A Comparison of Music Mastering and Film Final Mixing: How to Enhance the Listener’s Experience

Abstract: Mastering is a term typically associated with music but other media, such as film, also requires a final production stage before distribution. There is much literature that explains the process of music mastering, but comparatively little that explains similar processes in the final mixing stage of film production. This study is based on interviews with six final mixing engineers in which they describe their work process. An analysis of these interviews shows that there are several similarities between music mastering and film mastering. In addition, there are differences in how engineers approach optimizing mixes for playback in different environments over different devices, as well as the use of dynamic range and noise reduction.