How to Master a Track in 15 Minutes or Less
Tutorial Details
- Program: Logic Pro 8
- Difficulty: Beginner
- Completion Time: 15 minutes
Twice a month we revisit some of our reader favorite posts from throughout the history of Audiotuts+. This tutorial was first published in July 2008.
Mastering your tracks can be a bit of a minefield and is often seen as the domain of the professional. However, if your tracks are just for demo purposes, a DJ set or even use on the net, you may want to tackle the job yourself. In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to master a track quickly and easily. Mo Volans shows you how…
Software and equipment used
This tutorial was completed in Logic Pro 8 using a mixture of Logic’s native plug-ins and third party processors from Universal audio. Although this specific mix of products is used in the workshop, all techniques are generic and can be translated to any genre of music using similar plug-ins and any digital audio workstation software.
Step 1
Start by adding a stereo track to accommodate your un-mastered track. This should be an exported or recorded version of your entire mix-down. For best results this should be in the highest bit rate possible. For example, if you original project was recorded at 24 bit then this should also be at 24 bit.
To allow maximum flexibility at the mastering stage there should be as little processing as possible taking place on your exported pre-master. This means no compressors, limiters or EQs on the master output when you commit your final mix to disk. Remember, you can add processing but not take it away.
Step 2
Check you have enough headroom for your mastering processors to work in. Do this by playing back the track at its loudest point and check the maximum level on your master output. Of course, clipping isn’t as critical as it used to be in analogue systems, but it remains good working practice to avoid huge overloads if at all possible.
Step 3
There are obviously a few different ways to construct a mastering chain but the following collection of processors will get the job done with minimum fuss.
The first plug-in in our chain is a compressor. Strapping a compressor across the entire mix buss in this fashion is known as buss compression and its main purpose is to ensure the dynamics across the entire project are as uniform as possible. This compression will also act as a ‘glue’ for your mix, marrying different elements together.
Long attack and release times and low ratios are the name of the game here, for as much transparency as possible. As far as the type of compressor you use, any compressor of a good quality will do the job, but it might be worth thinking about investing in a dedicated mastering buss compressor plug-in if you strive for absolute quality. With the right compressor you can get away with quite large amounts of gain reduction, whilst still retaining the original feel of your track.
Step 4
The next stage is to think about whether or not the track needs equalisation. In this case not a huge amount was needed, I just added a very small amount of low end shelving EQ to enhance the bass and so on. Some slight dips in the lower and upper mid frequencies and a gentle boost to the highs finish the process.
Whatever you feel you need to do here keep the Q points low and the amounts you add or reduce to a minimum. This way you won’t colour any particular group of instruments too much. If you find yourself adding a lot of EQ in one area it might be time to go back to your mix.
If you have access to one, try to use a linear phase EQ or a dedicated mastering plug-in, as these processors impart less ‘character’ to the final mix. If you don’t have any of these, reach for the best you have.
Step 5
To allow the rest of the processors in the chain to work correctly–and not be overloaded by sub-sonic frequencies–it’s a good idea to remove everything under 30Hz at this point. This will allow everything to breathe and remove any unwanted rumble.
Of course, you can do this at the EQ stage but it keeps things clear if a separate plug-in is designated for the task.
Step 6
If you feel there are still areas in your mix that are too loud or quiet, even if it’s just in a small section of your mix, an excellent tool to use here is a multi-band compressor. Most DAWs come with a multi-band compressor bundled and there are plenty of third party plug-ins around as well.
Basically, using this sort of processor you can clamp down on a certain frequency and boost or cut it dynamically. This is much more transparent and organic than heavy use of EQ and it’s well worth looking into.
Step 7
Sometimes some light stereo enhancement can go a long way in the mastering process. Of course, don’t apply this as a rule of thumb as every track’s requirements are different. There are a many different available processors for this purpose, so choose a plug-in that suits your needs.
Here you can see Logic Pro 8’s ‘Stereo Spread’. Whatever you choose to use, remember to only spread the upper frequencies of your mix, leaving the lower end of the spectrum intact. Otherwise, you will end up with a confused low-end mix and the master will not translate well to other systems.
Step 8
The final dynamics process in our chain is brick-wall limiting. This is purely here to increase the perceived volume of the final mix. A mastering limiter works in much the same way as any other, the only difference being is that it has a ‘brick-wall’ type setting so that the audio can only reach a certain point set by the user. Add a gain on the input and the result is a dense and maximised sound, making your master sound louder.
A dedicated mastering limiter is a must here. Other hard and fast rules include not dialling in too much gain and preserving some of your original dynamic signature!
Step 9
The very last step before trimming and delivering our master is exporting and dithering of the mix. If your mix was recorded and exported at 16 bit then no further work needs doing here (apart from trimming the start and ends of the file). If your mix was mastered as a 24 bit file, however, dithering has to take place at this point.
Dithering is a number crunching process that allows a 24 bit file to be reduced to 16 bits without too much loss of quality. This should only be done once during the mixing and mastering stage and it’s always a good idea to try and use the best algorithm available. Look for ‘POW-r’ and ‘Apogee’ and you can’t go wrong. These are included with most modern DAWs.
Listen to Mo’s unmastered track:
Listen to Mo’s mastered track, after this process:
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I have a recording studio and I am a producer. I basically make dancehall beatz and have few of my artist jump on this tracks. I used clean samples and sounds to make my beat and the vocal is good. I used fl studio, reason, cubase and mortif xs 8 to make my beats. I used mbox for recording. I must confess I want to learn how to mix and master a track. Can someone please help me with the true art of mixing and mastering.
hey moz,
If you are producing dance music, house or trance music or any electronic music style I think we are what you are looking for… We can help you with your audio mixing and the mastering session.
If you feel interested have a look in our site:
http://www.audiomasteringstudio.net
Thanks!
I mix with compression in the master buss listen one of my recording master at http://www.MySpace.com/divinabox
Where do you put the plugins, on the Audio track or on the master track?
Will it make that much of a difference anyway?
Thanks for the article.
Plugins go on the master cause that is the final output
Mo I luv you man!!!!!!
You the Greatest ingeneer i ever read!!! THis mastering Tuto is OMG!!!
but i use cubase 5, how can i match the cubase plug ins with the logic plugins u used?
help me to do that please!
and can i put the exact settings i see on your screenshot for each steps?
ps: ive seen a lotta mastering tuto but THIS is the most complete + we can see the before/after!
god bless u! you the best!!!
Landro,
If you are interested in more before/after examples I suggest you:
http://www.audiomasteringstudio.net/audio-mastering-examples.html
Good Luck!
HI there Audio Master…
Any comments and questions are more than welcome but this really isn’t the place to sell your services. You might be better off purchasing some advertising space at the top of the page ;)
Please get involved and help people out, plenty of people with questions on mastering!
Hey Mo,
Thanks for your advices. But believe me, if you spend 12 hours a day in the studio, you do not have other subjects to talk about ;-)
You are right, actually we are preparing a short tutorial for the mixing section, but do not know yet when it is gonna be done.
I have to tell you that I really appreciate the hard work you have done in all your tutorials and I believe that they are one of the best you can find out there…
Keep the good work mate!
And for sure you will see me more here helping people. I will do my best ;-)
i love this thanks for the help!
Ok Mr Mo Volans, you have my respect, for 15 min we can not ask for more ;-)
If I have to be honest, this is not a professional mastering sorry mate…though the result is pretty modest, I really miss a good stereo spreading and a much better compression, by the way the Equalization is not that bad.
Ehy mate, you forgot a good quality reverb… and actually some harmony exiter would be nice ;-)
by the way this is something good to start from.
Hi there… to be honest this was written a few years ago now and I never actually titled it “… in 15 minutes or less” ;-)
This was just meant to be a quick introduction to a basic mastering process and nothing more. This is in no way meant to represent professional mastering .. more a beginners guide. And there are things here that I would probably not include now and others I would!
As far as reverb goes, it’s not something I actually use in my mastering process. Although I know some are huge fans of it. Maybe submit a tutorial on mastering reverb! And as for harmonic exciters I try to stay well clear of things like this and try not to include them on my master buss.
Hello again my friend,
Yeah I am fan of reverb, maybe some electronic music styles like house, techno or Trance would not be the same with out some good quality reverb in the mastering process…
I will prepare my mastering reverb tut for sure ;-)
Cheers!
good post! i liked everything but the sub-30Hz filter part. I remember hearing about that a while ago, but whenever i did it (and after listening to your mastered version) the “thud” in the bass drum doesn’t really carry out. Being a drummer, I may be picky about this, but when a bass drum is hit, there is an attack pitch of about 50-60 Hz, then it can resonate down a fraction of a second later in the 25-30Hz range, giving it the real full punch (that’s why old bass drums heads can never really sound all that great). Anyway, I’ve been putting a sub filter at 10Hz with a 24db/octave slope, it leaves the full punch, and removes deep rumbles.
Also, maybe more importantly, while mixing, i generally roll off everything but the bass and bass drum at 70Hz. That REALLY clears up the mix more so than a final 30Hz filter.
My 2 cents, thanks for the post.
Mo thanks for all the great info. Keep up the good work..
I found this service called http://www.InstantSongMastering.com that masters tracks for $10. I thought it was too good to be true, but it’s not bad! You get to choose the genre and preview 30 sec for free – try it out
Just wanted to say thanks! very useful information, i just mastered a song and sound awesome!!
Many Thx..
Wish all tutorials was like this in PDF file :-)
Excellent article, thanks Mo!
Quick question – when you bring your pre-master into a new session, do you not normalize the track first? I always export my pre-masters with the master out peaking between -10 and -3dB; my masters always come out way too soft, but I’m wondering if this is perhaps a bad technique?
Thanks for your help, much appreciated! :)
Hey Mo,
Great Tutorial!Many thanks!
P.S. I’m so hooked that small piece of clip. What is the song name/where can i listen to the whole thing?
Cheers!
Thanks for you tuto,can you advice where i can get complete pdf tuto’s on mastering vocals and track making
big up
This tutorial is a life saver! I’m trying to hurry and get a basic mix to my friend to insert into a trailer for his doc so he can start promoting it, and this has quickly upped the quality of my mix and given me a nice basic guideline for efficiently mastering a track, thanks so much!
From a complete novice, thanks a million. This has been brilliant help to me.
Good info. on this web page. My songs sound pretty darn good while they are playing my digital audio work station. What I mean is that I actually have commercial loudness. A song that’s loud enough where you don’t have to turn up your stereo at a 50 to 75% volume to hear the song. It may be my digital audio work station. I don’t know for sure. But after I mix down my song project to an audio file and play it back through real player. It sounds like I’ve lost 50 to 75% audio volume. I don’t get it. I read one post today where a fellow suggested that after adding the compressors, limiters, eq., etc., to record the song file to a 24 bit masterlink, 24 bit DAT or to tape. Any suggestions would be welcome.
Hey, your problem is that “normalizer” is probably on. It will automatically reduce your volume to the level where no clipping is occuring, even if there’s just one tiny clip. You’ll have to go turn that off in your program, it’ll be somewhere in preferences… Or something. Google that.
wow!..now that i have read this article,i know its going to have a great impact to my career as a music producer…brilliant i would say.
If you are mastering you might want to consider using WaveBurner instead of Logic. While mastering can be done in logic to a certain point, Waveburner is really the tool to use. IT allows you to not only master “the music” with eq and compression but also deal with the other issues of mastering like ISRC codes, CD Text, Bar Codes burned into the disc, sequencing of the tracks, and more. Good tutorial though.
cant master a professional song in 15 mins. impossible. nice guide for beginners but not for people with pro ambitions. every single track needs to be balanced and tuned to fit into the master. a good master takes at least 5 hours up to some days……… that comes from someone that sells music. l8r
Great tutorial! Quick question, what should I do after I’ve dithered it? It’s a huge file and I want to put the file onto a CD.
Thanks
Hello MO,
just wanted to know that this mastering process is to be done for a single mixdown of our final track?
And i am a budding singer – composer from india and my aim is to make it big in music industry.
I am finding all your tutorials really helpful to me. But please clarify my one small doubt! When i mix and export my song and listen to it in a pair of headphones and compare it with any other song released by a proclaimed composer, i find mine is having a lack of presence or something! please help me anyone!
use izotop ozone4 for final mix down ….do not over e.q. any instrument give every track reverb1.5 set overall master volume -1.2
Nice tutorial ! I learned a lot, but will use only parts of it, because I work on a different kind of music with another destination. Allow me to ask some questions.
1. All your EQ corrections are less than 1 dB, which is about the limit of perceivable difference. Do you really hear the individual differences ?
2. You advise a buss compression with low ratio. The picture shows a ratio 2:1 from -23.7 dBFS. That allows up to 12 dB influence. Is the meaning of the words “low ratio” related to the attack and release times ?
3. You also use a multi-band compressor with ratio 3:1 on different thresholds per band. It looks like destroying the earlier EQ in short fragments. I understand that the buss-compression and EQ make an optimal sound, and the band-compression compromises against loudness. Am I right ?
this is one day i always pray for,where i can tell my feelings aboult mastring here in my country nigeria where all the mix and master off evry studio those not stand out like a song don in the uk,in my studio here in nigeria i do all i can to meet up with what i ear out side my country but but its not working! why am freelance a.k.a Iqbeatz
This is a great tutorial for mixing engineers who want a pre-master of their track. I would say that if you’re going to master your own track, you should wait at least 2 weeks without listening to your track. That way your ears get a fresh listen. This is a good idea anyway even if you are submitting your song to a professional mastering engineer.
Mo….
Really appreciate your opening a door onto a complicated subject such as mixing/mastering. Anyone who claims to have a background in the music production industry (and a working brain) should and would realize that you provided an easily digested piece on the subject that was not intended to be the final word on the subject matter. Speaking for myself – and hopefully others who walked away from your brief work here a little better informed and perhaps even better directed via the glimpse you provided into the mixing/mastering process – thank you.
Awesome man, really nice to see the steps behind it! — I’m definitely going to learn mastering to save money ;) — Very nice tutorial too, very simple and easy to understand, appreciate it Mo.
16 bit vs 24 bit recording???
16 bit recording and exporting does not require dithering, so does that mean it is better to export and record your audio at a 16 bit depth rate???? ps very awesome article :)
I have to say I think this is a really poor article. I know it was written a while back, and times have changed, but suggesting things like automatically removing all frequencies below 30Hz is pretty appalling, in my opinion. A lot of the power of the sound in a room can come from these frequencies, especially with electronic music, and especially when played on a good sound system. And multi-band compression is rarely, if ever, used by many, many professional mastering engineers. Same goes for stereo width enhancement. NOTHING is done by rote, and every track is different. I’d imagine someone without a lot of experience (whom your article appears to be targeting), would end up with something of a mess after following all of the steps listed above.
I do not think that the article was meant to replace professional mastering engineers. It is just for home users who need to self finalize. Doing anything “preset” without professional grade reference monitors and serious acoustic treatment will always result in something less than “mastery”. Self finalize would have been a better term.
Русский язык
Абсолютно неправильно сравнивать треки “до” и “после” на разных уровнях громкости RMS
Выровняйте треки по громкости (leveler). Иначе – необъективный результат.
Мне кажется, что надо придерживаться этой схемы:
http://s1.ipicture.ru/uploads/20120411/4WUBVefW.gif
Why are my comments removed? Do not you understand Russian? Well, I write in English.
For comparison, you need to install both the volume of the same tracks. Otherwise, a loud song will always look better.
Level nomastered-12dB
Level mastered-7dB
Hi Alikdio. They weren’t removed. Because you haven’t posted before they had to be approved before they were displayed.
Alright. I understand your idea.
It seems to me that you have made a different volume levels, so I will not interfere. This could only come up with the guys from Russia ;)
Mixing is a spiritual thing,u most listing carefully work greatly.
I am creating my music using a combination of midi & sample loops, i’m using a pro-tools and recording at 16 bit 44100Khz Stereo from start to finish.
Question: Would the finished recording be good enough quality to be used in film & tv??
Thanks
Hi Warren. Music for tv and film is usually done at 48 kHz 24 bit.