How a mix gets finished.
Every control in a mastering chain, what it actually does, and the one rule for using it — written for someone who has never been in a mastering room. No jargon left undefined, and every number here is the one the processor uses.
- 01
Loudness targets for Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube
What LUFS to master to, what every streaming service does to a record that arrives louder, and the true-peak ceiling to leave under it.
- 02
Gain staging, and riding a level
Why a master starts by putting every mix at the same level — about -18 LUFS — and what to do about a verse that came in under its chorus.
- 03
Program EQ, and the boost-and-cut trick
Broad, musical curves instead of surgical cuts — and the one move, boosting and attenuating the same low band, that fixes more muddy mixes than anything else.
- 04
Optical compression: the slow one
What a photocell does to timing, why an opto can hold a whole mix steady without anyone hearing it, and when to reach for one instead of a faster compressor.
- 05
Bus compression, and where “glue” comes from
The fast VCA that makes a mix sound like one performance rather than a stack of tracks — ratio, attack, release, and the sidechain filter that keeps the bass out of it.
- 06
Tape saturation, and what people mean by “warm”
Half-inch at 15 ips: a head bump in the low end, a soft top, and transients rounded off a hair before the limiter has to work for a living.
- 07
Stereo width, bass mono, and surviving a phone
Working on the middle and the sides separately — how to open a mix up without dragging the vocal off centre, and why the bottom octave gets folded to mono.
- 08
True-peak limiting, and why −1 dBTP
A converter plays the curve between your samples, and that curve goes higher than they do. What true peak means, and why mastering to 0 dBFS clips on playback.