5 Things You Should Do With Every Song You Master

Written By: Eric “Realistic” Michael

Mastering is the final stage before uploading a song to distribution & releasing it to the world. It’s the stage where we bring up the overall volume, polish it, & make sure it competes with the market.

We’re HUGE advocates that every song is different & requires its own unique approaches, but there are still a few key things that you can & should apply to every song you master. Don’t worry though, it’s not cookie cutter - copy & paste suggestions.

1. Listen To The Song All The Way Through!

This is the simplest - but yet most overlooked step whenever it comes to mastering. It’s also the most important step you should take & never skip.

Before you pull up an EQ, compressor, or limiter - sit back & listen to the song all the way through. Give it an unbiased listen & let your ears tell you what needs the most attention. You can even take some notes while listening. Just don’t touch any gear or plugins during this initial listen.

This 1st step actually supports our claim that each song requires its own unique approach, because once you listen to it, you’ll know what needs attention. Always start with the areas that stand out to you the most during this listen.

2. Make Sure You Have Proper Headroom!

Proper headroom is going to drastically impact the quality of the record & also determine how loud the overall master can be. Believe it or not, a mix sent at a lower volume with the proper headroom, can actually achieve a higher perceived volume than a track that is maxed out in volume & doesn’t have any headroom.

 -6dB is the general level most mastering engineers will recommend. You could get away with as high as -3dB though. If a track is over that amount, it’s usually ideal to reach out to the client & ask if they can send an updated mix with the proper headroom.

 If the track is lower than -6dB, you can adjust that on your end during the gain staging process of your master.

3. Use Reference Tracks.

Reference tracks can give you a good idea of the overall loudness you should try to strive for. As well as the balance of the low-end, mid-range, & high-end. It’s important to use reference tracks that are within the same genre of the track that you’re mastering. You’ll also want to use reference tracks that share some of the same sonic characteristics & evoke the same emotion & mood.

An example of a bad reference track would be if you were mastering “What’s Poppin” by Jack Harlow, using “Marvin’s Room” by Drake would not be a good choice for a reference track. That’s because “Marvin’s Room” is a low-end dominant, slow moving, emotional track that has lot’s of the high-end filtered out of the instrumental. Whereas “What’s Poppin” is a higher energy track that has bright sparkle in the high-end. A better reference for “What’s Poppin” would be “ROOF” by DaBaby. It has a similar energy & shares more of the same characteristics.

4. Use A LUFS Meter.

No matter the genre or song, a LUFS meter is the best & most accurate way to measure the overall loudness. That’s because this meter does a much better job than RMS or VU meters at considering the perceived volume.

LUFS meters will show 3 different readings. Momentary is ever changing & will show the current loudness. Short term will show the average loudness within the last 3 seconds. Integrated will show the average loudness of the entire track that you have played through the loudness meter.

You’ll want to put the LUFS meter as the very last plugin in your mastering chain, so it can read the loudness accurately.

If you’re looking for a good LUFS meter, iZotope’s Insight has the most features & shows the most information. FabFilter’s Pro-L2 has a good one built into it as well. You can also get a free Loudness Meter from YouLean.

5. Check Mono-Compatibility & Phase.

One of the steps in every master is making sure it translates well across all systems. We want to make sure that it will have good sound quality through expensive speakers, cheap speakers, & everything in between. One of the key ways into doing that is not only checking it out on different speakers, but also collapsing to mono for a little bit & see how it translates in mono. Mono does a good job at pointing out a lot of chaos & clashes. It’s also good to check a song out in mono, because there’s a lot of Bluetooth devices that playback in mono.

Checking the phase of the track is also important. When a track is very “phasy” it will lose a lot of body when collapsed to mono.

The Insight meter by iZotope we mentioned earlier has the capability of showing you what’s out of phase & if something is mono compatible or not, but if you don’t have that plugin, don’t worry! iZotope also has a free plugin called “Imager” that has that same exact phase & mono meter built into it. You can download that here!

These tips are something you can apply to every single song you master. Regardless of the genre, style, or mood of the record. If you’d like to watch a full video showcasing these steps, you can watch that here on our YouTube channel!