Hey Folks - a friend of mine said "you know how to master right?" and I said, 'well no, but i'll do it anyway" and then he asked me to master a dj mix he made. I've done lots of reading up on mastering for a track but not really for a mix, and I thought I might talk to you guys about general philosophies in/around working in that environment.

I mean, every song in the mix is already mastered, so mastering is more about how the songs gel together (light overall compression?), making sure the levels are consistent with other mixes (say, should they have recorded it at a low level), and anything else? It doesn't seem to me like I'd want to do a whole lot to his mix (and I mean you could argue that for any master), but do any of you guys have any pointers for mastering an overall mix like this that might be different from the approach you would use for one of your tracks?

--Many thanks for any advice--

http://audio.tutsplus.com/tutorials/mix ... -a-dj-set/

^That covers it I think.

One thing the article does not cover is that if it is a 24 bit recording and you need to drop the bit rate to 16 bit for a CD or mp3 encoding (hopefully 320kbps!) you will POSSIBLY want to dither in the same step that you drop 24->16bit. This will negate some of the "loudness" and "clarity" you lose in the bitrate drop. I say POSSIBLY because sometimes the algorithm will introduce "unacceptable noise levels" (to your ears). 90% of the time I find this is not the case and the dither sounds better than no dither, but listen for it anyway, and if you have time try different dithering options if powr3 doesn't work well. I usually use powR-3 dithering, which is an option that Ableton gives you. Be sure to listen after each step you do - some times you can make things sound worse inadvertantly.

ah sweet, I had come across that article earlier today. Good to know there's not too much too it. Should be fun, thanks for the advice sir!

no compression, maybe chuck a limiter on the end to catch odd peaks but dont run anything into it. maybe some eq if some areas get out of hand.... most of all, its about tediously riding the volume faders so you dont have to destry the dynamics with compression

You won't need any compression or anything (theoretically) and you'll want to avoid leveling or EQing since that will hopefully have been covered in the process of, you know, mixing it live. Sometimes little issues crop up that you wouldn't be able to catch live though, so it's more a case of doing small patching-up of sections rather than a full-on master. At least that's how I go about it.