Mixing all the way. Mastering adds that final gloss and gives you that punch and volume, but you could technically get by with a good mix with no mastering over a bad mix with good mastering. A good master will not make a bad mix sound good. A good mix will not make a bad recording sound good.

There is some debate of whether or not sending music into a professional mastering studio is a necessity. If the mix does not need any modifying : it is at a perfect volume level, fades are well done, EQ is consistent throughout, compression is right on, etc.; then there is no need for mastering.

Mastering is mostly EQ/Compression/limiting. Mixing is all of the above on more than 48 tracks with reverb, delay, outboard processing, and automation thrown in. So many more decisions. Definitely tougher if you don’t like the music!

8 Best DAWs for Mixing

1. REAPER. Reaper, i.e., Rapid Environment for Audio production, engineering, and recording, is built by WinAmp audio player.
2. Ableton Live. It is the best DAW for mixing and mastering to producing hip hop music.
3. Avid Pro Tools.
4. Steinberg Cubase.
5. FL Studio.
6. Steinberg Nuendo.
7. Presonus Studio One.
8. Logic Pro X.

Because mastering engineers have not heard your music before, they can catch the mistakes you’ve made over hours and hours of mixing. They can make your song sound even better than it did before. Learning how to master a song is important, because it changes how you mix.

The average costs of a professional mix and master can run about $1,200, about $120.00 per song, according to hitandrunrecording.com.

I recommend mixing at -23 dB LUFS, or having your peaks be between -18dB and -3dB. This will allow the mastering engineer the opportunity to process your song, without having to resort to turning it down.

Home mastering is hard – but it IS possible. There’s no question that it’s difficult to master with the same monitoring (and in the same space) that you use for mixing, and it can be very difficult to get that impartial “distance” from your music to know exactly what it needs.

Because mastering deals with a song’s mix at the macro level, it cannot fix issues at the micro level such as within the individual tracks in your song (otherwise than it would be mixing duh!). For example, mastering can’t add delays to just your vocal track.

An experienced mastering engineer can master a song within 10-20 minutes whereas a beginner or someone just starting may take an hour or more to master a song completely. As you continue learning and gaining more understanding, you will begin to spend less time, using like 30-20 minutes or even less.

The biggest determining factor in the cost of having your song mastered is the skill and expertise of the audio engineer. A person that is relatively new to the industry may charge a few hundred dollars to mix a song, while engineers with major accolades will likely charge a few thousand dollars to master a song.

One song could cost from $50 to $500 – but at a project-based rate, an entire album could start at around $2000.

The approximate average annual salary for Mastering Engineers is $72,500. The approximate salary range for Mastering Engineers runs from $22,000 to $143,000.

So, how much will it cost to mix my audio tracks? Professional studios will charge between $150 and $1500 for each track. Freelance professionals will charge between $100 and $1000 per track. Project studios will provide a completed mixed track for as little as $50.

As a mixing engineer, you are entitled to a part of the “Sound Recording” / “Master” royalties resulting from streams of digital recordings. The Master rights usually belong to the artist, the label, the recording studio, and other affiliates that sincerely helped to the recording/mixing process.

No, they do not receive royalties. Mastering engineers get paid a fee for services rendered…

OP, if you really know how to mix (editing, microfades, vocal ride, eq, compression, delay verb and other fx+ automation fx changes every 4-8 bars, bigger change for the hook) you should charge at least $40/hour, probably $60/song..

Some genres will use more or less tracks. A slow ambient song might only have 8-12 tracks while a wall of sound track might have 50. In general though if you go over a certain amount you will need a good reason to justify more tracks.

For these reasons, PayScale puts a sound mixer’s annual salary between $34,000 and $128,000 (an average of $59,173), with an hourly rate between $12.22 and $75.99 (an average of $29.48).

The salary range for Boom Operators runs from $37,000 to $121,000. The median salary for a Boom Operator is approximately $72,000. Lloyd states that almost all Boom Operators begin as contracted or freelance workers.

Salary Overview Well, on average, Audio Engineers in the United States make anywhere from $30,000 to $82,000 a year, depending on your years of experience.

1). If you are recording to a 2-track (a song instrumental), the average time to mix could be from 15 minutes to an hour per song depending on the amount of vocal tracks are used. 2). If you are a live band this could take up to 4 hours per song plus a day or two to “refresh” from the song and make tweaks to the mix.

If you’re sitting down to write a song that’s decent it should take less than four hours. On the other hand, if you’re struggling with a song that you have no business working on, you could waste days and still not be happy.

It’s the 10,000 hours rule. If you don’t have sessions, download some off the internet.

Normal time for mixing major, or large independent records is 2 and 1/2 to 3 weeks. But almost ALWAYS depends on the budget too. Generally a day maybe a little more per song. If vocal tuning and editing is needed add a few days to that (for the whole record).

The average cost for professional mixing and mastering services varies from $150 to $700 per song to receive a good quality product. When working with top-producers, the pricing can get into the $1,000’s. But, with any other studio, you can still obtain a radio-worthy product with a budget of $200 per song.