Mastering Workflow?

[timmyg]

I'm about to master my first album that I've mixed and wondered what is the best workflow.

Do people master each song individually using the master strip or are the individual mixes imported as wav's to a separate project so they can be mastered in one timeline?

If the songs are mastered in their individual projects, how are you able to get consistency from song to song?

Also, how do you approach CD burning, DDP, ISRC Codes etc with Auria?

I'd like to know what software & workflow Auria users use when it comes to the FULL mastering process.

[martygras]

A lot of what mastering used to be has fallen away these days. Mostly because what we are doing is not mastering in the strict sense, but pre-mastering.

Mastering used to attempt to glue the tracks together by altering relative music levels and even reordering tracks for flow when instructed to. There's so much more to mastering, but now it is best using DAWs as we do, to get the final mixdown to sound the way you want it to then. No need to go back afterwards and re-tweak, unless you are trying to "glue" your songs together to make the album feel like it was all one piece instead of a grouping of recordings.

You might also make different mixdowns depending on how your music is to be used. Are you planning on having a cd house make a thousand for you or just for SoundCloud uploads?

IMO, if you are recording your own music for a serious release then have it mastered at a mastering house. They will actually work with you prior to submission to help you give them what they need to make your project really sound professional.

[timmyg]

Good advice, however no answers to the questions asked unfortunately. Yes 1000 CD's will be duplicated so there goes any cost I could spend on a mastering engineer. I HAVE to master this myself. I understand that using a mastering engineer offers another level of professionalism and a new set of experienced ears (I have just finished mixing an album for a band that has gone to Brian Lucey in LA (Arctic Monkeys/Black Keys) but my personal budget won't stretch to that.

Also, Auria includes a mastering strip & mastering plug-ins so it must be possible to get professional level masters otherwise what is the point?

Bob Katz has endorsed pro-L and I've read that some mastering engineers use the desktop version of that plug-in.

To re-iterate; has anybody using Auria mastered a full album and what workflow & software did they use?