The Mastering Show

Getting your music "synced" for licensing in TV, movies or ads can be an amazing opportunity for indie musicians to make money and gain exposure. But is it just a pipe dream, and is mastering a necessary part of the...

This started out as a Q&A episode, but one way or another there turned out to be a real theme to many of the questions, namely - how do you choose between technical and creative considerations, when mastering...

Translation is one of the main goals of mastering - make the music sound great on any platform, and any delivery format. But how is that possible ? How can we optimise the audio to sound great on both a huge PA and...

Brian Eno is probably the musician, producer and artist who has had the single biggest influence on my music taste and enjoyment over the years. His work speaks for itself and needs no introduction ! So when I heard...

I wanted to do something a little different to mark the 100th episode, but wasn't sure what. I was wondering about interviewing myself but that seemed a little weird... And then Matt Boudreau from the excellent Working...

Stereo, mono, binaural or surround-sound ? I've worked with this episode's guest in all these formats and more over the many years we've been working together - but which does he prefer, and why ? Richard Durrant...

'Stem mastering' has provoked a ton of debate recently, with people claiming it crosses the line between mixing and mastering, interferes with the artist's intent, and isn't even really mastering at all ! But if that's...

The term “legend” gets thrown all the time in audio production circles, but my guest this episode really deserves it. I’m sure you already know this but Ken Scott has worked with the Beatles, David Bowie, Elton John and...

We’ve been using “soft clipping" in mastering for over 20 years at this point, but it suddenly feels as if it’s all anyone is talking about ! New plugins, new suggestions about how to use it, and wild new claims about...

The Billboard Top 50 global singles from the first half of 2024 have an average loudness of -8.3 LUFS So that’s how loud we should be making our masters, right ? Well… It certainly might seem that way, but in reality...

People are always asking me about mastering for vinyl, and I’m happy to try and help based on the experience I have. I don’t actually cut vinyl myself though, so that advice is always limited and second-hand. So for...

I’m always arguing for balanced dynamics rather than loudness for it’s own sake, but some people have a different opinion - high loudness is important, and even beneficial. Nick Di Lorenzo is one of them - he says that...

You can't go a day without someone telling you how loud your music should be, these days. "Everything has to be -8 LUFS" "EDM has to be -6 LUFS or louder" "-11 is the perfect balance" "Just master everything to -14"...

It’s virtually impossible that you haven’t heard music of some kind mixed by Alan Meyerson by this point - he’s one of the most prolific and successful film score mixers in the business. And luckily for us, he’s also...

Everyone is talking about inter-sample peaks and True Peak limiters - or in fact it’s more accurate to say they’re arguing about whether ISPs are audible or not, and whether True Peak limiters sound bad ! In this...