Should I Master My Own Music?

By the time you've finished producing and mixing a track, you've heard it hundreds of times. Your brain fills in gaps. It compensates for problems. That harsh 3kHz resonance you should be hearing? Your ears adapted to it three hours ago. The kick that's slightly buried? You know it's there because you put it there, so your brain tells you it's fine.

A mastering engineer hearing your track for the first time doesn't have that bias. I hear exactly what's in the file, not what's supposed to be in the file. That's worth more than any plugin or technique.

Demos. Rough mixes you want to play out at a gig to test the reaction. Tracks you're sending to labels as submissions where the final version will get mastered properly. Personal projects where the stakes are low.

If you're still developing your sound and putting out music to build a following, doing your own masters is a reasonable way to save money while you grow. Just be aware of the limitations.

Label releases. Editorial playlist submissions. Anything going on Beatport where it's competing directly with professionally mastered tracks. Vinyl pressings. Any release where the quality of the master affects how people perceive your music.

Here's the test: if you'd be embarrassed for a mastering engineer to hear your master, you probably need one. If it sounds good and you're genuinely happy, carry on. But be honest with yourself.

Over-limiting is the most common one. Producers push the limiter until the meter says it's loud, without listening to what they're losing. The transients flatten, the punch disappears, the low end turns to mush. It reads loud on a meter but sounds small on speakers.

Ear fatigue is the second. After hours of production, your ears are shot. The frequency response of your hearing literally changes when you're tired. You make EQ decisions that sound right at midnight but sound terrible the next morning.

Monitoring environment is the third. If your room isn't treated and your speakers aren't calibrated, you're making decisions based on inaccurate information. You might think the low end is fine because your room has a bass bump at 80Hz. On a flat system, there's nothing there.

You can get a decent result mastering your own music. But decent and professional are different things. A fresh pair of ears in a calibrated room will almost always improve on what you've done, because the objectivity alone is worth it.

The people who tell me they can do it just as well themselves usually can't hear the difference. And that's the problem. When you can't hear the difference, you can't fix what you can't hear.