Unravel the Differences Between Mixing and Mastering

Being a music producer, audio engineer, or simply a music fanatic, you must have encountered this question multiple times: “What’s the difference between mixing & mastering”. It’s really important to discover the essential differences between mixing & mastering before you start producing a song. Mixing and mastering are two important components that ensure your crafted music sounds good on any DSP. However, there are certain differences between these components. Let this blog guide you on the differences between mixing and mastering and help you create amazing music that conquers all hearts.

Brief Overviews of Mixing and Mastering

Mixing is the procedure of blending all the tracks within a song to make it sound better. On the other hand, mastering is the final step in the production of a track. While mastering, you are working with a mixed song and enabling some final tweaks before it’s ready to release.

Being a music fanatic, you should know more about these procedures. So, let’s check the details of these procedures in the following section.

What Is Mixing?

It’s the starting point of post-production. If you have prepared beats and recorded vocals, now you should do the required arrangement and turn it into a song. Generally, at such a time, a music player comes into the picture. An expert mixing engineer can ensure that everything sounds balanced and cohesive. In order to ensure the success of mixing, engineers use tools like compression, EQ, and reverb and emphasize important sonic elements of the track (or tracks). As a mixing engineer, here you should take care of another fact—you should take care of the song’s emotional impact. You should work to bring a song to life.

The mixing procedure may involve steps like:

• Level balancing
• Panning instrument positions
• Equalization
• Compressing
• Improving harmonics
• Resolving problematic frequencies
• Enabling automation
• Applying effects like reverb and delay
• Enhancing sounds with creative touches

What Is Mastering?

Mastering is known as the final step of audio production. It’s an attempt to enable the final touches on a song by enhancing the overall sound, maintaining harmony across the album, and preparing it accordingly for successful distribution. An expert and experienced mastering engineer can add the required touches to the mix. It’s important to perform a quality check before publishing the EP, album, or even single. Generally, a mixing engineer needs to work with a series of tracks and turn them into a song. On the other hand, mastering engineers work with a single stereo of the track. They do everything possible to make the track sonic perfection on any playback system.

Mastering can include steps like

• Enabling compression
• Equalization
• Limiting
• Stereo enhancement
• Increasing the perceived volume with minimal side effects

The Difference Between Mixing & Mastering

For an additional breakdown between mixing and mastering, it’s time to highlight several main differences.

• Without mixing, it’s not possible to master a song. The mixing part should be done first.
• For mixing, you need to combine multiple tracks into one, while mastering works to improve a single track.
• While mixing, engineers use individual instrument tracks to complete the song and achieve balance within the song itself. On the other hand, mastering works with a complete song to achieve the required balance with other songs.
• Generally, mixing and mastering engineers use different equipment or instruments to complete their jobs successfully. For example, a mixing professional may use only high-quality headphones to listen to tracks and mix, while mastering engineers use headphones as well as room speakers and other audio devices to make sure every detail of the song is perfect.

Conclusion

In order to be better at mixing or mastering, you need to invest in the right equipment and spend more time practicing. You should also follow others in your domain to understand how they are achieving perfection. The more time you spend on experiments, working on music, and understanding new trends and techniques, the better you will be at crafting music that can conquer the world.