Mixing vs Mastering: What Is the Difference?
Mixing and mastering are two different jobs done at two different stages. Mixing works on the separate tracks of one song (drums, bass, guitars, vocals) and turns them into a single stereo file: what is loud, what sits back, where everything lives, what the song feels like. Mastering works on those finished stereo mixes and turns them into a release: consistent level and tone from song to song, the gaps and fades between them, loudness that suits streaming and vinyl, and the final delivery files. Mixing makes the song. Mastering makes the record.
This guide is for bands and artists who are about to release something and are trying to work out what they are paying for, what each stage can and cannot fix, and whether they need both. We mix indie and alternative records for a living and work with mastering engineers on most of them, so we will also tell you where we think people waste money.
Mixing vs mastering: the short version
What it works on. Mixing: every individual track in one song, often dozens of them. Mastering: one stereo file per song, or a handful of stems at most.
What it decides. Mixing: the balance, the space, the tone of each instrument, the emotional shape of the song. Mastering: the overall tone and loudness of each song, and how the songs sit next to each other.
What it can fix. Mixing: nearly anything about how the recording sounds. Mastering: broad things only. It cannot turn up the vocal in the second chorus on its own.
When it happens. Mixing comes first and takes the most time. Mastering comes last, once every mix is approved.
What it costs. At the independent level, roughly 150 to 1,200 dollars per song for mixing and 50 to 200 dollars per song for mastering. The mixing numbers are broken down here.
What actually happens in a mix
A mix is a long series of decisions about priority. The multitrack from your recording session is raw material: a kick drum mic, a snare top and bottom, overheads, room mics, a DI and an amp on the bass, four guitar tracks, a lead vocal and some doubles. The mix engineer decides how those become one picture. Which guitar carries the song and which one is texture. Whether the vocal sits on top of the band or inside it. How much of the room you hear. What the chorus does to the listener that the verse did not.
The technical tools are familiar: level, panning, EQ, compression, reverb, delay, automation. The tools are not the job. The job is knowing what the song is supposed to feel like and making every one of those small moves serve it. In a shoegaze record the vocal is often a texture inside the wall of guitars on purpose, and a good shoegaze mix protects that. In post-punk the bass is frequently the lead instrument, and pushing it back to make room for guitars kills the song. A mixer who treats every record the same way will make yours sound like everyone else's, which is why we think alternative music should not be mixed with pop templates.
If you are worried that a professional mix will sand the edges off your song, that worry belongs to this stage, not to mastering. We wrote a whole piece on that fear, and the short answer is that it depends entirely on who mixes it.
What actually happens in mastering
Mastering starts when the mixes are finished and approved. The mastering engineer listens to the songs as a set, usually in a room and on speakers built for exactly this, and makes broad adjustments to each stereo file: a little EQ to even out the tone, gentle compression if it helps, limiting to set the final level, and sometimes nothing at all to a song that is already right.
The rest of mastering is the part nobody talks about, and for an EP or album it matters as much as the sound:
Consistency. Song four should not feel louder or brighter than song five unless you want it to. A good master makes the record feel like one piece of work.
Sequencing, gaps and fades. How long the silence is between songs, where a fade ends, whether one track bleeds into the next.
Loudness for each format. A streaming master and a vinyl master are not the same file. Vinyl has physical limits on low end, stereo width and length per side.
Delivery. Final WAV files at the right format, ISRC codes and metadata embedded, and a DDP image if you are pressing CDs.
A second pair of ears. Fresh ears on a mix that the band and the mixer have heard three hundred times each. This one is underrated.
What mastering cannot fix
We disagree with a lot of what you read online on this one. Most of the time, when an artist says "it just needs mastering", what they mean is "something in the mix is bothering me and I hope someone else will make it go away". The snare is too loud in the bridge. The vocal disappears when the guitars come in. The low end booms on one song and not the others. None of those are mastering problems. Mastering works on the whole stereo file, so any move it makes to fix the snare also changes the vocal, the cymbals and everything else living in the same frequencies.
Our rule of thumb: if you can describe what is wrong in terms of one instrument, it is a mix note. Send it back to the mixer before mastering. A mastering engineer can sometimes rescue a mix with stem mastering (working from four or five grouped stems instead of one file), and that is a real and useful service. But it is a rescue, not a plan.
The reverse is also true. If your mixes sound good on their own but the record feels uneven as a whole, or it sounds great in the studio and small on a phone, that is exactly what mastering is for.
Loudness: the part everyone argues about
For years the argument about mastering was an argument about loudness. Records were pushed louder and louder with limiters to compete on radio and in shuffle, and lost their dynamics doing it. Streaming changed the maths. Spotify, for example, normalises every track to about -14 LUFS by default, with listener settings at -11 and -19. A master made much louder than that simply gets turned down. Spotify's own advice is to keep true peaks below -1 dB, or below -2 dB for loud masters, to avoid extra distortion in the encoded file.
What that means in practice: squashing your master to win a loudness race buys you very little on streaming, because the platform turns it back down to the same level as everyone else. What you keep is the damage. Played back at the same level, the crushed version usually sounds flatter and smaller than the one that was allowed to breathe.
We are not saying there is a correct number. Some records should be loud and dense, and noise rock that sits at -14 LUFS may feel polite. The number describes the signal. It does not tell you whether the record works. Meters describe signal, not quality, and a good mastering engineer listens first and reads the meter second.
Do you need both mixing and mastering?
For anything you release properly, yes. But how much each one matters depends on the release.
A demo or a rough sketch. You need neither at a professional level. A decent rough mix with a limiter on it is fine for sending to a booker or a producer.
A single for streaming. You need a real mix, and a mastering pass that may be light. The mix is doing most of the work here.
An EP or an album. Both matter, and mastering matters more than people think, because it is what makes eight songs recorded on different days feel like one record.
Vinyl. Ask for a dedicated vinyl master. Do not send the streaming file to the pressing plant and hope.
If the budget only stretches to one of them being excellent, spend it on the mix. A great mix with a modest master sounds like a great record. A weak mix with an expensive master sounds like an expensive weak mix.
Should the same person mix and master your record?
Some engineers do both and do them well. Our view is that separate ears are worth paying for. By the time a mix is approved, the mixer has lived inside the song for days and cannot hear it fresh anymore. Neither can the band. The mastering engineer hears it for the first time, the way a listener will, and catches things everyone else has stopped noticing.
That is how we work at Tapetown. We focus on the mix, and we hand the finished mixes to mastering engineers we work with closely and who understand the kind of music we make. If you already have a mastering engineer you trust, we deliver pre-master files for them instead. Either way works, as long as someone other than the mixer is the last pair of ears.
How to hand mixes over for mastering
No limiter on the mix bus, or send two versions: one without the limiter for the mastering engineer and one with it for your own reference.
Leave headroom. Peaks a few decibels below zero are plenty. The master is where the final level gets set.
Keep the session format. Export at the sample rate and bit depth you mixed at, as WAV. Do not convert to MP3 at any stage.
Write down the song order, the gaps you want, and any fades or crossfades.
Flag what is deliberate. The tape hiss at the start, the distorted vocal, the loud cymbal crash that ends side A. If you do not say so, a careful engineer may try to fix it.
Send one or two reference records and say what you like about them, in plain words.
If you are still at the stage before the mix, our guide to preparing your tracks for mixing covers the earlier handover, and bands who recorded live together should read the stem prep guide for live-recorded bands.
What about AI mastering?
Automated mastering services are cheap and fast and fine for demos. They are weakest on exactly the records where mastering decisions matter most: albums where songs need to relate to each other, and music with deliberate rough edges that an algorithm reads as faults. We made the full argument in AI mastering vs a human engineer.
FAQ: mixing vs mastering
What is the difference between mixing and mastering?
Mixing balances and shapes the individual tracks of one song into a finished stereo file. Mastering takes those finished mixes and prepares them as a release, with consistent level and tone across songs, sequencing and gaps, and the right files for streaming, CD and vinyl.
Do I need mastering if my mix already sounds good?
For a real release, yes. A good mix makes mastering easier and lighter, but mastering still sets the final loudness, matches the songs to each other and gives you a fresh pair of ears before the record is out.
Can mastering fix a bad mix?
Only partly. Mastering works on the whole stereo file, so it can fix broad tonal and level problems but not a single instrument that is too loud or buried. Problems you can name by instrument belong back in the mix.
How loud should my master be for Spotify?
Spotify normalises to about -14 LUFS by default, so there is little to gain from mastering much louder. Keep true peaks below -1 dB (or -2 dB for loud masters) and let the music decide the loudness rather than a number.
Should the same engineer mix and master my album?
It can work, but separate ears usually catch more. The mixer has heard every song hundreds of times by the end, and a mastering engineer hears it fresh, the way your listeners will.
Keep reading
Not sure whether your record needs a better mix or just a master? Send us the rough mix and one reference track, and we will tell you honestly which one it is. We mix indie rock, post-punk and shoegaze for artists everywhere and hand the mastering to engineers we trust. Ready for an honest answer? Send us the rough mix.
