The finisher

Analyse and master a mix in your browser.

Drop in a mix and get a straight answer: how loud it is against a streaming target, where it clips, whether it survives mono, and what to do about each. Then finish it through a 7-stage chain and measure the result rather than trusting it.

All of it runs on your own machine. The audio is decoded, processed and rendered in the browser — nothing is uploaded, and there is no queue to wait in.

In open beta — turn it on in Settings once you're in.

What it measures

Integrated loudness (LUFS)
Measured to BS.1770, the same standard the streaming services use to decide how far to turn your record down.
True peak (dBTP)
Oversampled, so it catches the peaks that appear between your samples when a converter plays them back — the ones that clip on a phone but not in your DAW.
Spectrum and tonal balance
Where the energy actually sits, against the shape a finished record usually has.
Phase and channel balance
Whether the mix survives being folded to mono, and whether it's sitting off-centre without anyone noticing.

The chain

Seven stages, in the order the signal runs through them. Each one has a reference page explaining what it does and the one rule for using it — no account needed to read them.

  1. 01

    ANCHOR

    Input conditioner & gain rider

    Gain staging, and riding a level

  2. 02

    MAGEQ

    Passive program equaliser

    Program EQ, and the boost-and-cut trick

  3. 03

    LUMA-2A

    Optical levelling amplifier

    Optical compression: the slow one

  4. 04

    VELVET BUS

    VCA bus compressor

    Bus compression, and where “glue” comes from

  5. 05

    FERRIC-9

    Half-inch tape stage

    Tape saturation, and what people mean by “warm”

  6. 06

    HALO

    Mid/side imager

    Stereo width, bass mono, and surviving a phone

  7. 07

    ZENITH

    True-peak brickwall

    True-peak limiting, and why −1 dBTP

The targets it masters to

Pick where the record is going and the chain aims at it. These are the numbers the processor uses.

Streaming
-14 LUFS · -1 dBTP
Club / loud
-9 LUFS · -1 dBTP
Dynamic
-18 LUFS · -1 dBTP
Reference / rough
-16 LUFS · -3 dBTP

More on where those come from in loudness targets for spotify, apple music and youtube.

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The Wizard — free in-browser mix analyser and mastering tool · Sonic Station