Yesterday, I had my weekly Music Monday call with my Insiders and this week we focused on mastering.

We spent about an hour mastering a mix I had done for them in the previous week. 

Although we were all happy with the mix a couple of weeks ago when we finished it, adding that final 10% on top just made it so much clearer and punchier.

 
Here’s what we used: 
 

• Linear phase EQ for mid/side filtering and some dynamic EQ to tame boom, plus an extra low end shelf for added thickness at the end after some discussion with Professor Ed, one of my more accomplished and knowledgeable members. 
   
• Multi-band compression to add overall tightness and taming dynamics using my go-to preset from Ian Shepherd of Production Advice. 
   
• The ART TG Mastering for their tape equalizer module and the limiter in parallel for parallel compression. It's a neat trick and it adds a lot of power to the master without compromising the dynamics.
   
• Gullfoss for some automatic EQ and dynamics control to add clarity across the board. This is a magic box that does who knows what, but if you tweak the settings just so it'll make everything sound clearer.
   
• Ozone for some EQ after compression, some stereo widening (that ended up getting deactivated), and some finalization from the limiter.

This was of course all monitored by the SPAN frequency analyzer, the Loudness Penalty plug-in, and the Dynameter to check the frequency range and dynamics, plus a good ol’ LUFS meter just guide the plane to a safe landing. 
 

Mastering by committee is of course a terrible idea, but I love my virtual classroom where everyone has to have something to say because I force people to really critically listen to what is going on. 
 

People keep coming back so it must be useful and I’m having a ton of fun mixing and mastering in front of a live studio audience that has to participate in the show. 
 

Listening to the before and after was eye-opening as well because it made it very clear how much polish you can add to a mix during the mastering stage.

Especially if you start with a good mix of well recorded tracks from a great performance. 
 

Settling for lower standards at any part of the process will immediately make every part of the process sound worse. 
 

Mastering might add that final 10% but if you’ve been settling for 50% in the previous phases, that 10% will only help you so much. 

In this case, the whole will only be as good as the sum of their parts. And if one part is lacking, the whole will sound lackluster.

Keep that in mind the next time you're working on your songs. 
 

Hope that’s helpful. 
Bjorgvin.

P.S.

If you want to join our Monday sessions, become an Audio Issues Insider right here.