match or whatever, and it's a different key, especially with electronic music, because it's so sub bass centric, if you know, if you're listening to a track in the sub bass fundamental, and this one's at 40 and the sub bass fundamental, this one's at 50, the EQ curves for those are going to look very different.

Eric Mitchell: 22:45

So they so I'll make sure that the references they're giving me, are in the same key, so that it's an apples to apples comparison. And so then from there it's really just like, I guess, my experience in hearing the things that are congruent through their references, like what's the DNA of what they're going for and then I just engineered their song into that vein. So I guess it's kind of like a one-stop shop kind of approach, like give me, you write the song and tell me what your intention was in the end, and then I'll make it match the intention that's a really good one.

Marc Matthews: 23:26

I like I'd never on hand on. I never considered actually saying make sure it's in the same key and audience listening. You're probably going to see that a lot now when this episode's released as an extraction from this episode on Instagram. Now, when it comes to top, tip for this week's episode. That's amazing. As soon as you said that, as soon as you said make sure it's in the same key, my immediate thought was fundamental frequencies and I was like of course that makes perfect sense was like fundamental frequencies and I was like, of course that makes like perfect sense, it makes total sense that to do that.

Marc Matthews: 23:56

Um, that's that's so good. I absolutely love that. Going back to daws, I do often go on tangents in this. Um, because you've used so many like for mastery, because you say you use ableton primarily right for mastery, would you say then, if you were to recommend a daw for its native plugins for mastering, would you say ab. If you were to recommend a DAW for its native plugins for mastering, would you say Ableton would be your recommendation or would it be another?

Eric Mitchell: 24:17

So my recommendation would be to use whichever one you find the most efficient 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 you from A to B, it's just the experience while you're in there on that drive is different. You know some people want a Mercedes, some people are fine with a Ford Focus, like it. Just they're all fundamentally different and so whichever one fits you best, you should run with that.

Eric Mitchell: 24:49

The only caveat there is that figuring on that that out means you kind of gotta give a little time to each one to give it a fair shot. And and like I said at first, when I so I was primarily when I first learned it was like on pro tools, cakewalk, um, okay, yeah, yeah, which turned into sonar, which, and then I went from there to Reason and so Ableton was like so foreign and like weird and I hated it at first. But with EDM I had no choice. I had to be in there for clients and so after I gave it time, all the things I hated about it and we're like why do they do it this way? I understand because it was for workflow, and now that workflow is very efficient for me and I love it. So it's it's kind of like the song you listen to. The first time you don't like, but you listen to it a bunch, it grows on you I know what you mean.

Marc Matthews: 25:46

I did that with logic because I primarily use logic and I went from logic 9 and then I went to pro tools and then I came back to Logic. I dabbled quite a bit with Ableton when I went through this phase of using Max MSP and I was creating plugins and doing all bits and pieces. Man and you could bring it into Ableton and create interfaces and stuff and it was great and it is a DAW that I'd like to extend more time to because it does look good. But you mentioned reason. Then did you use reason prior to the thing? Because it's not always been accessible? Well then, you've not always been able to use third-party plugins in reason. Yes, did you use it before?

Eric Mitchell: 26:21

or after you were able to do before and we were actually.

Eric Mitchell: 26:23

I got endorsed by propeller heads oh nice um, so like we had a whole thing on their site for that 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, for the, the edm project I was in, actually we were writing all our music and mixing and mastering it in there um, but they had, like I think they had just started doing those rack extensions, so it wasn't wasn't like you could just use vsts but you could buy, like they had that shop for rack extensions where some people made like plug-ins for it.

Marc Matthews: 26:57

Yeah, I mean I dabbled with it once again. It's like you said at the beginning, when I started out I was trialing all these different DAWs and this was around the time of when you can do that. I remember using Thor a lot. I mean I really enjoyed using that. I was also like the education side of things. I was teaching a class of these primary school kids how to use Reason and I caught my fingers. But really quick there, because this 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 you probably know when it comes to teaching. But what you've mentioned there about like they're sending you projects, you're going in, you can 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 with regards to what are the most frequent issues. We mentioned about the low pass and whatnot. What are the most frequent issues you encounter when mastering tracks that are originated in home studio environments?

Eric Mitchell: 27:51

Number one worst offender, I, I would say, would be like game staging, and by that I don't mean, you know, making sure that your master isn't over zero.

Eric Mitchell: 28:02

I mean, that's an obvious one, but like, I'm just talking like channel to channel, plug in to plug in, um, a lot of times I'm seeing producers.

Eric Mitchell: 28:12

They're just, you know, they're writing electronic music or even metal and stuff, and they're just dragging in, you know, drum samples or using like drum instruments and all this stuff in which the sound is already set up to be very loud, or the samples are already at peak, and they're dragging them into their projects and they're leaving all the channels at zero. And so the master's in the red and they just like throw a limiter or something on there and think, oh, I'm all set, my meter's not red anymore. It's like, well, it's not red there, but it's red in front of your limiter. You know what I mean. So they don't understand the gain staging. And and even you know, like we're talking about all these like ads, like you'll see somebody who like bought soothe because they saw an ad but the signal running in the soothe is like 60b in the red. It's like soothe can't do its best job when it's being fed signals like that. So it's really just educating them on why it matters and and how to keep track of of the gains and stuff.

Marc Matthews: 29:12

That's interesting. You mentioned that about gain staging because I remember I saw this on TikTok and it was maybe this sort of time last year and there was so many videos of people calling out other people for getting the definition of gain staging wrong and it kind of alludes what you said there about, like, because that's essentially what they were doing. But with regards to gain staging then, like, what would your perfect description of it be? If you were to explain it to someone who is new to mixing production? What would your like sort of definition, perfect definition, of gain staging be?

Eric Mitchell: 29:46

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 fresh to start, I just set it up right from the get-go to have a buffer like. So you know, typically if you bring in your kick to start or whatever the loudest thing, I'll set that channel like minus 10 db and that's like my zero. So if I know that the kick is going to be the loudest thing and that's at minus 10, anything else shouldn't be going over that. And so you know, once all my channels are combining at the end, that usually gives me enough room.

Eric Mitchell: 30:20

Um, I'm not one of those people that's like oh, you need, it needs to be 60b under zero before you send me the master, whatever. I'm just like, as long as it's under zero and it's not clipping, that's fine, like. And it's especially fine because I'm going into the mix anyway and have the ability to fix the gain staging if it's wrong. But ultimately, yeah, it's just like make sure you just have the headroom. And you know, I find like the 10 db, 10 db down start point leaves enough headroom that by the end of a track, um, where I should be, um, that that's good.

Marc Matthews: 30:51

I think that's a very, very good sort of tip to give out there with regards to because I often get asked that question. It's like where should I start? I mean, you know there's the top-down approach, isn't there? You can start with vocal and go the other way, but once again, I think depending on music might have an impact on that. So a nice little segue from sort of gain staging and this comes for want of a better way of putting it and sort of clarity for streaming. So you mentioned there about EDM, and what would your advice be to someone who is sort of mastering their own music and they are obviously going to be releasing it on a streaming platform? Because there is the constant discussion online with regards to streaming platform and minus 14 laughs, blah, blah blah.

Marc Matthews: 31:35

And the audience have probably heard that many times now. What's your advice for someone who is doing it themselves?

Eric Mitchell: 31:41

um, with regards to sort of levels for streaming platforms, well, this is another can of worms, probably, but yeah, um, I mean, I feel like, um, it needs to. The masters now need to be competitive, like especially, uh, you know, in loud genres like metal, rock, edm, especially, obviously. And I do think it's important to consider streaming, but I feel like most of the whole, uh, master for streaming, target speak is overflow from when it first, when spotify like first came out, because originally if your track was too loud, it was, they had a limiter that they would put on it and it would be limited and you know. So now, at that point, you're the way your track sounds to the listener. You're at the mercy of, like Spotify's random algorithm limiter which could change your sound. But then they changed it. So now all they're doing is just turning it down.

Eric Mitchell: 32:49

And what that means and what I tell my clients when they say, well, should I have a master for streaming and a master to hand out to DJs? It's like no, just do your master master the song for what it is, it make it as loud as the tracks you're referencing make you know, so that when you hand it out to a dj and they put it in their usb to go on the cdjs like the. It's competitive and loud and as long as it still sounds the 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 every track, so it's not like it's going to go from yours to somebody else's and even though yours is turned down it will be quieter. It's just be turned down to match the quiet ones.

Marc Matthews: 33:34

I think that's really important, because what you mentioned there about how when Spotify started out and they were using the limiter and then they changed it, I think that's important to realize that if you are going to do it for that particular level, for a streaming platform, they could change the goalposts at any point and then your master is not fit for purpose there. So, yeah, that's really good because it's nice. I said at the beginning of this episode I've got this curated series now for mastering and what the audience hopefully are hearing is just that it's got to be competitive and it's just got to be complementary to the music. Don't worry about what Spotify is going to do to it, because ultimately it's just going to turn it down and like the same with Apple and Tidal and whatnot. So, yeah, key pieces of information.

Marc Matthews: 34:18

So with regards to that, um, we're sort of coming towards the end now. So, final words of advice, as we call it, for aspiring producers and artists working in home studios. What's one key piece of advice you would offer to help them elevate their mastering, dro, mastering workflow?

Eric Mitchell: 34:35

um, I think the key, key, most key piece of advice would just be going back to what we were talking about earlier, which is just to to be real with yourself about what it's going to take like to sit there and say I want to be a mastering engineer. What you're really saying to yourself is I want to make a bunch of sacrifice because I'm going to have to put a ton of time in my life into learning this and doing thousands of mixes before I even get good. You know what I mean. Like it's you, you have to understand what you're signing up for, because, at least for me, once I decided, okay, I want to make a living from music, my own, uh, goal posts were always like years too short. You know. I was like, okay, in three years from now I'll be doing this. And then it's like three years and I'm like man, I'm only this far, like what the heck? And then it's like, okay, okay, well, five years.

Eric Mitchell: 35:37

And you know, long story short, I it took probably like to be sitting here talking to you comfortably doing this for a living. Almost two decades, like a long time. You know what I mean, and so, um, and it's also just not fooling yourself that, like there's no magic gear, there's no magic anything, it's literally just your ears, that's it, and just managing that, because pursuing your passion in a way that can afford you making a living is challenging. It does take a lot of like mental gymnastics at least at least my experience was like it's hard to turn this into a career, and so if that's, if that's really what you want to do, just you'll save yourself a lot of stress and depression and and struggle if you can just be honest with yourself at what it's going to take yeah, I think that's really important.

Marc Matthews: 36:34

You got to put in the reps. Ultimately, you got to be prepared to do in it for the long haul, in it for the long haul, put in the reps, and there will be knockbacks and there will be moments where you're thinking actually is this right? But?

Eric Mitchell: 36:46

you've just got to keep. What did I do with my life? Yeah, yeah, it could have been so different.

Marc Matthews: 36:52

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Really, really good stuff, eric, it's been a pleasure chatting with you today. If our audience want to find more about you and what you do, where should we send them?

Eric Mitchell: 37:03

You can go on Instagram. It's at Eric Mitchell Audio or ericmitchellaudiocom. Fantastic.

Marc Matthews: 37:11

Audience. I will put that in the show notes, so please do go follow Eric on Instagram and also check out the website as well and learn more about what he's doing what 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 finally finally been able to chat. It's been a while and, yeah, yeah.

Marc Matthews: 37:29

And I will catch up with you soon. Awesome man Sounds good. Folks, before you go, I want to hear from you. I want to know your favorite episode of the Inside the Mix podcast. Alternatively, you could just review this episode. Click the SpeakPipe link in the episode description and you can record an audio message detailing your favorite episode and why, and also give yourself a shout out. All you need is your mobile phone. You don't need a SpeakPipe account. You don't need to download an app. It's just like sending me an audio message via WhatsApp or whatever messaging platform you use. As soon as I get your audio, you will be entered in that month's draw to win a Starbucks coffee voucher, and if you don't like coffee, just give it to someone else and pretend that you bought it for them. All you need to do is click that SpeakPipe link and send me an audio message reviewing this episode or a previous episode and give yourself a shout.