Online Mixing and Mastering Services: What to Look For Before You Send Your Tracks

You spent countless hours working on your precious track, and finally came up with a song, arrangement, and production that you really like. It was already tough to accomplish that task, yet there’s this thing called mixing and mastering, and your song sounds nearly like the songs on your playlist. You now need a mixing and mastering engineer who can make your music sound release-ready, completed, and finished.

Maybe you don’t know anybody that you can trust with their skills, your local studio doesn’t seem like they know their stuff, and you want someone who can understand you and take your vision to the next level. Like, we can order anything online nowadays, the whole music market is in our hands, and we can work with anyone around the world. So, why would you limit yourself to only the people around you when you can work with any mixing and mastering engineer remotely?

Why Choosing the Right Online Engineer Matters

If you’re afraid of working with the wrong person and wasting your money, I’ll help you choose the right service correctly in this article.

What Are Online Mixing and Mastering Services?

Back in the day, music recording took place in large studios with real musicians, music producers, and recording engineers. When they finished recording the song, the mixing engineer was mixing it right there in the studio, probably in a day. Nowadays, as the music recording process has shifted to little computers in our homes and many of us produce music in our DAWs, there’s no reason to go into a studio and sit next to a mixing engineer to finish the song anymore.

For some time, even the biggest mixing engineers in the world have worked entirely in the box, meaning they use only software plugins, and they don’t have to go to a studio, so they can work from home. After the pandemic, even those working in big studios had to set up home studios to keep working. And then the significant change happened. Nowadays, most of the mixing and mastering process occurs online.

From Home Studio to Finished Master: All via File Transfer

What is online mixing? It can be sending your multitrack files to the mixing engineer via file transfer, sharing your preferences, vision, reference tracks, and rough mix, and waiting for them to work on your song. Or it can be like in the old days, but online. Instead of sitting next to them, you can send your files to them, get on a call, and watch them mix your record from start to finish. It can also be a hybrid idea that I also follow with some of my clients, and it’s my favorite: you send your files and let the mixing engineer do their job, then hop on a call for the revision process.

What is online mastering? And is there a difference between online mixing? The main difference between online mixing and online mastering is the amount of time the engineer spends on the song.

As mixing can take between 2 and 12 hours, it might not be practical for both sides to do so online. However, mastering usually takes at most an hour, and the change from mix to master is not that significant. Even though some mastering engineers might also get on a call with you to simulate the old ways, you usually just send the file and wait for them to work on it.

Pros and Cons of Going Online Instead of Local

Let’s start with the pros of working with an online mixing and mastering engineer.

Pros of Going Online for Your Mix and Mastering Needs

First of all, you reach a global talent pool that’s so diverse. What you can do, and I like the most, is first to find an album you love so much for how it sounds, and look at the credits of the album. You found the mixing engineer there, so listen to the other records they worked on. You liked them too, great!

Now you can just email them about your project and work with that person. But if you look only among local engineers, you cannot find many direct matches unless you’re living in Los Angeles or maybe Nashville. And you can find niche genre experts, such as dark wave, ambient, IDM, acid jazz, you name it.

Another pro of working with mixing and mastering engineers remotely is that you can always find engineers within your budget, whether you’re rich or broke. There are engineers around the world for every budget. 

People working online usually have a system in place, and the turnaround time is generally much faster than at local studios, where they can sometimes hold your project for months.

Cons of Going Online for Your Mix and Mastering Needs

The first con of working with online mixing and mastering engineers is that there’s often no in-person communication. If you want to go to the engineer's studio to watch them work on your project, working online might not be for you. It’s also possible to do that with modern tools, but it’s never the same as being in the same room. For example, I have a perfect system for online collaboration with high-quality audio and video streaming. Still, if you don’t have a sound system to listen to the audio, you would miss some of the audio quality.

Although remote working systems make remote work easy, there are still time zone differences. I often have to sacrifice my usual work times to collaborate with people in different time zones. If you’re not so much flexible with that, that’s also another point.

But now most of the work happens online anyway, even if you work with your local mixing or mastering engineer. Not many projects require working in the same studio; therefore, I complete all regional projects online. If we meet, it’s usually just to talk a bit and get to know each other, not because of work.

What to Look For in an Online Mixing and Mastering Service

Professional mixing and mastering engineers often work across very different genres in their careers, even though some are known for a particular genre. However, it would be a nice idea to find someone who actually worked on similar music in the past. It doesn’t have to be the same, but it would be nice for them to have at least some closely related genres in their portfolios.

Portfolio

If a mixing engineer is known explicitly with trap music, it would be a good idea not to send them your hard rock track. It’s not because they cannot mix that genre, but because they are probably not used to that, and you have too many options online that you can find another person who is explicitly working on rock music, or someone who has both rock music and rap, for example. 

Moreover, it’s a good idea to look at their selected portfolio. The difference between all the credits online and their portfolio chosen is that they may not be proud of a particular project, even though they did a fantastic job, because it might not be representative of their style. Listen to their portfolio closely and decide whether you like them enough. It’s nothing complicated, just listen if you like or not.

Mixing Mastering Pricing and What’s Included

Most of the time, mixing engineers don’t include pricing on their websites because it may depend on the project. Still, the pricing is obvious on online marketplaces. If you found an engineer you want to work with but don’t know about their pricing, simply send your demo/rough mix, explain why you want to work with them, and what you expect from them, and ask for a proposal. If it’s an online marketplace, you already know the price. 

If the information about revisions is not included, ask about how many revisions are included in the price. Three revisions are more than enough for almost all of my projects, and there’s usually an issue with the files, or simply the artist or the band is very uncertain about their decisions. So, if a mixing engineer gives you a revision limit, it’s not a bad thing. 

You can also ask about the prices of extra mixes such as stems, instrumentals, or vocal up/down versions, beforehand.

There are some websites, such as Airgigs, that offer a money-back guarantee, which sounds fantastic at first, but, in my experience, only people who don’t trust their work enough provide it. But if you're terrified of what it’s going to be, you can choose them and see if it's worth working with that professional. What’s more, some engineers can give you a free sample too.

Communication and Revision Process

It’s also important to know which medium you’ll use to handle the revision process. Engineers often have their own ways of handling this process, and some just adjust to their clients. However, if you don’t know where to talk to or where to write your revisions, the process might get complicated. Furthermore, it’s important to talk beforehand if you’d like to handle the process on a call, because not every engineer would give you that opportunity.

Mixing and Mastering as Communication: What Are You Really Saying With Your Sound?

Turnaround Time and Schedule

One of the most important things to talk with an online mixing and/or mastering engineer is the timeline and your expectations. The turnaround times for online work are often very fast; however, if the professional you’re working with is a busy one, it might take some time for them to work on your project. It’s always better to tell them about your expectations beforehand or ask them when they can send the mix. It can clear the stress out of both sides' heads.

You will also see a 24-hour turnaround time on some professionals' profiles. Even though it sounds tempting to have your mixes just in a day, it might not be a great idea to work with someone who rushes to mix your song.

Mixing a song is all about the ears' objectivity, and we lose that when we work on the same song. This is why most of us check our mixes the next day to re-evaluate them. Rushing a mix in a day sounds forceful, and it might not be a good idea to pick someone who rushes to the finish line, then another engineer who might take their time before sending the final mixes to you.

Technical Quality: Monitoring, Room, Tools

Some of the sound engineers use their gear to attract clients online. Some might really have those gears, but some don’t. But do you know what? It doesn’t matter because it’s really not relevant what gear they have, or don’t have. Is your song going to be better if it is entirely mixed with analog gear? No! The most important thing about a mixing and/or mastering engineer is their ears, expertise, and maybe monitoring.

It doesn’t matter if they have a hardware compressor worth $5000. If a gear-head is selling you their gear online, run away because they are not gonna fix your problems, and help your vision come through.

The professionals who will help you focus on the music rather than the hardware. Of course, what tools a mixing engineer uses is essential, but it’s not the most important thing or one of the first five most important. 

What is essential when we talk about gear is the monitoring equipment and the engineer's room.

Some engineers work with headphones nowadays, so that also counts. But if they are just cheap headphones, of course, that doesn’t count. Many engineers use high-quality headphone setups nowadays, so check whether they include any information about their studio monitors or headphones. You can also look at their studio room if they work with studio monitors. If it doesn’t look like they treated it acoustically well, they probably don’t hear well. 

Reviews, Testimonials, and Credits

Reviews and testimonials might be critical, but it doesn’t mean that you cannot work with someone who doesn’t have any of them. You can catch a good deal with someone who doesn’t have any reviews on online marketplaces, but the downside is that they might be a stranger to working online. 

If you’ve already listened to their credits and like their portfolio, you can read a bit about the testimonials, what their former clients say, and what they emphasize. They often emphasize something about them, such as their perfect communication, their working system, or how they deliver sound. 

Although the internet is a wild place, the testimonials can be fake; therefore, don’t rely on them solely.

Red Flags: When You Should Avoid a Service

It’s so easy to trick someone with just a bit of volume change.

The “Before & After” Volume Trick

I personally don’t appreciate before-and-after work in music because it just throws the rough mix or demo in the trash and doesn’t appreciate what a client brought to the table in the first place. I understand that people would like to know what can be changed in the mixing and mastering process, but it’s not just one man’s work but a collaborative effort.

The producer of the record, or just the artist, prepares the multitracks for the mixing engineer, keeping in mind that they will be working with someone on that, and sends them to a mixing engineer. So they have a huge say on the record. And most of the time, mixing requires revision, which might affect the song's direction.

But let’s say someone uses before-and-after work on their website. What you can carefully listen for is a volume change. If the volume rises when you listen to the “after” version, the engineer wants to play with your ears and make you think it's way better than you might think. You can run away from them because they are just not honest with you from the start.

Fake or Stolen Credits

Do you know how many times I caught a liar on the internet with fake or stolen credentials? It became my partner's and my hobby to spot scammers in the evening. If a person writes big credits into their biographies on social profiles or websites, always double-check those credits. 

You may notice nearly everybody has a Grammy, so double-check that too. Some people use that information just to look like it. Or they might write Taylor Swift in their portfolio, but they might be just a studio assistant for the song. That doesn’t mean they have that credit as a mixing engineer, but they have it as a studio assistant. Which is not a bad thing, of course, but it’s just a bit of a misleading way of using big names in your portfolio. This is why I include my position for every song that I use in my portfolio.

“I can fix anything” Attitude

Some engineers might tell you that they can fix your bad recordings, or any issues in your song, really.  Nevertheless, the quality of your recordings decides the quality of your mixes and masters. No tool in the world changes the original recordings.

We can just manipulate them into some areas, but the source always stays the same. It’s always better to have someone who can tell you what’s wrong with your recordings, ask you to re-record them, or give you feedback beforehand. That way, you can even learn something new from the process. 

I even give feedback on final mixes before I work on them as a mastering engineer, because it’s always better to discuss what could be improved before working on them.

What does mastering a song mean?

No Questions Asked

A professional engineer will ask you about your vision and your reference songs. They all have a different way of understanding what you really want to achieve before working on your music. If they don’t ask you anything about what you really want, that can be a red flag too.

Unlimited Revisions

Although it might sound good to have unlimited revisions, it’s often a trap that makes the mix worse with every revision. There’s a reason why they picked the second mix of Billie Jean after making 90 different mixes of it. Because working on the song and trying every possible scenario doesn’t serve the song, but it serves the obsessed minds. And nobody can stay objective after listening to 10 different versions of a song.

If an engineer offers you unlimited revisions, it’s often not because they want you to feel free, but because they lack the confidence or boundaries. The industry standard is two or three revisions top.

Analog Gear Obsession

I cannot stress this enough: if someone markets themselves 90% with their expensive analog gear or console, and just 10% with their skills, be careful. I love analog gear. They look great. But gear doesn't mix records; ears do. Even though working with analog gear is fun, many top-tier mixes are done entirely "in the box" (digital) today.

What the Actual Process Should Look Like (Step-by-Step)

This process usually starts with you sending your song to the engineer and asking for a quote.

Step 1 – Initial Contact and Quote

They typically send you a proposal that includes the price and information about how they work. They can also include their turnaround time in the first proposal. After you agree to work on the song, it’s important to prepare a document, or just an email, for the engineer to tell you about your vision and what you expect from the sound.

It’s beneficial to send reference tracks, but don’t force yourself to find one if you don’t already have one in mind. If you pick the wrong reference track, the engineer might take your sound in another direction. To prevent that, include your reasons why you’re choosing that song or album as a reference. 

Some engineers ask for full upfront payment, while others might take half before and half after the work is done. Both ways are acceptable.

If you need specific files, such as stem groups for live shows, instrumental versions, vocal up or down versions, or a TV mix, tell them you will need them after you finish the mix or master.

Step 2 – File Transfer and Confirmation

You prepare your files to send to your mixing or mastering engineer. It’s essential to do this step carefully. Wrongly named files, or names like “Audio 13,” might start your project with your mixing engineer on the wrong foot. Be clear with naming, and don’t include anything that’s not going to be in the final version of the track.

After you send your files to the audio engineer, they will check them and confirm everything is okay, then start working on the song.

Step 3 – First Mix / Master Version

After your engineer works on your multitrack files or final mix, they will send you a first mix. If you work with this engineer for the first time, this first mix may scare you off because you will get something different. Often, everything is reversible within a couple of revisions.

Step 4 – Revisions and Final Approval

Once you have the first version, it’s your turn to give feedback on whether there are any elements you want to change. You will write your notes correctly, explaining everything in plain language and avoiding over complication.

The revision process will be as smooth as your notes. If you’re not a person who can explain them well in written language, you can ask your engineer to handle the revisions online on a call. But be sure to agree about it when you start working, not in the middle of a revision process. After a couple of revisions, you will usually have a final mix that you love.

Step 5 – Final Delivery

After you agree on a final mix and have made all your payments, you will receive your files. If you decided to pay half upfront and the other half after finishing the work, this is your time to pay. Do not expect the engineer to send you final files before you finish your payment.

FAQs About Online Mixing and Mastering

Let’s see some of the frequently asked questions.

Can I get my song mixed and mastered online if I only have a rough demo?

Unfortunately, that’s impossible. It can be remastered or mastered if it hasn't already been mastered, but it’s impossible to mix it without the multitrack files.

How loud should my premaster be before online mastering?

As soon as you don’t peak at digital peak, zero, everything is acceptable. Be sure you don’t have digital peaks, and that it’s not too low in volume. This is why, often on the internet, it is suggested to be between -6 dBFS and -3 dBFS, as it’s a safe spot. But don’t obsess on the numbers. It’s also okay to have either -10 dBFS or a -1 dBFS peaking files.

What is the difference between mixing and mastering services?

While a mixing service involves working on each instrument in isolation and balancing the instruments, a mastering service works on an already balanced file.

Do I need separate engineers for mixing and mastering?

Often, it is recommended to have two separate engineers for mixing and mastering to have a different set of ears and mindset for each process. However, some engineers, including myself, can handle mixing and mastering together. It can be done easily if it’s a single song, but it can be risky to place all the responsibility on one person for an entire album. But don’t worry if you have found your mixing engineer, but don’t know who to work with for mastering. Mixing engineers often have their go-to mastering engineers who understand their sound.

How much do online mixing and mastering services cost?

The sky is the limit here, but I can give you some guidelines.

Mixing Rates

You can find budget options, often hobbyists, or people who have just started their career, between $20 and $100. You cannot expect to have a professional record working with someone on that budget. You can have great opportunities for those trying to build their portfolio, but you might also encounter surprises.

Between $150 and $400, you will find independent engineers who have solid portfolios and are professional in their expertise. This is often a sweet spot for independent artists because it’s neither cheap nor expensive. And you can find great engineers in that range.

Between $500 and $1500, you will find professionals with major label credits, Grammys, and Platinum records under their belts. They are often not on online marketplaces, but you can approach them by email, or they might even have their own managers.

Some star mixers might charge between $3000 $10000, but they are very rare in the world, and it is often hard to find a way to contact them if you’re not in the industry.

Mastering Rates

You can find indie engineers for $30-$70. They often work in-the-box (digital), and they probably have a modest studio environment.

High-end engineers with purpose-built studios only for mastering work between $80-$150. 

If you want to work with legends, that will cost you between $200 and $400.

Conclusion

Choosing the right person for your beloved project is often a difficult decision, but it can lead to a long-term relationship throughout your career. Especially with the help of the internet, you have a diverse range of engineers you can work with. If you’re not sure who to work with, I might be a good fit for your mixing and mastering needs, and I’ll be happy to help you achieve world-class sound at indie prices. Contact me now to get a quote for your project.