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Mastering.com Members Club
28k members • Free
33 contributions to Mastering.com Members Club
17h •
NEWBIE
Hello everyone am new here and I'm new to audio production and currently learning sound design, mixing, and mastering Hope am i welcome?
2 likes • 16h
@Travis Gibbon Relatively new to Mastering.com. I did their Mastering Intensive in Sep/Oct. I'm new to this forum though (a couple weeks). Definitely not new to the studio though. I've been recording demos and releases for my own bands as well as local bands since the 80s.
0 likes • 13h
@Travis Gibbon Pittsburgh, PA
15h •
Mastering
If I don’t have high quality sounds, what will give me the perceived loudness i need to reach (-11) to (-8) lufs? aside from plugins -balancing frequencies and gain staging only do so much. Ik every trick in the book but for some reason i haven’t figured out that last 2% Would someone kindly help me?
2 likes • 13h
Use a clipper to trim the super short transients that are unnecessarily triggering your limiter. Then as David says, be sure that you have your low end under control as the lows chew up your loudness budget. Less lows yields more room the frequencies humans are sensitive to to get loud.
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5d •
Unpopular (Audio) Opinions
Kevin McCloskey posted this in The Reverse Engineer community and it was a super interesting thread... so posting here too! Comment below with you biggest unpopular audio opinions... don't hold back 😈 I'll start with a couple: 1) Most gear preferences in the industry are baseless and random. People just follow the crowd and are easily influenced into think things sound "better". 2) Seemingly in contrast to the above... anything other than an SM57 on a snare is a waste of time. We're so used to this sound that it immediately sounds "right" to us.
1 like • 16h
@Todd Daily Ears > Gear. Master the tools you have. I (mostly) avoided spending money on new plugins with all the Black Friday sales. I'm going to master the Waves and iZotope (Ozone, Neutron, Nectar, RX) stuff that I already own in 2026. I did spend money on ME: I signed up for the Mixing Intensive in March :-)
2d •
Producer 101- Notes Comparison Discussion?
I know some of you have already done this. I know some are on it right now. I am curious as to how/what you guys did or got to and such. I mean there is no one but ourselves checking out our work, unless we do a mentor call right? Well, we can check each others work out and then we can leave the more important things or whatever it may be for mentor calls. Though these are basics and probably as important as anything else, however trivial it may seem. Reference track analyses/eqing, do you guys build your profile with whole song, then eq by comparing the profiles? Or just parts of it here and there? Limiting to RMS -9, Did you do this over the entirety of the song, or by analyzing parts of the song? how did you go about achieving it? Some analyzers are momentary, and some build upon the value. Were you happy with the results after compression/saturation/EQ etc and then Limiting to -9RMS? Did you feel the changes were sufficient to the song mixes, or do you feel that they're just showing us some processes to ensure we understand what the tools do, to move forward? Something to get us all interacting I hope. \m/ I wasn't quite happy with the results I got, so I didn't bother saving the files even. But if you guys would like to check it or compare, I'll just redo a bit later when/if I get that chance. I redid it, not quite sure if it suffices. I struggled more this time, probably because I am not feeling too well and using different tools this time around. Personally... I don't even know what to think about it. https://drive.google.com/file/d/15SGlSUEk46TsGoM32lsLV50Zr-dJP-ef/view?usp=sharing
1 like • 19h
@Jasper Labuschagne First of all, nice work! I hear some pumping in the background which makes me think you have a compressor in the chain that you might want to consider turning off or tweaking. Those odd reversed synth sounds seem to pulse more than they should. I guess I cheated and searched Spotify for the song and found the officially released version so I loaded that along side your master to compare... Your master is a bit louder and compressed sounding, so you might want to back off on the limiter a little (like 1 to 1.5 dB). I used a static EQ to pull 600 Hz down 1 dB to add vocal clarity and added low and high shelf EQs to subtly take out some sub-bass ( < 50Hz) and soften the very top (> 8K). After level matching (turning your master down 2 dB), I hear very little difference between your master and the official release, so you got quite close on the first try. Those are small EQ tweaks that I made. Again, nice work! You did fine!
1 like • 19h
@Jasper Labuschagne I typically just check the loudest part of the song (last chorus?) to see what the short term LUFS are. Most mainstream genres would target around -7 LUFS (short term) for the loudest section. EDM and metal might push louder than that (sometimes quite a bit louder). Do you have a loudness meter (LUFS) plug-in? I have a bunch of iZotope software which includes their Insight meter. The Mastering.com mentors really like the MAAT meter. I'm sure there are free ones out there too. The Youlean stuff is well regarded: https://youlean.co/youlean-loudness-meter/
5d •
Music Production 101
Just completed Music Production 101 Mastering. My first attempt at Mastering Music. With the training provided it went well. I felt that it sounded better than any other attempts at Mastering. Overall, I feel I had a good success. If anyone is just starting this maybe we could compare notes and how you felt about the course. I still need to purchase a camera for my computer. Any suggestions? Also, any suggestion on a good pair of headphones? I was looking at the VSX from slate but was unsure if that is what a beginner really needs. Happy Mixing all. That is where I am headed next to study🎧.
1 like • 23h
@Matt Mackinnon No headphone is "flat" (equal power across all frequencies). That would sound terrible. No bass and way too bright. Headphone makers tune their headphones to try to hit a reference target. Some target the "Harmon curve", others use their own proprietary curves. Check out the actual frequency response curves for hundreds of headphones on autoeq.app (website). But they always fall a bit short which is where corrective EQ software comes in like Sonarworks SoundID Reference or RealPhones or just an EQ plugin. The software tries to EQ the frequency response of the headphone to match a reference curve as much as possible. Many times, the corrective EQ includes a huge bass boost which eats headroom. Plus, there is more to how good a headphone sounds than just frequency response. Transient response and distortion are critical too. The goal is translation. You want your mix to sound at least OK on all playback systems. One would hope that "pro" engineers are working with good monitors in well-treated control rooms (or good, EQ'd headphones), so there isn't much bias baked into the original master. You certainly can tell when a mix is done on speakers that are too bright, or lacking sub-bass, or in an untreated room where room modes are messing with the sound. It might sound fine to them in their room, but their speakers/room or headphone are lying to them.
2 likes • 22h
@Jasper Labuschagne The famous engineer, Andrew Scheps, is well-known for using Sony MDR-7506 headphones ( ~$100/pair). I have a couple pairs of them in my studio for tracking. They are quite bright. They work for him. If you have the skills, you can make good music with the tools at your disposal. Ears are always more important than Gear.
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Pittsburgh, PA
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