The Mastering Show

I'm seeing several different discussions online about what makes a "real" mastering engineer – and some of them are getting pretty heated ! So what really matters the most ? Expertise, experience, or credits ? In this episode I talk about my own opinions and reasoning, talking about: Why credits can be a complete red herring, especially online The problem with credits even if they are reliable How...

Audio repair and restoration has always been a huge part of mastering – and not only for re-mastering vintage material. Even modern recordings can have problems like clicks, thumps, hiss, amp buzz, distortion and many more. Ideally they’d all be fixed in the mix, but sometimes it’s not possible or they get missed – or maybe the best tools for the task aren’t available. In this episode I talk to Mi...

I used to say that the Loudness Range (LRA) measurement wasn't really useful when mastering - but recently I changed my mind. In this episode I explain why , and how loudness range is actually something you might want to pay attention to, as well. Topics include: What is the Loudness Range ? How is it different to Dynamic Range ? What even IS Dynamic Range, anyway ? Why did I say that LRA wasn't h...

More and more people are choosing to get vinyl copies of their music made one at a time, rather than having hundreds of copies pressed at once. Or in very small batches, or allowing fans to order copies on demand. So how does this work, and what does it mean ? How do you get the best quality results, and minimise the risk of getting something back that you're not happy with ? Mastering for vinyl i...

I see it every day: “The Loudness Wars are over - loud won. Get over it” And it’s easy to see why. The average mainstream release hits -8 LUFS integrated or more; club releases regularly hit -6 or even -4 LUFS and are peaking well above zero; every other post you see on social media is about a new limiter or clipping strategy… As the creator of Dynamic Range Day and Loudness Penalty , I should pro...

It was the Grammys this week - you can't have missed it ! And somewhere along the way I saw an article by Ian Vargo assessing the loudness and dynamics of the nominees for Best Song. In this episode I talk about what he discovered, and what my reaction is – and along the way, I talk about: The highest (and lowest !) LUFS measurements of the Best Song nominees How I feel about that What these songs...

Getting your music "synced" for licensing in TV, movies or ads can be an amazing opportunity for indie musicians to make money and gain exposure. But is it just a pipe dream, and is mastering a necessary part of the process ? Chris SD from Sync Songwriter is an expert in this topic – just in the last year they've had artists get songs placed in the soundtrack for the Oscar-winning movie "Anora", f...

This started out as a Q&A episode, but one way or another there turned out to be a real theme to many of the questions, namely - how do you choose between technical and creative considerations, when mastering ? Questions like: When the client wants songs to sound different When to use mid-side processing (or not) Transient shaping - hardware or software ? How much distortion ? When is unbalanc...

Translation is one of the main goals of mastering - make the music sound great on any platform, and any delivery format. But how is that possible ? How can we optimise the audio to sound great on both a huge PA and crappy earbuds, or via any data-encoded stream, when we don't have any control over those playback systems or streaming platforms ? The answer to this paradox is deceptively simple - an...

Brian Eno is probably the musician, producer and artist who has had the single biggest influence on my music taste and enjoyment over the years. His work speaks for itself and needs no introduction ! So when I heard Emre Ramazanoglu talking on the Working Class Audio podcast about re-mixing and mastering many of Brian's classic albums for Dolby Atmos, my ears immediately pricked up. I just couldn'...

I wanted to do something a little different to mark the 100th episode, but wasn't sure what. I was wondering about interviewing myself but that seemed a little weird... And then Matt Boudreau from the excellent Working Class Audio podcast invited me back onto his show, and it occurred to me - I could get Matt to interview me, which would be way more fun and get some much more interesting questions...

Stereo, mono, binaural or surround-sound ? I've worked with this episode's guest in all these formats and more over the many years we've been working together - but which does he prefer, and why ? Richard Durrant describes himself as an "Indie Classical" musician, which I think is a pretty good summary - but doesn't really take into account the fact that he also toured with Sky , worked as an acco...

'Stem mastering' has provoked a ton of debate recently, with people claiming it crosses the line between mixing and mastering, interferes with the artist's intent, and isn't even really mastering at all ! But if that's true, why would Abbey Road , one of the biggest mastering studios in the world, offer a dedicated stem mastering service ?! In this episode I talk to Oli Morgan , who specialises in...

The term “legend” gets thrown all the time in audio production circles, but my guest this episode really deserves it. I’m sure you already know this but Ken Scott has worked with the Beatles, David Bowie, Elton John and Supertramp amongst so many others, so I was delighted when he agreed to join me for this episode ! There were so many things we could have talked about it was hard to know where to...

We’ve been using “soft clipping" in mastering for over 20 years at this point, but it suddenly feels as if it’s all anyone is talking about ! New plugins, new suggestions about how to use it, and wild new claims about how amazing it sounds. Except it doesn’t. At least – not all the time, and not for all material. In this episode Joe Caithness and I dig deep into the details and talk about: * What...

The Billboard Top 50 global singles from the first half of 2024 have an average loudness of -8.3 LUFS So that’s how loud we should be making our masters, right ? Well… It certainly might seem that way, but in reality it’s a bit more complicated than that. This is only one of the interesting results that Ian Stewart presented in his latest blog post for iZoTope, and in this episode I asked him back...

People are always asking me about mastering for vinyl, and I’m happy to try and help based on the experience I have. I don’t actually cut vinyl myself though, so that advice is always limited and second-hand. So for this episode I decided to talk to a genuine expert on the topic - Scott Hull from Masterdisk - and really get into the details. Scott’s knowledge and experience of cutting vinyl is eno...

I’m always arguing for balanced dynamics rather than loudness for it’s own sake, but some people have a different opinion - high loudness is important, and even beneficial. Nick Di Lorenzo is one of them - he says that loudness is important regularly on his YouTube channel. So in this episode I invited him on to explore that idea in more detail, and really get into the nuances of the topic. Do you...

You can't go a day without someone telling you how loud your music should be, these days. "Everything has to be -8 LUFS" "EDM has to be -6 LUFS or louder" "-11 is the perfect balance" "Just master everything to -14" ...but they can't all be right ! In fact, none of them are, and even more importantly, they may not even be talking about the same thing. And the differences are really important. So i...

It’s virtually impossible that you haven’t heard music of some kind mixed by Alan Meyerson by this point - he’s one of the most prolific and successful film score mixers in the business. And luckily for us, he’s also super-generous and open about the information he shares, including his perspectives on mixing and ‘mastering’ music for the movies. So in this episode we dig deep into all the details...

Everyone is talking about inter-sample peaks and True Peak limiters - or in fact it’s more accurate to say they’re arguing about whether ISPs are audible or not, and whether True Peak limiters sound bad ! In this episode I’m joined by Alexey Lukin, iZotope’s “godfather of RX”, to talk in detail about exactly what ISPs are and why they’re so confusing - including: * How are inter-sample peaks measu...

If you’re not already listening to Matt Boudreau’s fantastic podcast Working Class Audio, you need to start now ! Matt is a highly respected mixing and mastering engineer who has recently moved into working in Dolby Atmos, where he’s already picked up some seriously impressive credits - oh, and also produces one of the top Audio podcasts around. Which is why if I try to think of anyone better to l...

DJs get a lot of flak, especially about loudness. There’s a deep-seated belief that “loud” masters are still a requirement for club music, and that DJs are somehow to blame. But is this fair ? The reality is much more complicated and interesting than the popular cliche that DJs will only play loud masters, and in this episode Ian dives deep into the issue with Joe Caithness, who works as both a DJ...

It’s amazing what mastering can achieve - but it’s also amazing how many things can influence the results we get right from the recording stage. In this episode Ian talks to Mike Senior about how to fix mastering problems at the recording stage, without using a time machine ! Topics include how to avoid: Muddy mids Harsh guitars Sibilance Resonant snares Boomy or hollow vocals Exposed vocals...

As mastering plugins become more sophisticated and more technical, there’s an interesting trend towards making the interfaces… less so. As well as traditional technical terms and numbered scales, controls labelled with less technical terms like “warmth”, “bite” and “colour” are becoming more common. And some interfaces are just… bizarre ! Is that good ? Or not ? In this episode Jon and I like at s...