Mixing and mastering is the final stage of your production. This process will finalise your track in a way that will give you the best possible professional sound needed in today’s modern music industry. No matter how good you are at producing a track, the mix and master can make or break your release. Every artist wants the best quality for their music but 9 times out of 10 the artist already think they have achieved this. What I personally find that is after an artist has their music mixed and mastered to the highest quality they realise the full potential of their music. A lot of artist are under the impression that mixing in the box will give them a professional sound. This is in many cases not true. There is only so much you can get out the box with the likes of digital plugins and digital summing.
Such processes as summing through an analogue console and high quality A/D D/A converters will do wonders for the overall quality of your track. Think of it like the difference between listening to a 96kbs mp3 and a Wav 44,100kHz. This is how I describe the quality difference between a professional mix and a digital in the box mix. Many studios offer a digital mixing service and the results speak for themselves. Weak, thin and lifeless mixes that do not showcase the tracks full professional quality. Owning a Solid State Logic 36 channel mixing console we are able to sum artists tracks to the master bus at the highest quality. With the addition of out the box processing using eq’s and compressors by brands such as Solid State Logic, Maselec, Maag, Shadow Hills, Elysia and Neve we able to achieve truely unique high quality mixes that set the professionals from the amateurs. A lot of home studios have poorly acoustically treated rooms and inaccurate monitoring. This results in overcompensation for frequencies that shouldn’t be compensated for. For instance a lot of artists will have a very unbalanced bottom end to their tracks. This is partly due to their monitors being too bottom heavy. You will begin to increase volume of the frequency range so that the track sounds good on your monitors and in your room. This doesn’t mean it’ll sound good on any monitors and in any room. Using a studio with accurate monitoring and knowledge that the track is perfectly balanced not only give you peace of mind but will also make sure your track is going to stand up against other professional tracks released into the music industry.
