Cheap Mastering Engineers?

[Astroshade]

Yao!

I suck at mastering, (Well... I do "know" how to use oZone 5 ) but I don't wanna spend too much cash on getting tracks mastered when I don't even have 1000 listens (sometimes not even 100 =/) per track.

U guys know anyone who is pretty good at mastering who doesn't charge too much?

And BTW, would a "rock masterer" be able to master a hardstyle track?
Stupid question i know... but still heh heh... ??

[Echidna]

Anyone who does mastering can master any genre of music. Quite a few artists, including myself, do mastering. It's all about finding the right person for the job.

[Black Elision]

Thera offers Mastering, don't have the price in my head now, but I think it wasn't expensive unless you want Mixdown + Mastering.

[Astroshade]

Coolio... thanks
Like, I want quality stuff, from someone who knows mastering, not just Maximus, Fruity Limiter and oZone u know?

[Black Elision]

Well mastering is nothing more than maxing out the overall volume of a Track. If your track and the mixdown is not "quality stuff" already, mastering won't change much on that. If your track sounds very good after the mixdown withouth anything on the master chanel, mastering can add that littly cherry on top of an awesome track, but otherwhise it won't be of much use for you.

[Astroshade]

Hm... I get that.
Every part of the chain must fit together, if you screw up early on the whole thing will flunk.

But still, I thought Mastering was "a form of art" as well?

[Black Elision]

Hm... I get that.
Every part of the chain must fit together, if you screw up early on the whole thing will flunk.

But still, I thought Mastering was "a form of art" as well?

Well yea, but not more than the rest of producing is already. Every Producer who masters himself or every professional mastering engineer has it's own unique way of mastering a Track. Like every producer has producing a Tack. Some prefer this settings, others those settings.
Imo a good Track+Mixdown is more worth than Mastering. But I guess everyone has to find out for themselfes.
So my advice would be find a good mastering engineer, get a Track mastered you think is "finished". See how you like the result and compare it to the unmastered Version. I think you learn best from that.

[Astroshade]

Thanks
Will do just that when the time comes

[RPGWiZaRD]

I master newcomer hardstyle producers tracks on a pretty daily basis for free. Probably done over 400 tracks in total by now so I've gathered quite some experience by now.

It happens sometimes that I tweak retail pro label tracks when I think there's room for improvements (mostly to power up the kicks slightly bit of shoddy Scantraxx masterings in particular).

I usually adjust things like volume, EQing, mixdown in the sense (break volume vs kickpart volume). Often I find newcomers having set the kickpart volume slightly lower than ideal compared to the breaks etc, reverb, stereo imaging/surround, maybe very tiny bit compression etc all depending on the track itself.

[Astroshade]

I master newcomer hardstyle producers tracks on a pretty daily basis for free. Probably done over 400 tracks in total by now so I've gathered quite some experience by now.

It happens sometimes that I tweak retail pro label tracks when I think there's room for improvements (mostly to power up the kicks slightly bit of shoddy Scantraxx masterings in particular).

coolio
If I need help can I contact u?