I Paid 5 Mastering Engineers to Master the Same Song... The Result is SHOCKING 

fiver guy probably cared more about it too.

We are super thankful to have Metropolis mastering appear in this great video, amongst all the talented engineers -- and to receive all this support of our work -- both in the video and in the comments! 💙🙌

A big problem with engineers under valuing themselves is due to the fact that many artists don’t understand or appreciate the time and effort that goes into mixing & mastering so they don’t want to pay good money for it. So it’s a tricky situation when trying to attract new clients, especially when starting out

Finally someone has done a mastering comparison here, *thanks Jordan! Also, not that I am advocating for skipping a loudness matched test here, but it's important to say that simply matching LUFS readings wouldn't necessarily give equal loudness.* This is because LUFS is a flawed measurement that can result in varying outcomes depending on the frequency response. It's important to do the loudness matching by ear rather than relying solely on LUFS readings. This comparison is useful because many people are unaware of how much mastering results can vary between studios! What sounds great for one may not for another. This is why many mastering studios including mine (Maven Mastering) offer free samples for new clients to help them determine if the engineer is a good fit. And I suggest that anybody trying to make up their mind about mastering should have some test masters done from multiple studios and compare!

$130 to get a song mastered at Abbey Road is a lot cheaper than I expected.

I had Abbey Road as number one and Fiver guy as number two. To my old (54) ears, the Abbey Road mix sounded more "old school" (before the loudness wars demanded the super slamming of compressors until it squashed all life and dynamics out of music). It also had a warmth (saturation?) that the others lacked. Granted, it's possible that my ears are just crap now, but I had these impressions before I knew which track was which. Maybe the "best" mastering depends on target audience? Edit: oops! Forgot to mention. As everyone else has said. Fiver guy deserves far more recognition, work and pay.

The fact that Abbey Road left it without pretty much any limiting gives me hope in humanity

I think you made one MISLEADING MISTAKE. You should always compare on equal loudness. I'm a mastering engineer for 10 years, and I can tell you one thing: 1dB louder sounds so much bigger, brighter, and better. So to be really honest you should do this comparison again but with equal loudness. Because that's these days the most important thing. Every streaming platform normalizes audio to a certain level, and that's what we finally listen to.

I would love to see the same thing with mixing, I think the results their would be much more different and it would be much more interesting!

Marvin from Tide Studios has mixed and mastered my last 3 albums. The man is a living legend. Super talented and easy to work with. He deserves all the plaudits that come his way.

What would be interesting is, send all these versions to each of the companies that mastered them and ask them to Rank them.

I knew 3 was abbey road because they were smart enough to not completely squash the dynamic range. A couple of the others sounded like they just crushed it with compression and scooped the mids

Great video. Played along with the blind testing, through IEMs and some open back headphones, I had Metropolis in first place and Fiverr in 2nd. Good for you for giving the Fiverr person a shout out.

For me, the most fascinating aspect of these comparison videos has been realizing that many folks' idea of a good mix/master is only tangentially related to mine. We all seem to value balance, emphasis, space (sort of), etc., but to my ears, #4 felt like a brick wall thud. I never thought I'd miss the early-to-mid '90s smile curve, but the last ~20 years has really cooled my jets re: the musical utility of saturation, limiting, and mid-forward mastering; while a mids-drunk approach can be great for a brilliantly arrangement-and studio-happy band like Radiohead, the Flaming Lips, or Gilla Band - i.e groups who utilize it with creativity and intention - in most hands it simply reads like a fear of space and dynamics. It's funny: as you've probably divined, I (theoretically) liked #3 the best, but I kind of hated all of these masters. Maybe I just dislike what we've deemed "radio-friendly" ca. 2023? Feels like we all thoroughly lost the Loudness War and, as a result, every song - even singer-songwriter fare! - must now sound like an insta-dated piston of precise drum replacement, laser beam compression, and plaintive synth/key figures meant to conjure the emotion/humanity that's been dialed out via quantization.

Abbey Road were the only ones who did a MASTER that was not limiting the shit out of the tune. It had what modern productions often lack: dynamics. It was quiet because your stereo has a master volume!

#3 - Abbey Road master was my favorite of the bunch. More dynamic, better separation, could turn up the volume for added punch without becoming muddled.

my fav was 5th one, 'cause i love how drums punches and cymbals feels in the mix with this round low end. yeah, it's quite bright, but i like the way it sounds - i think his work has been underrated too, however it's very individual thing depending on a taste

I actually like the Abbey Road one best. There was a weird spot at the end which could have been fixed with an adjustment in the mix, but the level of detail and clarity were superior. The "mid" sound you preferred was due to over-compression in getting the mix in range. Abbey Road left it a little under range, but had a more faithful sound overall.

I picked out the Metropolis and Abbey Road as my top two favs before the reveal. That $20 was way overcompressed.

Version 3 sounds the most hifi. As in, not being pushed to stupid levels. If you want your record to have longevity and not be a forgotten iTunes jam. It sounds pre loudness wars. I think that master trusted your original mix and tried to do a classic master for it just covering the basic technical corrections Version 2 is what I would pick if I were doing a digital release Version 4 comes in 3rd for me. It sounds good tonally in many ways. I agree with what you are saying. It sounds a little mushy and indistinct in the vocal, like it's buried a little. Version 5 is nasally and not good at all. Version 1 is kind of boring

Man, that Fiverr dude 🤣 Congrats! I've never seen Jordan with such a huge grin on his face. He's usually so restrained 😆

speaking of "leave about -6dB of headroom", i think that the request is actually easy to address by the mastering engineers themselves with pre-chain gain reduction considering it's usually so that the mix doesn't push the plugins/hardware gear too hard.

You should also do an experiment in which the unmastered mix is disguised as a master!

To my ear version 2 was by far the best. It felt immersive. The kick had a good punch. The cymbals were bright and present but not harsh the vocals are warm its very dynamic. Its what id expect from a master

Excellent video In my opinion, you should give this guy a link to the fivver you did with him, it's not obvious that he gives such quality at such a price. He deserves a lot more work, the little thing you should do in my opinion is just send people to him if you've watched this video. If you can even make an epilite with it, great :) Just my little advice

I had the same experience, many years ago, with a mix a sent to a world renown mastering engineer (who’s worked for Mariah Carey, among many, many other equally famous artists) working at a popular studio in NYC for mastering. Never heard anything in terms of corrections from the mastering engineer (and it wasn’t because I’m amazing or anything. The mix wasn’t bad, but it did have some sibilance issues), and the master I got back was underwhelming. It wasn’t bad, but not what you would expect from a big shot mastering engineer. Like I could’ve done the same thing with Ozone, is what I was left feeling. My belief is that these big Studios don’t really care about a client unless it’s a big shot Artist. Ever since that experience, I master my own music. My masters might not be perfect, but at least I’m not wasting hundreds of dollars getting suboptimal másters that leave me feeling I could’ve done the same, if not better (especially with the tools we have these days, like Ozone 10, which is WAY better than it was back then). Anyway, not surprised by the results.

The best way to get a great sounding mix and master is through open communication between the band and engineer. Often times, bands misunderstand the recording process as just showing up to the studio and playing. In reality, the recording process is a collaborative effort from beginning to end. As a final note, one might take care to strongly consider any suggestions an engineer may offer.

A fairer comparison would have been to level match all of them before deciding in order to eliminate loudness bias. You might then have found that a less squashed master that retained some of the original dynamics of your mix sounded better.

I called the Abbey Road one before even hearing them because you can see by the waveforms they didn't obliterate the dynamics.

please make more such experiments going further, it's exciting

I've tried dozens of different mastering techniques, software, and programs, and I almost always feel they have squashed life out of the mix. I like a live, dynamic sound, and I have learned a lot listening to people like you. Thank you

Interesting outcome! Still I would compare them with loudness normalised (like how most platforms play out), just to avoid any loudness bias.

If you want to best evaluate them against one another, you should adjust them to all be -14 LUFS. Then, and only then, will you be removing the loudness bias, which irrationally favors louder signals.

I liked Version 2 (Metropolis) the best. However, Version 4 (Fiver) is definitely second.

That‘s so cool! If you did this again, could you include a section where you switch the phase from the mix to the master and lay them onto each other so you can here the actual difference between them? I guess that would be interesting

really enjoyed this .. thankyou for spending the money to help the rest of us all out and biggin up that guy .. deffo earned my sub

The Abbey Roads master is the online (fast) masters that Jr engineers do. If you want the Seniors eg master it's another procedure and is more expensive. Also they leave it with more head room bc for streaming (wich is 80% of the use) you don't need loudness, instead you need dynamics, bc all the streaming services have a limiter in their player or their process. Meaning that all the tracks will sound at the same level and the ones with more gain would lose dynamics (and they didn't have much already)

Version 2 sounds the best, easily. Version 4's transients suffer significantly in comparison and it sounds a bit too dull, which probably works best for earpods, which is unfortunately where music is being played back on.

awesome man, thank you. Underdogs rock! Good for him and koodos to you for doing this and getting a great sound for your mix

Outstanding video! Great job

I really liked version 2, this Metropolis guys know what they are doing. Fiverr was good too (but I liked Metropolis more - kinda matter of taste).

You know that fiver guy is hustling his passion if he's getting the no. 1 spot. What an inspiration for giving it his all.

I'm just starting the video and haven't heard the different masters yet --- just wanted to say how much I like your original track! :)

Out of curiosity, did you bump up the volume of the quieter masters to compensate for the “louder = better” phenomenon?

Version 4 definitely sounds good, but version 2 was my pick right off the get. The music industry is SOOOOO difficult. A complete nobody can actually be the biggest monkey in the room, but if no one else knows them, they are the smallest fish in the biggest lake. The plain and simple way to command your place in the music world is to know what you are worth and stick to a price model that reflects that. The hardest part of that idea is being objective and realistic about your talent. The cream rises to the top in this industry, if you charge high and get pushback, but your client is super happy in the end, you are doing good. Conversely, if you are charging high and you get no return business, well, you are out of your league.

Abby road looked like there was more bandwidth left for headroom. Louder tracks sound great quiet, or on headphones, but as soon as you try to drive the music at more realistic sound pressure levels with quality hifi kit louder tracks just become tiresome and fatiguing, you want the track to have some headroom. That’s just my opinion

I’d be interested to hear the same test again but with each master level matched. The mix sounded killer. Definitely not requiring a mix revision!

The order you chose, your thought process, exactly how I felt about it. Very surprising result!

I picked version 2. And imo, the loudness shouldn't have been an issue. Loud isn't better, as we all know. Fascinating video!

I feel like #4 ended up on top because it was the loudest... Our ears are very easily tricked by loudness and we instinctually think loudness = good. Watching your initial run of the masters kinda confirms this to me since pretty much immediately after you put it on you said "this is the best so far" when just about the only thing you could really tell at that point was that it was way louder than the others. I'll say too that the Abbey Road master was admirable in its aversion to the ever-present brickwall yet it's true that it felt like it was missing something

This is a great video and to me shows that there are some very talented ME's that fly under the radar. Great video my friend.

Great video! I think it would be great to make the same comparison but with equal loudness!

Great video, bro! That Fiver dude needs to set his rates at $100 and call it a day. Props for shouting him out.

What you monitor on and your preference obviously factors in. I think the #2, at the start, was best.

At the end of the day, you like what you like. I see a lot of people commenting on how the Abbey Road master has more dynamic range, which is to be expected. But I think it's important to remember that mastering is for making your music sound not just as good as it can, but as good as it can across all speakers (car, phone, headphones, eaebuds, soundbar, small bluetooth, home theater, etc.). I'm not sure if you went out of your way to test these tracks on many different listening devices (other than the monitors and airpods), but I think that would be the most considered approach to determining the "best master"

Great video. Thanks for putting it out.

This goes to show that there's a lot of "reputation bias" in the music industry. I would argue that many people would still trade the best sounding master for the "most famous/expensive" master in the end just because... people trust the reputation more than they trust their own ears.

I thought Metropolis edged out the top spot for me. I LOVE the low end on the one you chose, it's really pleasing but the sides on the metropolis sound amazing.

After 5 Sec., to me the last mastered one from you initially played ist the best one. No doubt!

YT recommendation.. man, this was an awesome vid to make, and you did it well!

I am shocked. Such an eye opening experiment. I had many band coming to my studio overtime saying they hired very expensive known engineers/studio for some previous work and were utterly disappointed. Expensive doesn't mean bad, but doesn't mean good either.

Midway thru the vid....VERSION 2 is the clearest, most natural with all the good dynamics. ❤‍🔥❤‍🔥❤‍🔥

people here complaining about dynamic range and the volume difference keep forgetting one crucial thing - music is meant to be exciting. the average listener doesn´t care about the nuances of the production, they just want to enjoy the music. and more brightness will always sound more exciting than more dynamic range. you can call boosting the top end, low end and heavier limiting cheap tricks all you want. what matters is the end result. and the fiverr guy definitely delivered.

this is insane 😂! gr8 topic Jordan!

He reached #4 at 1:40 and I thought "Eww, that's the worst so far. Overcompressed to the max!"... then he immediately stops it and says, "This one sounds the best so far." 😂😂 Is it a matter of personal preference or is one of us WRONG? I'll admit the EQ is very nice, probably the best of the four, but that compression is unforgivable. EDIT: Okay, I reached the end of the video. I promise I didn't know it was the Fiverr master 😂 I'm as surprised as Mr. Hardcore Music Studio. I actually liked the Metropolis master the best, so I do think it's a personal taste matter. Excellent video.

Hi, I think that before comparing you should have normalized the versions to the mix LUFS, because loudness changes frequency perception

i would like to say thank you, i finally made by myself a good mix and mastering for the first time and thanks to you. i learned how to fix my lasts problems with your tips. i've been trying to fix it in the last 5 years.

love the song! Ty for doing this

Nice video Jordan! Thanks for sharing this. You know I HAD to watch this one!! :-) I picked the same 3 as my top 3 masters, and felt any of them could potentially have been acceptable, especially if the M.E. was given the opportunity to do 1 revision based on notes. Theoretically, I wouldn’t want to decide on a final order until I heard number 3 level matched with the other two, and listened against a few reference tracks in the genre to help determine which had the most appropriate frequency balance. That said, there’s a pretty good chance #3 still would have been in third place for me. There was something welcoming about the slightly less hyped vibe, but it felt less “modern”, and my instinct is that even with level matching, we’d find the M.E. could and should have pushed things a bit more in general to make it really feel right. Without hearing tracks this one would want to playlist alongside, my instinct is that #4 has the best overall tonal balance… BUT, the size and weight and enveloping smoothness it gives the band seemed to make the vocal take a bit more of a backseat than in #2. So I’d almost want to hear #4 on a revised vocal up mix to get the best of both worlds. But one big problem with all of these comments I just made is that I’m making them without first tuning my ears by listening to a handful of tracks in the style that the mixer and artist LOVE the sound of first. That’s the last double check I’d need to make to be certain we’re winding up in an ideal spot. This points to one potential advantage the fiverr guy has over the others: He’s a genre specialist. This is still uncommon in mastering, but perhaps it will become more common in the future? I don’t know. Your overall experience here pretty much confirms mine though!: 1. Mastering Engineers who charge around $100 or more generally do acceptable work that could serve well as a final master. When they fall short, a quick conversation about sonic goals and references can usually make it right with 1 revision. 2. Mastering engineers who charge around $50 rarely do very good work, and so far, I’ve never had a great experience with a mastering engineer in that price range on my own mixes. Most of them have made the record sound worse, and took multiple rounds of revisions to get it anywhere near acceptable for my tastes. I wish this wasn’t true, but it’s been my experience so far. 3. Sometimes, there are amazing undiscovered diamonds out there who do great work and should charge more! People that skilled will eventually charge more, or will eventually move on to doing something else instead if they don’t raise their rates with time. 4. I am also surprised when mastering engineers have comments about the loudness or headroom of a mix when confronted with a good mix that happens to be loud. (And this mix is good!) If the mix works, the received headroom is pretty much irrelevant in the digital age. In those cases where I master a mix that does need some work, it’s fairly rare that excessive loudness or lack of headroom is the issue. Maybe that’s 10-20% of cases. If anything, in the vast majority of novice and intermediate mixes in genres like this, the problem is too little compression and limiting in the mix, not too much! Please tell me if you experience is any different :-) Thanks for a fun video, Justin

It would be interesting to see you do it again with a second track from the same group/ep/lp to see if they match and you still make the same choice. (Nice recording, by the way.)

Song is dope! Loved the demonstration

this is so cool man, thanks for doing this

Great video. One thing I'd actually disagree with from years of experience as a mixing and mastering engineer: Since we all know that taste varies quite a lot, communication is absolute key to me. That black box approach might work with someone who knows your style and preferences from working with you for a long time or happens to have a very similar taste - but expecting that from a random stranger on the very first project without talking to them (!) I think is fairly unrealistic. Good way to get a fair shootout but not exactly great for securing a satisfying result. I personally think either taking the engineer's notes into consideration so they can deliver their own vision of the track or telling them what you want so they can try matching YOUR vision is absolutely necessary. I don't start working on a master with new artists anymore unless I either get reference tracks from them or a description of what they want. Still, very cool experiment. Cheers!

The AR version kept the dynamics. The Fiverr master was too squashed IMHO. Version 2 was kind of a good medium between your top choice and AR.

That was awesome! Dude, the music sounds good too!

Interesting video, well presented. Cheers

First thing I'd have done is to loudness-match them all by ear (including the original mix) to eliminate the loudness factor.

The best, by far, was the third from the bottom before you rearranged them. They somehow managed to give you better dynamic range than they got from your original.

Second 🥈 from the bottom is the Best mastered example to my ears!! I master everything I do with a Ozone 8. I've been experimenting with different mastering plugin's since 2002. I have previous experience at mastering on the Manley Variable Mu!

I love how i can hear the differences even on my phone, thanks for the quality video.

#2 is most balanced in my opinion. #3 well balanced, soft and clear with a voice in right place but loudness is a main rules as always.#4 louder then competitors well balanced but more hard and not comfortable. #3 is closest to the mix imho

100% always first adjust the gain to match before judging.

Crazy how different ears are. Listening blind I picked Abby Road and Sound Pure as my favorites. The Fiver mix was decent but way too thick in the mids for me. Very fun video.

LoooL also liked th Version 4. It feels in the exact point of loudness and dynamics.

Would have been interesting if you had one of those automatic master services thrown in just to see how it ranks

To the people asking who the band is, it’s The Longest Year. This song is actually not released but we can change that. We split up about five years ago. Here’s a link to a song of ours. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Ccw64QLsXXw.html

This is very interesting. When you switched back and forth, the one that immediately jumped out to me as unpleasant to listen to was version 4. I think it was overcompressed and felt like running into a wall when it came on. 3 was good soundwise, but lacking loudness in a modern audio setting (but it might be the comparison to the other loud ones). 2 I felt was a good middle ground between loudness and dynamics and my winner.

Metropolis was the clear winner for me in terms of how they opened up the mix which - listening through sound corrected (sonarworks) Sennhsr HD650s - would've been my priority task in creating the master. Interesting to see the shift in your perception going to earbuds. I thought you were initially going to overlook the Metropolis one!

I thought the Abbey Road mix was the most accurate and listenable. My ears are 61 years now so don't have much above 10khz. The over compression of two of the mixes, including your winner just squeezed all the life out of the music.

The second version (Metropolis)worked best for me on my speakers.Before you revealed whose is which. I agree with the rest of the order. :)

This was such a good idea for a video!

Amazing idea for a video bro!

It's not "best to worst" - it's in order of your personal aesthetic preference.

I reckon Abbey Road masters the songs up to modern standards - putting an end to a pointless dynamic-crushing loudness war and doing it specifically so it sounds even and good on streaming platforms. And it sounds good too!

5:00: "Version 3 just sounds kind of thin, it sounds there's a bit of hole in the mids or the lower mids" 5:42: "I think version 3 would translate better because it has a more forward mid-range"

there was some listenign with the eyes here and some loudnes compettition:) Also the guy who asked you to leave more headroom is the guy to hire :). Your no2 is my no 1.

I agree with the top two but I actually prefer your second preference to your first, I'd swap them. The second one is slightly less squashed. Writing this before the reveal so no idea yet which one it is but I'd go with your second choice if I was to pay for one of them. EDIT: Ha, that's a crazy result! Great advert for Tide Studio too! Tho I still prefer the Metropolis one personally, they're very close. Good video. Cheers

I preferred Version 3 right from the start - most natural sounding especially the drums!!!

V5 is best for the song I think personally. Thanks for the video comparison 👍 and the very funny result! It is all about taste and personal preferences

Interesting video! So much depends on the equipment, especially the speakers. Of course you, as the artist, were looking for something specific in the sound that the rest of us wouldn't have known to look for. In my Sony MDR-V6 headphones, version 1 was the clear winner on the parts I heard, providing a spaciousness that I felt appropriate for this tune that was absent in the others. Version 3 was my second pick, but a little too warm, the attenuated high end masking any sense of space. The others were all EQ'd slightly differently, but equally uber-compressed, so louder and equally unexciting to my ear. Louder can trick the ears, so I wonder what reevaluating these tracks with the average, rather than max, DB levels matched would provide different results. PS: No affiliation with any of the mixing companies LOL!