Me and my band were going to record at a professional studio and we saw that there were the options of getting it mixed or mastered. We are beginers at the whole recording scene. so could anyone explain this to me in a way anyone can understand it?
i play a fender telecaster and i need to know about effects!
This is only a guess, and I'm sure someone else will know for sure, but I'd guess that mixed means recording and putting the tunes together (like for a demo or something). Mastering might be actually creating and pressing the discs and such.
"Rock And Roll Ain't Noise Pollution"
Mixing balances the individual tracks of a song and adds any effects like reverb, etc. At the end of mixing, you've got a 'finished' song.
But your CD might have 10 songs - and although each one is finished in itself, they might not fit together as a set. Mastering balances the songs as a unit, so one won't be louder than another, and they'll have the same overall feel. That's done by adjusting levels, equalization, and compression so you dont have one song louder than another, or skewed more to the bass end... in mastering you're making sure the listener won't have to be turning knobs on the stereo when they listen.
It's sometimes a fine line, since things you did in mixing might be tweaked again in mastering.
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There are alot of great articles on this site about home recording and about recording in general, I would reccomend you check some of them out especially if you're not really experienced with recording or using recording equipment.
Steve-0
