FAQ's

Answer:
(it depends)

The short answer is, the raw mixes.

When to make an exception? If you can not attend the mastering session due to budget or schedule or geographical limitations, it's very useful to go through the process of sequencing your album before mastering. I use this "pre-sequence" as a guide for style and flow, but don't always take it as the definitive album sequencing. There are a lot of reasons why the gaps between the songs would need to be changed after mastering. Principally though, the relative level between the songs plays a big role in making the appropriate gap. Once the tone and level are set in mastering, the gap that seemed cool prior to mastering may now seem inappropriate. I will always re-evaluate the gaps and make suggestions if I think there are issues with the fades or gaps and even sometimes with the actual selection of the order of the tracks. I'm not pretending to know more than you do about your project, but sometimes that "favorite cut" just doesn't come to life the way another song might, and once in a while the sequence has to be re-examined. Pre-sequencing doesn't really speed up my mastering process much, but importing all of the choice mixes into one Session file does! I like to think of it this way. It's ideal if you can show up to the mastering session with the choice mixes put together in a way that makes it easy to hear any song and listen to rough transitions between the songs. The staggered session in Protools seems to work well. In this instance the choice mix for each song is on one stereo track. Other "alternate" mixes can be laid in on other play lists (virtual tracks). Then the gap or spacing between the songs is accomplished by moving the beginning of the second song (on it's own stereo track) to start right after the end of the first song. The result then looks like a staircase. Each song is on it's own track. Levels can be easily compensated between tracks, and if necessary pre-eq or filtering can be applied before coming out of the workstation.