I'm mixing my band's EP. What would you love to see offered from a musical release?

Bad title, not sure how to better formulate it. Basically, I can do the obvious thing and master it to be about commercial loudness and release it in any format including the raw 48/32flp .WAV files. But what do you wish you could ask the band or mastering engineer to do?

My personal favourite idea is to do a completely non-loud master, where the transients are managed as usual on each track, but there's no mastering limiter to squash the master, and instead it's just normalized so only the very loudest peaks reach the top at all. This would be true audiophile quality mastering, which means you get all the detail and rawness, and everything is as punchy as it gets. You turn the volume up and sit back. Mmmm.

Another idea I've seen done is a "producer's edition" which has all the stems for each song so people can remix it all.

So... Have you ever listened to an album and gone "ya know, the songs are good, but I wish I could get a chance to hear it like THIS!"?

 

No expert here. But here are some personal experiences

I once mastered a track with zero compression on the kick and other drums. Didn’t reallysound good. Maybe because the playback system couldn’t reproduce the program at loud volumes (95dB+) and handle 30-40 dB transients on top of that without distortion; or maybe I just didn’t like the aesthetic. In the end I redid it with a little compression, focusing mostly on the drums. I did lose presence in some instruments by not mixing them up, but it actually seems to have stood the test of time. I consider it a “hi-fidelity” recording.

For me, I’m curious about what it takes to capture binaural type stage without losing the level control and timbral body afforded by multiple mics. I suspect there is a great deal of art to placing the mics around the band and actually doing minimal mixing. In lieu of that, hard pans kind of help create artificial stage.

 

Film and music mixing / mastering engineer here.

Multi-band or side chain compression in the mix if done right adds dynamism. Compression (or rather, heavy hard limiting) in mastering is a mixed bag. Generally I find most contemporary pop mixes (loudness-war criminal type stuff) to be limited about 2-3dB too much. If you'll be limiting, consider a softer knee.

Limiting artifacts are most easily heard (for me) in the mids and down. Squashing the highs on cymbals et al is sometimes an option depending on the performance style. Here's a trick - bus out everything above 6.5k, smash it (maybe w/ some light gated reverb), side chain with the kick with a quick attack and release under 100ms tops, and play with wet/dry balance.

How much stereo width an instrument takes up can also affect perceived punch. Play with some mild phase-offset doubling or mid-side EQ and saturation modeling. Ozone Advanced is my favorite software tool for finishing touches FWIW.

Kinda depends on the style of music and what aesthetic you're going for.

I wish stems were more freely available for everything. I actually enjoy the songwriting and performances of some contemporary pop tracks but the mastering is too brutal to look past.

 

In the mix I would be applying compression and clipping etc as usual, and on the master I would be using a juicy analog sounsing compressor, but there would be no clipping or limiter applied to the master to make things louder. Just for clarity.