Mastering Your Music (In 6 Simple Steps) 

Drew here! Thanks for watching, here are some time stamps. P.S. not every master needs ALL of these. Saturation and stereo expansion in particular won’t be needed for every track. 0:28 - Don’t master your own music (if you can avoid it) 0:47 - Step 1: Make sure the mix is completely done 2:56 - Step 2: Metering 4:27 - Step 3: EQ 6:32 - Step 4: Dynamics 10:17 - Step 5: Tone Shaping 13:15 - Step 6: Limiting 15:40 - Bonus Tip: MidSide Processing 16:54 - Bonus Tip: Stereo Expansion

Thanks for the great video! Enjoy your channel and your style of explaining things. Another little mastering tip that I am using (and heard from others) is to use linear eq on master, just to avoid any phasing issues. Probably it’s hard to tell the difference, but it could be sweet bonus for your final result)

For those interested the song is called Daffodils & Love by The Dreaded Laramie. And the song is rad.

Thank you, you're awesome

Thank you, thank you...

Thank you!!!

Hey you guys, I remember in a video I watched by you recently the guy talked about how you can use mouth sounds as an audio engineer to determine where your sound sits in a mix. I believe he said something like you can use a BA sound to look for boxiness etc. Could you guys make a video on that and using it?

I love the song you used here! If anyone is curious for the final master, that's "Daffodils & Love", by The Dreaded Laramie.

Great info

Thank you ♥️

Just had a few questions: The correlation made sense as you had explained what it did. But I was still. confused on what a "True Peak" and "Lufs" meter did. You mentioned that we should have em ready to use but I wasn't really sure for what purpose. And the limiter had be a bit confused too. I understand that it limits signal so that the signal can't get any higher than whatever threshold you set. But what happens to those sounds that do go higher? Do they get pushed down to the level identified by the threshold? Thanks for the vid

Great video. Where can i find the song you used?

What program did you use to show that analyzer effect?

Will it make a difference if mastering the track before bouncing compared to after bouncing?

great video as always! anyways I'm searching for tips and tricks on how to enhance the dynamics in the mix. I've been searching through this channel but I can't find any. Thanks!

Yeah bro thanks

You have music going up to +14 on Fabfilter Pro L2? What scale is that??

Amazing tips mate✌😇

So awesome thanks for this 👏🏾

As shown on 2:05-2:06 that’s correct.

I have noticed some people put their mastering chain plugins on the audio channel itself and keep the master channel for just their metering and reference plugins. But in this video, you put all the plugins on the master channel itself. Do you know if this matters at all?

aside from the logic stock compressor (love it), what's a good compressor for the mastering chain that's affordable for mid side... unless there's a stock logic one that does the same

You forgot the most important thing(Step: 1) Make sure the mix you are mastering has enough headroom.

Across the whole video I really think you’re killing your transients with all these fast attack times. I think you’ll be a lot more successful in preserving transient impact with slower attack times. Especially with the limiter you will get a lot more mileage out of it with a really slow and attack and a much faster release time.

How is lufs measured? Do you let the song play from start to finish and see the value displayed on your mastering plugin (average of the whole song) or is it measured on the loudest parts of it? And more importantly how do youtube and spotify measure it?

So should we put plugins on the stereo output or the track itself

Hi bro do you use any software

For mastering engineer like Howie Weinberg he had to basically had to listen to the whole entire song 🎵 from 0:00 to 3:31 to see if there’s no pop or click or constantly with hissing noises or s sounds too.

Hey who’s the artist/ group of this song and the title? I heard this song at a shop in Wisconsin and tried to find it since

DONT STOP POSTING VIDEOS

Hi. Good stuff explained well. Aren't you killing too much of the transients with short attack and longer release with Iron? While activating the TMT, it sounds more open at first but with a closer look, especially on the 2 bus or masterchannel it easily can pull your tightness off a bit. A mono maker up to 70-80hz might be a good idea, as well as a side chain to not trigger the compressor from the low end. You probably would be very happy trying out UNISUM, a real mastering compressor, sounding like legit hardware, makes the PA stuff look like very limited toys, considering their "mastering" abilities. 5-6 db gain reduction from one limiter is quite a lot. I didn't find one tool which is capable of leaving the stereo field and the low end in tact in a good way using such an amount of GR. Just some thoughts. Cheers

There are literally no transients on that track at all. No dynamic range, think you need to go back my friend

You forgot the most important mastering ingredient: clipping. Its like limiting, but preserving the punchyness of the song. Use it before the limiter and make it do all the work (1-2db GR).

You need two Steps! A good mix and GW mixcentric! 👍

The problem I'm having is I'd mastering my rock song, and I can't get the release to work. In the verses, I have sustained electric guitar chords. The compressor won't let go of the signal, because it doesn't go below the threshold. I couldn't wait to use my Softube Bus Processor for the first time, and now I can't get it to work properly on this particular song. I see yours is the same. It's not releasing. I don't like the thought of the compressor just clamping onto it indefinitely.

Solid video overall, but I do have to say that I find it odd that you'd touch on dual Limiters as an option, but leave out that just as many people-arguably more-use a Clipper before their Limiter instead, especially in certain genres. Not a glaring oversight, but maybe something that should have been brought up. I could also argue that Stereo Expansion at the Mastering stage is almost always a poor idea, but that would be working at least partially under the assumption that everyone is receiving mixes that have been pushed out as they can/should be, so I'll just say that it was a wise choice putting the disclaimer in there about not pushing Stereo Expansion to hard. All in all though, solid video.

Great tutorial, but my question is - what's the song's title?

what is the song you're working on?

Please do not ignore the lookahead in the limiter ;)

Hm. 6 steps as an idea are not a bad start. Voiceover recording is not so great though, and i doubt you would want to use Logic's Channel eq for mastering, at least use the Linear Phase EQ. Also the release set to 0 on Logic Comp would probably introduce low-end problems. And at the end you say that for a punchier sound you're gonna use a faster attack on the limiter and for more transparency a slow release? Ehm, that sounds kind of the opposite of what's true.

Anyone aware of good metering AU3 for IOS?

👍👍👍👍👍👍

Coornucoopia-aaah

"They need to be fixed IN THE MIX", MICHAEL...

0:12 The "mathtering"? Check your de-esser, Drew. :)

you forgot a clipper before a limiter

You didn’t even look at the LUFS when you set your limiter🤦🏻‍♂️

Why the music sounds like in the blanket?

Man, this track ain't ready for mastering, balance, eq, dynamics are not there. Are you trolling us.

The lack of care and attention this dude spent on making this mastering process realistic is beyond me. This video over explains for anyone with experience and also underexplains for beginners, so it’s not very helpful for either. Why would you make a mastering tutorial that skips all of the actual process of mastering lol

First of all people, use a multi meter which has a goniometer, correlation meter and a lufs meter too all in one. Secondly I came here for mastering tips from what I thought was more advanced than myself. Maybe next time I guess

Why do you talk about mastering with a voice that hurts my hearing with some upper-mid parasite frequencies?

That song vocals is out of tune

First of all : I’d tell the singer to redo the vocals on the track and tune it !!! You cannot fix that on the master !!!

to be honest this video was really no help i gain nothing from it

More compression fast attack so you can kill what is left of any transient and dynamics 😢 what a joke!

This video shows you nothing.

Showing the “details” of mastering a song that is constant noise. Slammed wav. No dynamics, loud guitars, washed out drums and a weak vocal. Terrible song choice.

swag