The best mastering chain for music production

Beginners often use mastering presets to make their tracks sound better, but really just end up blindly changing the loudness of their track.

Instead, I propose this workflow for producers: work on your production, mixing as you go with a lot of headroom, and then on the master channel only put a limiter, to eat up that headroom as a final step. That's it! With this almost perfectly transparent master channel, your mix should sound professional already, so the job of mastering will become more about sweetening your song, rather than correcting mistakes.

Contents:
0:00 What mastering preset to use?
0:55 Mastering won't save your bad mixing
1:38 A diagram to explain the workflow
5:18 Again but in an actual production this time
8:13 Advice for beginners
8:35 Dance outro

[OscarUnderdog]

Don't fall for the comment section scammers! 🚨🚨🚨

[Bthelick]

As a 15+ year professional, I find most people who are tempted by the 'dark art' of mastering, are really just delaying blame to a later process, because their track doesn't sound good at mix. That's all you need to know, it's a mix problem! I promise you there's literally no difference between a good mix at commercial level and a master. If the mix is good there is no need to master, fact. Many a great mastering engineer has said as much. I have released and engineered thousands of tracks and there are some out there with millions of views that are just mixes that got released, no master at all, and in many cases not even a limiter! The difference is in your ear training not the specific processes or gear/plugins.

[Yasha-tc]

This is the best explanation of a limiter, and beginner mastering concept, that I have ever heard! Great work. Short but very informative. Thank you!

[johnghadimi]

Producing/Mixing into a limiter is the secret sauce. Totally on board with that. I also have a clipper (KClip) before the limiter, to catch the strays before it feeds into the limiter. Keeps things nice and tidy.

[FunDaBounceDJ]

Thank you for speaking up on this. After more than a decade of mastering my own productions, it really does boil down to working as you described. The sooner this is understood, the better! Thanks again for your insights and great teachings, Oscar! God Bless!

[BaddBadger]

If only someone would have told me this back in the 90's i might be a lot further into this journey than i am now!

[manmachinemusic]

Simplicity at it's best! Simply fabulous Oscar. Thank you 🔊

[FreehhZe]

also the loop in the end is such a banger i love it

[dreamer-]

thanks for all the tutorials, i'm not taking this for granted and appreciate all the work you put into it.

Merry Christmas and a happy healthy creative new year!

[bAdorablePeach]

This pushed me, in the right direction, to remove my mastering chains and actually fix my mix. Spent 5 hours fixing things, but it was worth it. Thank you for the video!

[ivanoleg]

This is actually the most helpful video addressing mastering I‘ve seen so far.

[GavinLyonsCreates]

Thanks again Oscar, I always enjoy watching your videos. I like this simple approach of just a limiter.

[icncpt]

You do a great job! Thank you for you work and time you spent to educate us 🤝

[eugenesansvie]

man, you're just awesome. I don't like your music (just not my genre), but omg how much more logical my production has become since I watch your channel! Cheers mate!

[glen]

amazing tutorials from this man, helped me move from flstudio to ableton, so glad i made the switch, thankyou so much, xxx

[FrequencyHorizon]

Dude that is such a sick loop you made! Great tips too.

[amg]

this actuallymade my workflow 100x better. excellent vid. puts most of the focus on the mixdown

[valdeEDM]

This is very good and important video. I started producing tracks and even published few without learning even these basics :D I think you explained it very well, thank you for teaching us Oscar :)

Few things I've started doing nowadays at the end of a project;
1. Check the mix in Mono to see how all elements are balanced.
2. Listen through multiple different set of speakers (TV, Phone, Speaker, Headphones etc.) to get better understanding of what elements may be off-balance.
3. Using a limiter to eat up the headroom like mentioned.

What I'd like to see maybe future videos of would be understanding phasing issues, the importance of key / scales and some other more subtle ''professional tricks / unwritten rules'' that people like myself might overlook when getting into producing.

Wish you all the best and looking forward to learn more from you guys =)

- Valde

[davidpurple]

Thanks - complete agree. And great track you're playing

[EuphoriaMusic]

Always delivering good wealth of info. But oh boy these productions of you lately,