Nothing on the 2-buss???

I get what you mean by the question, but I never understood why a mix engineer would expect the mastering engineer to "finish" the mix for you. Mastering guys were originally around to get tracks prepared for records. They had to be fairly uniform in tone so that the RIAA filters could work well enough so that vinyl grooves were within operational standards. Too much bass and the needles would hop out of the groove and/or the record time would be reduced.. Too much top end and it wouldn't sound balanced.

I mean think about it.. You expect them to add some EQ and some compression and/or limiting to the mix, right? If you go into mastering expecting them to boost a little top or bottom, trim some freqs here and there, and then do a bit of limiting to get the level up..

Why couldn't you just do those things yourself?

I know a lot of folks who get the mix "right" and then remove all the 2-bus processing and then send it for mastering, only to have it come back not quite like they wanted. So they then ask the mastering guy to make some tweaks and changes and then they get it back exactly how they wanted..

And it sounds 99.999% the same as their 2-bus faux master.

So why'd you send it to be mastered if you were going to ask the mastering guy to make the tweaks that end up sounding how you had it to begin with?

As someone that master's others works. I don't care at all what you have on the mix bus. Long as it isn't crushed or pumping in a bad way. If it's already loud as hell, then Im not going to be making it much louder. But I might still be able to clean it and polish it.

That said, I would try it out with near nothing or nothing at all on your mix bus. You might be surprised with the results. I do find that the people that send me stuff that at least appears to not have anything on the master bus (nice low levels, not too quiet, but meters are great and obviously not crushing it with a limiter) I can do more to make it even better.

But I wouldn't let that stop you from thinking it's "not masterable" or something because you are mixing it how you want it to sound. Just be aware if it's all ready loud as hell, it probably won't come back louder. But should come back better than you sent it. Thats the whole point.

In some ways if you do a mix into a lot of stuff on your master, then just turn it off all the sudden. Well, your mix is gone. Its not the same thing anymore. Especially if you have saturation and EQ on it. You'll almost be setting yourself up for more disappointment when you send it to a mastering engineer. BUT there is another way to do this:

Let's say you are mixing and have a Tape emulator, some EQ, a Compressor, and a Limiter on you master and you want to send it to be mastered. If it were me, I'd ask for a reference of what it sounded like with all your master bus stuff on. Then I'd also ask you to probably take the limiter off and turn the gain down on the compressor so that it isn't peaking and send me that. Then I have an idea of how loud it was when you last heard it, how the limit was being pushed and changing the sound, and I have a "clean" version to limit myself and lots of headroom. That would be an ideal situation for me personally. Doesn't always go that way and if I got an already limited track, I can still work with it.

This is why communication with a mastering engineer is important. And your relationship with them.

Yeah. Only thing I leave off is the limiting.

You certainly can.  (And most of the time I do as well). But a lot of album projects get tracks from a half dozen different producers, mixed at a half dozen different studios by a half dozen different engineers - or more.  The mastering engineer can pull them all together into a cohesive sounding album at that point.  Also, some engineers prefer a "second opinion" at the tail end of a project.

Over the years, I've come to realize that there is no right or wrong - only what gets you to the finish line.

The one thing I’ve read about this that makes the most sense to me is send the mastering engineer two versions.. one that is as good as you can get it as if you were not sending it to anyone, and a second version without anything on the 2bus that affects dynamics. That way you are giving them a pretty big indication of what you are looking for but also not painting them into a corner. Now that being said I don’t know anything about this first hand but when I read that it rang true to me.

That was the great thing about mixing to 2-track tape. The tape would compress and the limitations of the tape formulation would help control your transients.

Well upfront about 95% of what comes though here goes to a dedicated mastering engineer. 

With some very rare exceptions I never mix into a brickwall limiter. And overall I probably have much less across my 2 mix then most... often just a compressor for some tone. Its always about tone never level. Making things loud takes 30 seconds. That's an easy trick, and not a very good one either. 

Mixing & mastering are separate processes with very different goals. If I'm mixing then my gig is to make songs as good as they can within that framework. What's not part of the gig is to get into a competition with the mastering engineer. Mastering is really the first step of replication... possibly old school thought but its more technical then creative. 

Sending different revisions to mastering? There are a handful of guys I work with and none of them enjoy the multiple version shootout trip they would much rather have one set of mixes to work from. And if they do go down the other path... whenever they have a "match/beat this" scenario they're going to charge for every minute spent listening. That's when we hear stories like - Oh mastering took weeks & endless revisions... cost a fortune and we're not sure what really happened or if it was worth it. 

Sitting at a modern DAW & working ITB its very easy to blur the lines between mixing & mastering. Pop on a brickwall & some other psychoacoustic enhancer... NOW we're mastering! But right louder is better. Take that stuff away and now the mix is wimpy. We're doomed. 

Typically I'm mixing on a desk and so all the fancy pants digital inflation tools aren't an option. Mixing ITB I have a limiter but its not doing anything... threshold & output set at -.5 only to keep the converter clean. Hit bypass and there should be no level change.

Since there's no level bump there are always two copies of each mix. Artist gets a 24 bit hi-res... the actual print with no limting and for the less then critical listeners? There's an mp3 version that's turned up a few dB. Just enough to be competitive but (hopefully) not to the point where I'm competing with whoever is cutting the masters. 

Some engineers book by the second (total running time) which would double the bill. But I get what you're saying.

I'm chasing energy and vibe, and like EmRR pointed out - I would prefer one of my mastering experts to treat the stereo mix.
So I never want a limiter on my mix bus, it leads me into an inferior world where my judgements are based on a plug in - not a pro mastering chain.
Great recorded music is a mixture of musicians, recording engineers, mixers and mastering guru's all working together.

I master lots of mixes I do, but given the chance, I would much prefer to defer to my mastering experts to complete the story.
Yet each one of them is a master in different genres.
Some mixes I send to Greg Calbi at Sterling - others to my local guru's / or The Exchange in UK.

We can ALWAYS learn from the mastering masters.

I've seen great mastering engineers polish up messy mixes beautifully that I did in a studio with an engineer. But I've recently had a well known major league mastering engineer work on a track that I wasn't happy with. Two revisions didn't fix it. I swear, I put the mix through the ARIA online mastering service, mastering type "D", and it was way better, and was used on the album I was mixing.

I just posted this on another thread, "To me, it's all about finding the tone you want. I've often used the UAD ATR-102 for adding some level, and then used the Black Box for tone and a little compression and two compressors further down the 2 bus. I've never used the limiter setting though.

Lately, I've gotten more adept at hearing the tonal differences compressors make more than the volume change. My last final mix only had one compressor after the ATR-102 and Black box, and I used less than 2 db of compression.

I"m working on a mix right now with just the ATR-102 and the Black box on the 2 bus. I tried a half dozen compressors and every one changed the tone of the track in such a way that I preferred the sound with no compression. It's a mostly acoustic track, nothing big or bold, no drums, no bass. I decided to leave well enough alone and let mastering bring this one up to proper levels.

So, I no longer automatically compress for volume, I compress for tone only.

Now, that might change if I had some hardware compression down the road."

So, where I'm at now is get your mixes sounding the way you like and let mastering deal with it as is. When I've left tracks to the mastering engineer with no compression, they came back still kind of shitty sounding. When I sent it the way I like it, it came back fine, just louder.

Compressors change tone. Use them for the tone you like, and mastering will be easier.

Potentially much to unpack here. 

Since it seems to be going in the direction of mastering vs mix processing... what have been your previous experiences with mastering? Have you sent things out before or would this be something like a first time shot?