mastering a track - how long do you spend on one tune?

[johnlong]

if i don't get it sounding right within 30 minutes, i know i have to call it a day and get back to it after few hours or another day.
if i get it right, i take a break and spend another 30 minutes tweaking, but the majority of work is done in first session.
i may or may not repeat the whole process after processing all of the tracks.

how long do you spend mastering a single track?

[MASSIVE Mastering]

I'd say 20-30 minutes if it's pretty involved.

[Martin Walker]

As long as you have good mixes in the first place then I agree with John that mastering should take under half an hour, and often considerably less than that.

However, in an album context things might take a little longer, especially if different tracks were recorded in different studios. It can also sometimes take me longer to decide on track ordering and spacing in an album context than doing the actual mastering!

Martin

[STREAKY Mastering]

It can take anything from 30 - 45 minutes to really pull it out the bag. You've usually got it in the ball park after a couple of plays..then it tweak hell for half an hour...unless the mix is amazing then it's a 5 minute job, but that's not offen these days...

[Guest]

Around 30 minutes per track unless there is something special to do: manual de-essing, de-noising, de-clicking or de-clipping (that one is becoming too common these days ).

The first track always seems to take longer...

[Simon Murphy]

I usually get the idea of what I want to do pretty quickly on instinct, within a few minutes. So about 5 mins to get the basics done. Then I spend some time level matching the original and A/B between the two to make sure I'm keeping the good bits in the original and fine tuning my original ideas. If its the first track on the album I sometimes take 5 mins out and come back to it to make sure I'm still happy with what I've done, then it's good to go.

Of course any editing, restoration or poor mixes will always take more time, but a decent mix wouldn't usually take longer than 20 mins for me (unless the track is really long of course)