Mastering Schmastering… overrated and grossly over-hyped. I’ve wasted stupid amounts of money on the past on ‘pro mastering’. Mastering in many cases means perfectly good mixes made louder and ruined. It’s another ‘emperor’s new clothes’ phenomenon and one that is not so applicable in this day and age of single digital downloads anyway. It used to be all about preparing a set of tracks for release as an album - LP and later CD, but really is a waste of time for single tracks that end up as MP3’s. Just get your levels sorted and leave it at that I reckon.
I now just ‘master’ my single tracks straight out of the mix… which is essentially just about overall sound level. You can put all sorts of gimmicky FX across the mix… ‘harmonic exciters’, ‘stereo wideners’ etc but in the end, you’ll probably find that you prefer the track the way you painstakingly mixed it in the first place. And the 3 people that will ultimately be listening to the song won’t care and will probably listening on ear buds plugged into an iPhone anyway.
You spend hours on a mix. After ‘mastering’ it sounds very much the same… so why bother? Or …you spend hours on a mix and then alter it drastically with mastering… so what was the point of all that detailed attention while mixing??
Mix until you’re content and happy with the result. ‘Master’ to get the levels to where you want them (and there’s another debate right there!). Upload it and rejoice if and when someone actually listens to it! 