In the last 15 years of working in the audio industry and helping thousands of musicians and engineers create great music from their home studio, I've seen every mistake in the book, and here's one of the biggest.

 

Honestly, if your mixes don't sound as loud and competitive as your reference tracks and the pro records you love, you're probably making this same mistake.

 

Whenever I listen back to my old mixes I hear this same mistake.

 

Even though the mixes sounded fine, something felt off.

 

That's when I realized...

 

I was almost maxing out the volume on my interface!

 

That meant my mix was almost 50% quieter than any of the professional records I listened to.

 

Yikes...so if my mix had come on after a professional record, you could've hardly heard it!

 

So what was the difference there?

 

One word: Mastering.

 

My mix wasn't loud enough because it wasn't mastered up to professional standards.

 

So if you're not mastering your mixes, they won't feel professional enough next to pro records because they're not loud enough.

 

Your mixes probably sound decent enough already. I know from experience, both from working on mixes and helping students improve theirs, that there are a million different ways to mix a song.

 

But there's only one way to make them sound like a professional record, and if you don't know how to make your mix loud enough to compete, it doesn't matter if you actually mixed your song a million times.

 

It still won't be enough.

 

You'll still be missing the final ingredient: Mastering.

 

Sure, you can always send your mix off to a mastering engineer and they'll take care of that for you, but that's going to cost you quite a bit over time.

 

The average price for a mastering engineer on Soundbetter is $80/song.

 

Let's say you want to eventually release 10 songs to put into an album...?

 

That's $800.

 

So it'll get pricey before you know it.

 

Or you might tell me, "But I don't think I'm qualified to master. It seems so advanced..."

 

Honestly...it's really not. If anything, mastering is simpler than mixing.

 

Remember, I'm the guy who tells you to Mix With 5 Plug-ins right?

 

Well, what if I told you that you only need THREE plug-ins to master?

• Linear Phase EQ for balance across the frequency spectrum
• Multi-Band Compression for tightness, punch, and glue
• Limiting to make things loud and competitive

That's what most professional engineers use while they master, and there's no reason you shouldn't learn how to use those tools too.

 

You already know that mastering is the key to taking your mixes and making them into professional and punchy records.

 

But you may be asking yourself:

• "How do I use all these plug-ins to master my mixes?"
• "How do I make them loud enough so I can feel confident in releasing my songs?"
• "How do I make sure my clients don't think that my mixes are weak when I send them a test mix?"

That's what I'll be showing you this week because we'll be talking all about mastering your mixes.

 

You'll also receive an awesome offer where I show you my in-depth, step-by-step process for mastering your mixes so that they compare to professional records.

 

Keep an eye on your inbox tomorrow for more about that!

 

Cheers,

Björgvin