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Comment by amelius | Hacker News Reader

I personally think we should be able to buy music in its pre-mastered form. Yes, that will be a lot of data, but nowadays that is not really an issue anymore. The experience will be so much better than our current option, which is basically only the EQ settings on our amps.

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So, from the comments here, it seems that people are under the impression that mastering engineers work off of the individual instrument tracks (the stems). This is not true. The article itself explains that a mixing engineer takes the individual tracks and mixes them. The final mixdown is then sent to the mastering engineer. It's called "mastering" because this stage of processing happens on a single track - the master track. Buying music in a pre-mastered form would still be a single lossless file, which is no different from Bandcamp allowing you to download the final lossless mastered version. The pre-mastered tracks will just sound worse and have wildly different volume levels depending on how they're normalized.

If you want the actual stems of the song, that would actually be the music in it's pre-mixed form. It wouldn't even be mixed at that point, let alone mastered.

Yeah, there seem to be very definitive statements in these comments without a basic understanding of the recording process. I wonder if these are the same people who swear they can tell the difference between various playback formats or when they use gold XLR cables.

Apart from the misunderstanding, I think it would be actually interesting if you could buy the un-mastered version, plus "mastering" files to use depending on your setup (e.g.: crappy headphones, car stereo, home stereo), but that would require multiple mastering sessions and wouldn't probably be very cost effective...

Or you could crowd-source them but then it might go against the creators intentions...

In a different field (digital cinema) the above is being done for color, lookup the ACES colorspace and workflows...

(Very) Basically the camera's recording goes through a process to make it into a standardized ACES colorspace. It will then being processed by editing, VFX, grading, etc... and then there's output transforms from ACES for each output device, like a cinema projector, a home TV or a mobile phone.

And yes, AFAIR, that does need grading for each targeted output device, because of how we see and perceive color depending on the environment we're in...

It would be awesome (EDIT: to have something like that) for music as well

You'd prefer no mastering over well-done mastering?

That's something that indie bands could consider, and would be an easy addition to a Super Deluxe fan edition of a release.

I also wish more bands would release instrumental mixes of their albums, like Imogen Heap, Celldweller & Blue Stahli have done. Sometimes I want to listen to an album while I work but the vocals are distracting. I've been happy to pay a few dollars extra to get the instrumental versions when available, it's an easy way for indie bands to make some extra money from fans.

I don't understand how unmastered tracks would be a lot of data. Can you explain? Also, I cannot imagine wanting to mess around with EQs for each track on an entire unmastered album. That sounds like a huge burden.

Maybe he meant pre-mixing instead of pre-mastering, ie - having all the individual tracks. But that would require special playback software, more akin to a DAW.

Even given that misconception, I don't understand how that would equate to a better listening experience.

There are some songs where I hate a particular instrument, or I would like another one to be louder. So I can see why this would appeal to some (limited) group.

What you want is a kind of multi-track audio format.

Some exist: http://news.traxsource.com/articles/1754/stems-announced-at-... only four tracks dedicated to designated instruments. I've also heard of iklax http://www.iklax.com/

It would be fun for other recording professionals and hobbyists, to deconstruct a record, and maybe some super fans, but overall it seems like something people wouldn't care that much about.

But how granular would that get? Would I be able to listen to one of 50+ layered distorted guitar tracks on "Siamese Dream"? Would anyone want to do that?

A few years ago Radiohead released the high-level stems for Reckoner (man, I guess that is going on 9 or so years now!). They let people download them and create their own remixes of the song. It was a lot of fun, and I remember listening to some pretty cool remixes.

It would be nice for me to get individual master tracks for sampling purposes. I would pay for access too, but I've never even seen that as an option.

This is exactly what the Stems music format is all about: http://www.stems-music.com

Stems is only four tracks. That certainly works well for "standardized contemporary music for DJ" but it doesn't sound it is a universal format for all kind of music.

Might just be a terminology thing, but I don't think mastering engineers work off of tracks. I think they're given mixdowns and adjust from there.

There are some fascinating isolated tracks out there, but I wonder if knowing that stems will get released will push things in the studio even deeper into the territory that every recorded note must be perfect. Making a record already produces a lot of self conscious anxiety that affects your decision making, so knowing that people will also be listening to and analyzing your individual tracks is even worse!

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