Why boosting the EQ doesn't make your master louder
You add 3 dB at 80 Hz, the meter doesn't move, and it looks like the tool ignored you. It didn't — the limiter gave the gain back on purpose.
Read →The eleven stages, and why they are in that order
A mastering chain is not a pile of effects. It is a sequence, and most of what makes one master sound better than another is the order rather than the settings.
Read →Two compressors in a row, and why that isn't a mistake
The chain compresses twice, with settings that look almost contradictory. The contradiction is the point — one is holding the record together, the other is giving it punch.
Read →Three ways to make a peak smaller
Saturation, limiting and clipping all do the same arithmetic and sound completely different doing it. Which one does the work is the difference between a master that breathes and one that doesn't.
Read →The stages that decide what it sounds like
Two EQs, a de-esser, a multiband compressor and a width control. These are the stages with no correct setting — and the two of them that can be copied from a reference record.
Read →What we mean by bright
Warm, bright, airy, lean, scooped. Everyone uses these words and almost nobody agrees what they mean — so here is exactly what each one is worth in decibels, and which record sits at each extreme.
Read →Punchy, dynamic, compressed — three words, two measurements
The vocabulary for dynamics splits along a fault line most people never notice, and a quarter of the library sits on the wrong side of it. Public Enemy hits harder than Dire Straits and has a third of the range.
Read →Reading a spectrum, and what it hides
Ten numbers describe a record's tonal balance well enough to act on. They also leave out most of what makes it recognisable.
Read →What a finished master can tell you, and what it can't
You can measure any record ever released. That still won't tell you what was done to it — and mistaking one for the other is the most common error in reference matching.
Read →The loudness war, and the record that ended the argument
For thirty years records got louder and lost their dynamics. Then streaming turned the volume back down and the whole strategy stopped paying.
Read →What makes a mastering iconic
Four different things get called "legendary mastering", and one of them is a warning rather than an aspiration. Telling them apart is most of the skill in choosing a reference.
Read →Kind of Blue, 1959 — a room, three tracks, and almost no second takes
The best-selling jazz record ever made was cut in two afternoons, mostly first takes, in a converted church. It is also slightly out of tune, and nobody noticed for thirty years.
Read →Abbey Road, 1969 — the desk that changed the sound
The Beatles' last recorded album sounds smoother than everything before it, and the main reason is not the songs or the band. It is a new mixing console with a compressor on every channel.
Read →Thriller, 1982 — when the format decided the tracklist
The best-selling album in history was shortened because vinyl physically could not hold it and stay loud. The constraint made it better.
Read →Nevermind, 1991 — three people, three jobs, one argument
Butch Vig produced it, Andy Wallace mixed it, Howie Weinberg mastered it, and the band ended up unhappy with how good it sounded. It is the clearest lesson available in who does what.
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