Mastering your own music.. is it possible?

[GratuiTous]

Here's a thought that came to me the other day.

I was asked by a reader on my blog to help them push some extra loudness out of their track. They were struggling with their peaks, getting in the way of extra loudness.

I told them to send me the un-mastered version, and I gave it my attempt at mastering.

For more info, check out this link:
http://beatstruggles.com/can-you-master-your-own-music/

So you've probably always heard about getting a professional mastering engineer to master your tracks because they have the experience, expensive gear, and proper rooms.

With that said, when you go to master your own track, do you feel like you're actually mastering, or just mixing while increasing the loudness?

(Check out the blog-post write-up. It's not too long, then post back here with your thoughts!)

 

[Fade]

Well I think a lot of times people combine mixing with mastering, when in fact they're two separate things. For mixing, of course it's fine to mix your own stuff, but mastering, I never recommended anyone do their own. It should be done professionally, unless you're just aiming to do an at-home mastering with the use of VSTs and whatnot.

 

[crog85]

Hmm... That makes sense. I'm far from a professional producer, I just do this for fun, but I have played around with "mastering" a couple of my own tracks. I don't really "know" what I'm doing, but it seems like I play around with the mix until everything sounds the way I want, then move on to "mastering" only to find now parts of the mix are too loud, others are too low, and I find myself going back to the mix adjusting levels and EQs. Most times I think the track sounded better before "mastering," it just lacks the loudness that I would like it to have...

I think having someone else with a fresh set of ears (and someone that knows what their doing lol) master the track would be best... I know if I go back and listen to beats that I made long ago, I can hear things in the mix that I would change, but you don't notice these things when making the beat, hearing it over and over for hours/days or however long it takes to finish the track.

 

[GratuiTous]

Solid points - I definitely agree with the fresh set of ears. It's so easy to listen to the same track for a couple hours and then kind of forget where you're at lol.

I still feel it's possible to achieve your own mastering if you know what you're doing + using reference tracks to get a real-world comparison from your track to professionals.. ?