Hello,
This is the music I have been doing since many time ago. I am a sound engineer from Barcelona and this is my personal project, called No Neo, an indie/art pop style, intimate but with lots of flashing lights in its production (or that's how I see it). Main influences are 90's-2000's indie, 80s technopop, and I'm a big fan of Lindsey Buckingham.

http://bit.ly/3EGXv2S

What impression do you have about the master? Is is OK enough to your ears, or you think an external mastering would be needed? I was not too concerned with making it very loud… just balanced, as sometimes there's quite a bit of information with many tracks.
I have a good room with good PMC speakers, but my field professionally is more post-production than music. And my hearing today is not perfect (it was quite good when I did most of this work, though).
I am specifically concerned about the balance (things like if low mids are still too busy…), the volume of the vocals (too loud?), these things. What do you think?
Thank you,
Héctor

I listened to When It's Cold. All the elements are nicely balanced, but for my personal tastes, there's too much low end. A low shelf cutting 3.5 db is good to my ears, but if you like that low end, then all is well. I would make it louder, too, which would be fairly simple, using clipping and/or limiting.

The biggest thing that's missing is compression, for "glue" or cohesion. The drums, in particular, are lacking in that regard. I added compression to your mix to illustrate how I think it should sound. It's not perfect, but it's the right idea. I volume matched it to your original, and tried to keep the EQ the same, though the compression adds some weight to the low end.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/zl64f...1v8pydczb&dl=0

That's amazing that you did this, thank you so much!
I must listen carefully, I think I must set up and turn on my subwoofers, and this perspective will be very useful for sure.
Much appreciated )

Héctor

I'm happy to help and I hope you find my feedback useful. Turning on your subs will help to hear low end, obviously, but you shouldn't need them to hear the compression I added.

I notice what you did perfectly and it is really nice.
But I must get used to it and listen in different ways, to form an opinion of my preference (if I listen the same way I mixed it, any change will sound strange to my ears). And I also like a laid back sound... maybe a midpoint will be it.
Not setting the subwoofers was my mistake if I intended to "master", and that may explain if I overcharged the lows, even if I trust the extension of my PMC Result6... some of my references have lots of lows but maybe there's something I'm missing. So I must compare in different setups. At this point every possibiity is open, from leaving it as it is, to send it to master (with some slight changes in the mixes if I feel confident enough), or even ask for stem mastering lol.

Thanks again.

I think you 100% need mastering. And the mixes are good enough, but I can guarantee that when you hear the mastering, assuming someone does a good job of it, that you will hear the snares get tucked in just right. The mix is currently a little overly dynamic. I don't think it needs fixing because it breathes very nicely. I am certain you will appreciate getting a second set of ears. I'm pretty sure you will get a solid left to right image as well. As it stands, the stereo image is not completely cohesive.
I think you will gain a substantial improvement.

Here's a take I did where I tried to pull the low level info up a bit. I tried to tuck the snare in too.