Resources
In-depth technical guides and industry insights for the modern electronic music producer.
Start here if you're new to mixing or mastering, or unsure what your track actually needs.
Mastering is the last 10 to 15% of making a track. I call it audio hairdressing. The track is already sounding pretty good, you've taken it as far as you can, and you want someone with experience to take it that last little bit further.
The single biggest thing you can do is leave headroom. Your stereo bus should have some space to breathe. If your mix is peaking at -1dB with a limiter slammed on, I've got nowhere to go. Give me a clean, dynamic mix with room at the top and I can do a lot more with it.
I used to be a chef. So here's the simplest way I can explain it.
There's a line I've stood by for years: you're only as good as your last master.
There are thousands of mastering engineers out there. Some are brilliant. Some are average. Some have no business charging for it. Here's how to tell the difference and find the right one for your music.
You can. Nobody's stopping you. But here's the honest answer: fresh ears matter more than most producers realise, and there are specific traps that catch almost everyone who masters their own work.
Good feedback gets you a better master, faster. Bad feedback wastes everyone's time. The difference isn't about knowing technical terms. It's about being specific.
Low end, loudness, translation across systems, and the mistakes that cause most of it.
Every platform has a loudness target. Most services, including Spotify, Tidal and YouTube, normalise to around -14 LUFS integrated. Apple Music typically sit around -16 LUFS. Beatport doesn't normalise, so louder masters tend to have more perceived impact in a DJ set.
Of all the things that can go wrong in a mix before mastering, low end costs the most time. You can fix a lot of things. You cannot fix what isn't there.
Everyone asks this question. The answer is simple on paper and complicated in practice. Here are the numbers, and then here's why the numbers aren't the whole story.
Every speaker lies to you. Some flatter the bass, some cut it. Some boost the high end, some roll it off. Your headphones are telling you a different story to your monitors, and your car is telling you something else entirely. That's normal. The question is how to deal with it.
A mastering chain is the sequence of processing a track goes through during a mastering session. There's no single correct chain. Every track needs something different. But the general flow follows a logic, and understanding that logic helps you understand what mastering actually does.
I hear the same mistakes every week. Some of them are easy fixes. Some of them mean going back to the mix. Here are the most common ones and what to do about them.
How the process changes by genre.
What tools like LANDR do well, and where they fall apart.
Stem vs stereo, vinyl vs streaming, and what mastering actually costs.
I'll say it plainly: stem mastering is always better than stereo mastering. Even a good mix can be improved more with stems than it can with a stereo file. The control you get is on another level. That doesn't mean stereo mastering is bad, and it doesn't mean everyone needs stems. But if you want to know the honest difference, here it is.
Standard mastering takes your finished stereo mix and prepares it for release. One file in, one master out. For a well-balanced, well-mixed track, it works perfectly. Stem mastering is different.
Mastering prices are all over the place. You can pay £5 on Fiverr or £500 at a legacy studio in London. Most people have no idea what the difference is or what they should actually be paying. So here's an honest breakdown from someone who's been doing this for thirteen years.
Most people assume that being in the room during a mastering session gets you a better result. It's a reasonable assumption. But the honest answer might surprise you.
Apple Digital Masters are one of those things that sound important but most producers don't fully understand. I'm certified for it, I offer it as an add-on, and I'm going to tell you honestly when it matters and when it doesn't.
Most of the tracks I master go straight to streaming. Spotify, Apple Music, Beatport. But vinyl is having a proper resurgence, and when it comes up, the process is genuinely different. Not just quieter. Different.
Different formats have different requirements. A master optimised for Spotify isn't necessarily right for vinyl, and a vinyl master won't hit hard enough in a club. Here's what each format actually needs and when you need separate versions.
