How to prepare your track ready to give to a mastering engineer using Ableton Live

How to make a pre-master for your mastering engineer using Ableton Live.
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[@marisvvvgtr]

Hi, how does the engineer get the same instruments as me in the track? Cuz my instruments are entirely from certain plugins that the engineer does not have. I also cant change them cuz they are the most important harmonics in the track.

[@AnarchyAudioworx]

@@marisvvvgtr Hey! They best way to do this would be to render out all of your channels as separate audio stems to send to your engineer. That way, everything is how you created it and embedded into the wav audio file. Your audio stems can then be opened by any engineer or any DAW and the project will always sound the same, ready for them to work on the final mix and master with them. You would need to follow the steps in this video to make sure the stems are sent in a ‘pre master’ state, but instead of just bouncing out the master output, you would bounce out all individual channels. Hope that helps

[@valheru3601]

Lean and clear explanation. Thank you.

[@AnarchyAudioworx]

Thank you. You're very welcome

[@karlwilson7851]

well put my man..plain,basic,simple and helped me massively..will subscribe.peace fella.

[@AnarchyAudioworx]

Thank you Karl. Glad it could help!

[@girlinagale]

So you're sending a stereo mix to the mastering engineer, not separate tracks?

[@AnarchyAudioworx]

That’s correct, yes. If it’s just for mastering from the wav file anyway. If you wanted to export all of the separate stems for stem mixing and mastering then you could do the exact same process but just change the setting in the export windows drop down box from ‘master’ to ‘export all separate channels’

[@girlinagale]

@@AnarchyAudioworx thanks for a quick reply. I produce electronic music, never tried a mastering service but tempted to hear how much value it adds.

[@alex95187]

So a mastering engineer does not need each individual track in the song?

[@stevenricketts4299]

A mastering engineer wouldn’t, no. Unless they are doing both the mixing and mastering. If they are doing the mixing part as well then they would need the individual stems. Mastering is usually just done from a ‘pre-master’ wav file as shown in the video.

[@reenday]

Can i put utility on master to turn down the volume ?

[@AnarchyAudioworx]

Yes you could also do it that way

[@MrJJDread]

Is there a difference between lowering the Level of the Master and selecting all the seperate Channel and lower them

[@AnarchyAudioworx]

You can lower all of the channels instead if you prefer. I tend to do it this way as I usually already have a ‘test master’ chain on my master output which is set with everything running into it at the levels I set them at while mixing. If you then pull all of the channels faders down and then re-add your test master chain at any point (to do a test mix for a club or soundcloud etc), then all of your compression and limiting will be totally off. Thats not so much of a problem if you aren’t planning on going back to the project and the mastering job is now passed on to someone else, but if you are working on the track for a client for example but they want a pre-master to also send to the label that its been signed to, there is a chance you may need to re-visit the project again at some point. So I tend to just use the master to get the right pre-master level so that it doesn’t mess up the original test master you did. Its also much quicker this way and more precise 🙂

[@MrJJDread]

Anarchy Audioworx thanks a lot!

[@AnarchyAudioworx]

@@MrJJDread You're welcome :)

[@kubolor1234]

How about using the utility tool

[@craigwilliams3912]

Ace Mukka

[@marchelawarab6727]

cool