Topic: Time Spent Per Track (Read 8217 times)

Jay Summers · « **on:** November 19, 2010, 10:59:03 AM »

Greetings mastering dudes! Just out of curiosity, on average how long do you spend on each track? I had a mastering guy tell me that he averages 5 or more hours per song. That seems long to me but I'm not a mastering guy. Every mastering session I've ever attended has spent a couple of hours per song, max. I can see it being more in special circumstance, but on average, 5 hours seems like a lot. How much time do you typically spend per song?

PS Sorry if this has been discussed before. I did a search but didn't find anything specific.

Thanks all!

pmx · « **Reply #1 on:** November 19, 2010, 11:06:47 AM »

5 hours per song seems a bit too long for mastering, and too short for mixing. 5 hours per album sounds more reasonable.

i tend to do 2 songs per hour, with the first one taking a bit longer sometimes.

TotalSonic · « **Reply #2 on:** November 19, 2010, 11:10:12 AM »

5 hours per song is an inordinately long time! There's been plenty of times that I've completed entire albums in that time. I'd say it usually takes me anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour per track for me - generally average around 30 minutes. If things are really out of whack or if it's hard to suss out where the client wants it then maybe an hour and a half - but these cases are pretty rare. And sometimes when you're on a roll you can nail it in say something like 15 minutes as well. Generally the first couple tracks in an album take longer but once you have a good sense of where things need to go and how to get them there the remaining tracks go quicker.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

Jerry Tubb · « **Reply #3 on:** November 19, 2010, 11:11:03 AM »

Jay Summers wrote on Fri, 19 November 2010 09:59

How much time do you typically spend per song?

On average, 30 minutes per track, more/less if needed.

JT

lowland · « **Reply #4 on:** November 19, 2010, 11:40:48 AM »

Hi Jay,

In very broad terms as it depends on the material, I suppose I spend 30 minutes to an hour listening to and processing the first track in a project, with perhaps 15-30 minutes per song thereafter - some go quicker than that, some slower. Once I've got the feel of the thing as a whole I may come back and tweak the first song or two in light of my understanding.

To me 5 hours per song is complete overkill: that's maybe a week for a typical album! No commercial mastering establishment I know of could afford to take that long, they'd speedily go out of business; more importantly, I don't think it's necessary if you have reasonable grasp of what you're doing. I do remember a chap called Bill Roberts claiming time taken of that order some years ago, but I don't believe he was in what I would think of as the mainstream of mastering work.

urm eric · « **Reply #5 on:** November 19, 2010, 12:08:41 PM »

My typical day includes at most only 6 critical hours in front of the speakers - that covers a 10-12 track CD.

I can't imagine what you'd be doing to have to spend 5 hours on a single track. Sounds like music micromanagement (i.e. fussy, intrusive, mastering) at its very worst.

Cheers,

Eric

bblackwood · « **Reply #6 on:** November 19, 2010, 12:25:40 PM »

I spend whatever time it takes, but that typically averages around 20-30 minutes/track.

Allen Corneau · « **Reply #7 on:** November 19, 2010, 12:33:05 PM »

If it's an attended session then I usually spend 30-45 minutes on the first song and towards the end of an album I'm up to 15-30 minutes per song. Client involvement (needing to hear before/after on all the songs, etc.) will stretch things out a bit.

Yesterday's session was 15 songs (well, actually 2 songs were basically the same) and we loaded, processed, spaced and cut ref CD's in 6.5 hours.

Viitalahde · « **Reply #8 on:** November 19, 2010, 12:39:08 PM »

5 hours per track is a lot. For me, it's 20-30 minutes per track, first track takes usually a little longer than that.

Typical album is done within 4-6 hours, depending on a lot of things.

jdg · « **Reply #9 on:** November 19, 2010, 12:46:52 PM »

maybe he meant 5 hours per album?

how many times can you listen to the same track in 5 hours?

4min song, 75 times on loop.

dcollins · « **Reply #10 on:** November 19, 2010, 12:47:51 PM »

lowland wrote on Fri, 19 November 2010 08:40

I do remember a chap called Bill Roberts claiming time taken of that order some years ago, but I don't believe he was in what I would think of as the mainstream of mastering work.

Ahh, Memories......

I think a half hour sounds about right here. Sometimes a bit less, rarely a bit more.

DC

dave-G · « **Reply #11 on:** November 19, 2010, 12:59:15 PM »

dcollins wrote on Fri, 19 November 2010 12:47

lowland wrote on Fri, 19 November 2010 08:40

I do remember a chap called Bill Roberts claiming time taken of that order some years ago, but I don't believe he was in what I would think of as the mainstream of mastering work.

Ahh, Memories......

Boost a dB, add a ground rod. .. these things take time.

Thomas W. Bethel · « **Reply #12 on:** November 19, 2010, 01:21:13 PM »

Approximately 30 minutes per song with the first one taking a bit longer.

I had a client who went to another local mastering engineer who took hours to do the mastering including 20 to 30 minutes doing "custom fades". He was cheaper than we are but the client still spent a bundle for all the "custom" work.

I have also had clients tell me that they spent over an hour per song with some engineers at attended sessions. I have other clients who have told me that the engineer just did the mastering, never asked for guidance or feed back. Spent exactly the same amount of time on each song and told the client that "I have done the best I could so don't bring this back if you are not satisfied as I will not redo any of it.

Different strokes for different folks...

lowland · « **Reply #13 on:** November 19, 2010, 01:31:08 PM »

dave-G wrote on Fri, 19 November 2010 17:59

dcollins wrote on Fri, 19 November 2010 12:47

lowland wrote on Fri, 19 November 2010 08:40

I do remember a chap called Bill Roberts claiming time taken of that order some years ago, but I don't believe he was in what I would think of as the mainstream of mastering work.

Ahh, Memories......

Boost a dB, add a ground rod. .. these things take time.

Had to do a little search to remind myself of some of the shenanigans -

http://recforums.prosoundweb.com/index.php/mv/msg/5726/0/0/1 436/

- brought it all flooding (ha!) back. Brad, your posts in that thread prove conclusively that Americans do in fact have a grasp of irony.

Waltz Mastering · « **Reply #14 on:** November 19, 2010, 02:24:29 PM »

About the same as everyone else here... 20 min average per song...sometimes slower - sometimes faster.

turtletone · « **Reply #15 on:** November 19, 2010, 02:40:25 PM »

Are we including naps in these times? if so, then about 1-2 hours per track.

Greg Youngman · « **Reply #16 on:** November 19, 2010, 03:12:15 PM »

Jerry Tubb wrote on Fri, 19 November 2010 08:11

Jay Summers wrote on Fri, 19 November 2010 09:59

How much time do you typically spend per song?

On average, 30 minutes per track, more/less if needed.

JT

Same here. If it takes longer than that... it usually needs to be mixed again. The first 2 or 3 tracks seem to take longer, because I'm finding the overall direction of the total. The last 2 or 3 go by quicker, because the direction is flowing.

domc · « **Reply #17 on:** November 19, 2010, 06:24:18 PM »

TurtleTone wrote on Sat, 20 November 2010 05:40

Are we including naps in these times? if so, then about 1-2 hours per track.

Where is the like button?

Ruairi O'Flaherty · « **Reply #18 on:** November 19, 2010, 06:30:11 PM »

I might be alone but I feel that if a track takes too long to master I lose the ability to bring my most important asset - objectivity. If I have to spend as long turning knobs as the mix guy did I can safely say we're in deep water...and sinking.

I aspire to having a room, gear and workflow where I can instantly hear where a song needs to go, intuitively take it there with minimum "thinking" and spend my energy concentrating on preserving or enhancing the feel of the music.

Sometimes you get a track with a weird problem, say a very particular type of ess problem that requires MS or whatever. In these instances I try to do the necessary broad strokes before I get lost in the jungle of minutiae.

I do a lot of unattended work and I find that if I'm struggling with a track for whatever reason that I'd rather spend 30 mins in two separate goes that slave over a track for too long.

Cheers,
Ruairi

dcollins · « **Reply #19 on:** November 19, 2010, 06:42:27 PM »

lowland wrote on Fri, 19 November 2010 10:31

Had to do a little search to remind myself of some of the shenanigans -

http://recforums.prosoundweb.com/index.php/mv/msg/5726/0/0/1 436/

- brought it all flooding (ha!) back. Brad, your posts in that thread prove conclusively that Americans do in fact have a grasp of irony.

T. Ray has the freehold on irony for that one.

DC

turtletone · « **Reply #20 on:** November 19, 2010, 08:19:52 PM »

that is a truly classic thread.

Bonati · « **Reply #21 on:** November 20, 2010, 05:55:54 PM »

About 20 min per song here, with the first song taking the longest. If mixes are in really good shape I'll move faster.

TotalSonic · « **Reply #22 on:** November 20, 2010, 06:24:18 PM »

Bonati wrote on Sat, 20 November 2010 17:55

About 20 min per song here, with the first song taking the longest. If mixes are in really good shape I'll move faster.

Funnily enough if the mixes are sounding truly great a lot of times I'll move slower as often even subtle moves to bring something in a desired direction can potentially degrade something that you like in the original source - so I go a bit more cautiously when the original is truly fantastic than when it is a mix that needs a little heavy lifting to get it to where the client wants it.

Where I find it goes a lot lot quicker is when the mixes are consistent in arrangement, production and balances - regardless of the sonic quality of these mixes. i.e. Give me a whole bunch of bad sounding mixes that are very similar sounding tracks to each other and I'll end up working quicker than to a batch of great sounding mixes that are all markedly different from each other.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

Bonati · « **Reply #23 on:** November 20, 2010, 10:09:29 PM »

TotalSonic wrote on Sat, 20 November 2010 18:24

Where I find it goes a lot lot quicker is when the mixes are consistent in arrangement, production and balances - regardless of the sonic quality of these mixes. i.e. Give me a whole bunch of bad sounding mixes that are very similar sounding tracks to each other and I'll end up working quicker than to a batch of great sounding mixes that are all markedly different from each other.

This is almost exactly what I meant to say but lazily didn't flesh out the distinctions in my reply. I quite like it when one processing decision (with possibly a minor adjustment here or there) can be "global" for the entire project. The session usually wraps under budget and the clients are stoked. And they usually become repeat clients. (And I might get home before 2am.)

Quote:

Funnily enough if the mixes are sounding truly great a lot of times I'll move slower as often even subtle moves to bring something in a desired direction can potentially degrade something that you like in the original source...

Fair enough. The only instance of this "go slow with a great mix" situation I can't accept is when the approach has a hint of "There must be something I can tweak!" This meddling impulse - done mostly out of fear and insecurity - contains an assumption that great work must involve some tinkering around. It seems to plague audio like nothing else.

Patrik T · « **Reply #24 on:** November 22, 2010, 01:47:59 AM »

Maximum 10 minutes for "better" and another 20 for varieties of "louder".

Best Regards
Patrik

Peter Simonsen · « **Reply #25 on:** December 15, 2010, 08:52:56 AM »

lowland wrote on Fri, 19 November 2010 17:40

Hi Jay,

I do remember a chap called Bill Roberts claiming time taken of that order some years ago, but I don't believe he was in what I would think of as the mainstream of mastering work.

if the "chap" youre talking about is the Bill Roberts from fl?

I´d say youre quite right he is by any chance NOT in the mainstream of mastering work..AND THANK god for that!..

He is unbeliveable good at his work...Some of the frigging best mastering I have heard in many-many years. Beats 99% of the so called "mastering" done worlwide today. People like Bill Roberts, George Massenburg, Chuck Ainlay etc who really cares and knows about high quality audio are very seldom to find today.

Kind regards

/Peter

Silvertone · « **Reply #26 on:** December 16, 2010, 06:38:05 AM »

On average 15 to 30 minutes... or as long as it takes, depending.

Here's the rub, I leave everything for the next day and come back with fresh ears to listen to what I've done... 9 times out of 10 I nailed everything on the first day... however, I do like having the chance to "out-do" myself the next day. The client likes it as well. btw, 98% of my session are unattended.

R/E/P Community

Author Topic: Time Spent Per Track (Read 8217 times)