What makes a song mastered

The two core problems are always that there's either too much or too little sub-bass. You'll have a better speaker monitoring system than anyone else, so this is up to you to fix. The other problem is that there's often not enough clarity between the kick and bass.

This should already be done but one thing you can do is add sidechain compression to duck the bass out of the way of the kick. You might reshape the attack of the kick with a compressor, or tweak the EQ of both stems. Whatever it takes is what you have to do. The problem today is that we can record and mix with crystal clear quality. Most tracks are produced completely digitally too, so everything is so "see through" that it can start to sound sterile and dead, even though it's perfect.

We can bring back a touch of the old school using two tools. Tape saturation or transistor saturation as well as an exciter can provide two characteristics. If you use them on individual stems you can add some pleasing distortion that's made up of complex harmonics. This is very pleasing to the ear and brain, especially if you keep it subtle.

This is something we lost when we stopped recording to tape reels. If you apply a slight amount to the song as a whole you can help glue the tracks together. More on that up next. The first thing you want to do is make sure each individual track is compressed enough.

Then you want to visit bus compression and make sure each grouping of tracks is glued together, like the drum bus, for instance. And finally you'll add some compression to the master bus for the song as a whole.

This is where "less is more" is extremely important. When we're talking about compression for glue, we're talking about the slightest amount.

No more than a few decibels of gain reduction at a high threshold and low ratio, in my opinion. More than that and you risk getting weird pumping sensations. This one is tricky. You can return to the mix and increase the panning but you don't want to move too far away from the mixer's vision.

Like, don't change a normal mix into an LCR mix, for instance. But in cases where they've faked stereo width using delays, you can increase that if you want. There's also stereo widening plugins that can be applied to certain tracks, or you can use the chorus trick for bass to make it sound larger than life in stereo rather than a boring mono bass.

The fundamental frequencies will still be mono, that's important. Finally, and this one is really risky, is to add reverb to the stems or song as a whole. If you do this, it needs to be very subtle.

Less is more and definitely dial it back from what you think sounds good. This can add a little glue and make take a mix to the next level. Play it safe and do this on a bus where you can EQ the reverb, duck it, whatever.

It has to be perfect if you pursue this. Learn more in our Mixing with Reverb article about how this should be done. Now we're at the meat and potatoes of mastering. This is what most people think of when they think about how to master audio. They tend to think of compression and balancing levels between tracks, but we're talking right now about the individual song, but as a whole. The first thing you want to do is deal with the stems, if you have access to them.

In that case, if any grouping needs extra compression you can do it in isolation on the stem. But if you only have a stereo track you'll have to bust out a multiband compressor. Multiband compression can be thought of as a parametric equalizer mixed with a standard compressor. It really more like a de-esser, in that it lets you target specific frequency bands and compress those alone.

This lets you dig into a complete stereo mix and still reshape and balance the volumes of specific frequency areas of a song. The example everyone gives is for a kick drum that's too loud.

You can isolate the specific range for the fundamental frequencies of the kick drum and compress them when they fire off. Yes, you could EQ it but then you lose the advantage of the "momentary action" only when the kick drum triggers. This is pretty tricky and if you can work with stems, then that's far better. If not, start off with as fast of an attack as you can and a very slow release.

Even better if your plugin has an auto release option. Use a very low ratio of maybe and test out moving up to a at the most extreme end. Don't go for more gain reduction than 3 dB, if that. The same settings should be used when you apply one compressor to the master bus. That means the compressor is acting on the whole song and not individual tracks. Less is more and dial it back a notch! Your entire goal here is to reduce the dynamic range a bit so you can squeeze out more average volume when you normalize the track.

There's a battle waging on called the Loudness Wars where people compete to have the loudest song on the radio or the loudest commercial on TV in order to grab your attention. It's annoying and we all hate it but we have to keep doing it for the paycheck. That doesn't mean you should slap a limiter on the master bus and crank up the gain.

You don't want any clipping or distortion so you'll definitely use a limiter but you'll rarely bump into it. That's because the compression you're using reduces the amplitude of the highest crests of the wave forms. Again, use a very fast attack 1 millisecond and a slow release 1 full second with around a ratio and shoot for maybe 3 dB of gain reduction. More than that will have weird side effects. This will let you add 3 dB of make up gain. You can then run a second compressor in series if you want or bump into the limiter occasionally as long as it doesn't cause noticeable distortion.

I want to keep this short. You now have your song polished and compressed. Now your goal is to pump up the volume so you're competing with other professionals in the Loudness Wars. I know it's hard to believe but you're going to purposefully use digital clipping and do so without distortion. Hard clipping means you're cutting the tips off of the wave forms entirely, leaving a flat plateau in it's place that sounds like a clicking noise. That's bad, but there's good clipping which is called soft clipping that can sound pleasing.

It reduces the gain but does so while adding pleasing harmonics. Yes, this is distortion but not the bad type. It's provides the difference between soft clipping and hard limiting. You can't slam it, though, or you still end up with distortion. This will just net you a couple extra decibels of volume. Believe it or not, you're still not competing against the average volume of commercial releases. To get the final amounts of volume you need, you'll sadly need to hit a limiter.

A limiter makes sure you absolutely do not run into hard clipping, which produces digital pops and clicks. Leaving headroom during mixing is a good practice as it keeps the dynamics and transients of the audio unimpaired. When mastering, the headroom gives you the flexibility to adjust the EQ without potentially pushing the audio too loud into the following plugins. Open up your metering plugin, then preview the loudest section of the mix and use the gain plugin the first insert on your master channel to adjust the peak of the audio to anywhere between -3dB and -6dB on your peak meter.

Getting yourself in the right frame of mind will help you make better mastering decisions. Jumping into tweaking the EQ prematurely without a clear sonic direction can end up worsening the sound.

Listening to a song for the first time is a unique experience. Before you monitor the mix again, take a listen to one or two great-sounding reference tracks that have a comparable genre, instrumentation, and vibe to the mix. The reference tracks should be a good representation of your sonic goal for this final master.

Listening to these references at this stage will give you a good frame of reference for what a great master should sound like before you start making changes to your master processing. Be sure to match the perceived loudness of the reference tracks to the loudness of the mix to make sure the comparison is fair. For the second listen, take a more analytical approach and make a note of the aspects of the track that you feel need to change to get the mix sounding more like your reference tracks.

Get a feel for how the low-end sits in the context of the overall mix and how the balance compares to the reference track.

Do the same with the mid and high frequencies. This will keep your mastering decisions focused and efficient. There are many ways to approach mastering.

How you structure your process will ultimately be down to your preferred workflow. Use the following advice as your foundation but feel free to tweak the workflow to suit your style. Your metering plugin should give you a LUFS loudness units full scale reading.

For example, streaming platforms like Spotify and YouTube stream audio at about LUFS integrated, which is roughly 8 decibels quieter than the loudest releases. A true-peak meter displays the peak of the audios signal once the digital audio has been converted into an analog signal that can be heard through speakers.

This is more accurate and relevant in real-world use than the meters that you see on your DAW mixer which displays the reading of the digital sample peak.

Regardless of the medium through which your audience will hear your music, knowing how to control loudness and true-peak will empower you when mastering audio. Start by opening your metering plugin and your limiter. Set the limiter output to This will help minimize true peaks and also accommodate any future conversion to lossy formats such as Ogg Vorbis and Mp3.

Monitor the loudest section of your track and raise the limiter gain until your LUFS short-term reading is hitting your target.

This is a fairly quick and rough setting and you can tweak it later. Setting the loudness before making any other changes to the sound has a number of benefits. When you listened to the reference tracks, you established the tonal balance direction you want to take for the song.

So when you open your EQ you hit the ground running and can make the first few adjustments very efficiently. If you work on the verse where the drums might be quieter or the bass might not be present you might overcompensate and boost the low-end too much. Keep referring back to your reference tracks when adjusting the EQ to help you set the perfect boost or attenuation amount. Mastering should be approached with precision. For example, the low-frequency range is tricky to get perfect.

Too much of a boost in the low-end and the master will sound muddy and lack clarity. Check out this helpful post on how to prepare your tracks for mastering. Now think of mastering like the best carwash ever. You want your new car to look as slick and shiny as possible. Mastering polishes everything to a perfect shine. It puts gas in the tank and oils up all the moving parts for the best possible performance.

In the first true mastering engineers were born. Due to the magnetic tape recorder changing the recording game. Before this, there was no master copy as records were recorded directly to inch vinyl. In , the stereo vinyl record came onto the market. Mastering engineers began to apply techniques to make records louder. Loudness led to better radio playback and higher record sales. This marked the birth of the Loudness Wars that still go on today.

In The CD revolutionized mastering. That changed in when the first DAW, with mastering software, offered a mind-blowing alternative to the process. This step fixes any hiccups in the original mix like unwanted clicks, pops or hisses. It also helps to fix small mistakes that stand out when un-mastered audio is amplified. Stereo enhancement deals with the spatial balance left to right of your audio. Done right, stereo enhancement widens your mix, helping it sound bigger.

It can also help tighten your center image by focusing the low-end. EQing corrects any spectral imbalances and enhances elements that need to stand out.

An ideal master is well-balanced and proportional. This means no specific frequency range is left sticking out. A balanced piece of audio will sound good on any playback system. Compression corrects and enhances the dynamic range of your mix and keeps louder signals in check while bringing up quieter parts. This process gives the overall audio a better uniformity and feel. Compression helps glue together parts that might not be as cohesive as they could be.

The last process in the mastering chain is usually a special type of compressor called a limiter. Limiters set appropriate overall loudness and creates a peak ceiling.