Advanced Mastering Secrets You Need To Know

MY GEAR:
DAW (Music making software): Logic Pro and Ableton Live
Studio monitors (speakers): Yamaha HS8's
Headphones: Audeze LCD X (open back)
Camera: Canon 80d
Computer: Mac Studio with M2 Ultra chip and 2 TB hardrive
Midi controller (keyboard): Komplete Kontrol 61
Interface: Scarlett Clarett 2 pre
Desk: a cheap one from ikea
Chair: also a cheap one from ikea

My favorite plugins that I use the most:
XFER Serum
Sylenth 1
Nexus 3
Kontakt
RC 20
Valhalla Shimmer
Valhalla Vintage Verb
Shaperbox 3
XFER OTT
Fab Filter Saturn 2
Fab Filter Pro C 2
Arturia Pigments
Baby Audio Comeback Kid
Output Thermal and Portal
LABS Soft Piano

Hardware that I use behind the scenes but not in videos:
Elektron Octatrack (my fav)
Elektron Digitakt
Korg Minilogue XD

[niallleonard]

For anyone new or considering the EDM boot camp, I’d highly recommend it, it’s amazing for starters and people who want to learn basic music knowledge, it’s really in depth but he doesn’t get hooked up on the complicated technical side of it

[AlexRome]

Technique 1: Soft clipping - thickens up the mix

Technique 2: OTT - tightens up the mix

Technique 3: Saturation - beefs up weak

Technique 4: Mix into a limiter to level out peaks

Technique 5: Don't overwork mastering. Work on skills that matter like songwriting. Your mastering skill will develop over time.

[MattVorn]

As a professional mastering engineer myself:

Mastering will never become obsolete, you pay engineers for their 'flavour', it's like getting a same-old burger from McDonalds vs a Burger from Gordon Ramsay, in every way it's just higher quality and when as a artist you become a professional you realise this.

Secondly, mastering is solely to ensure your track meets loudness and audio standards. As an example, to have a Apple Digital Master (Mastered For iTunes), you have to have your track mastered by a specific mastering house who can verify these masters and whom of which has the tools to perform the masters.

Ultimately mastering is about making your track sound as good as possible on all listening mediums and then you can add a bit of extra fancy processing to really add some flavour to the recording as a whole.

To say that mastering is about aiming for the '-14 LUFS' that Spotify recommends is incredibly incorrect. The truth is, it does not matter what loudness you go for, so as to say if you have a club track, these tend to as an industry standard, be mastered at or above -8 dB LUFS. This is because these tracks naturally need to be loud. Like a big room Test track will always be around -5 dB LUFS.

So no, the -14 LUFS thing IS NOT A TARGET, it's simply Spotify saying, don't force loudness if your track doesn't call for it. Of which is to say if you have a pop track that sits naturally loudness wise at -12dB LUFS, then this track doesn't really need to be pushed as it traditionally would to the -9dBLUFS recommendation in order to meed the red book standard (the standard for Compact Discs).

Other than that, agree with everything and of course MUSIC IS ALWAYS FIRST. You can also however have a good track/mix but a bad master. However the song always comes first, unless your track is audio engineering heavy like for Techno for example.

Thought I'd share some thoughts, if you disagree that's fine, but this is what I researched as part of a university dissertation, and I also do this partly for a living so I hope my words have some weight and may help someone in some way!

[Aakash]

I used to watch tones of tutorial about how make good music sometime I saw his videos in my feed, when I watched his video about the chord tricks, I am literally addicted to his tutorial. I have learned from him a lot. Thank you so much and keep uploading such videos I will soon join your EDM Bootcamp.

[soundmonkey]

Your tips are so on point. Very helpful!

[milkyfernandez]

I love you so much, bro. Thanks for these gems of videos.

[rajaninahar]

I can now easily admit that u are a real pro

[FiresDesign]

I would like to see you explaining this on a serious project with nicely mixed quality instruments

[TimSpriggsHQ]

Maybe someone has already said something, but I’m pretty sure by turning the limiter on you are limiting not soft clipping, and by pushing the input you are just limiting more. You have to turn the limiter off, set the distortion to soft and push the makeup gain until you go past 0db (there will be saturation leading up to it on soft), then match the volume with the output gain if wanted.

[Musicbypinge]

so well timed video for me! thanks again alex!

[SuperMhops]

Hey Alex me again from insta! This is what I was talkin about, didn’t even know it was u but I saw the title and clicked hahaha

[andrewcimino]

Hey dude! Thanks for the videos. I’m just curious, do you use pre-level fader metering to gain stage and make sure individual instruments/tracks aren’t clipping?

[SoundBarAudio]

OTT is, as the name already suggests, an over-the-top multiband up-down compressor. So one should be careful with it. I use it all the time. But for mastering, I only use it strategically (like only when a song actually benefits from the OTT sound, otherwise I just take it off my mastering chain) and sparingly (in between 1-10% in depth and any number lower than 100 in up-down), cuz even at 1% in default settings, it already subtly colorizes the entire mix by phasing.

[tlp]

I have a question what I asked here and there but no answer yet. So I understand that music platforms are giving u "loudness penalty". Basically if I upload my music at around +5db they will lower it down.I tryed a lot of different ways to have my upload sound as loud as some other tracks but its never ended good. So I downloaded a track from youtube what I thought Its much louder that 0db then uploaded it to the penalty analyzer and viola +7.2db. How is it possible that recordlabels and some artist can upload their tracks with full loudness? Are they paying some extra for that? Thnx

[salww.]

Mr, Alex Rome could you upload the trap beat in 3:34

[tr_]

Does fl studio have a stock saturator? (I apologize if I spelled that wrong)

[rubenlopezmartinez]

Doesnt OTT absolutely destroy your phase?

[gamer-wlsv]

--- > how about to no-lose "dynamique" of the song during those mastering ; and mastering in general ?
(difference between the lowest and highest instrument )
or is it related to apply or remove "gain" finaly how to keep "dynamic" as possible and also follow the "standard industrie" as music plateform.?
- finaly many questions ....

[officialbammusic]

Can you make a video specifically on mixing for dynamics? I keep ending up with tracks that sounds like theyre coming out of the middle! :(

[Asturev]

good stuff but I don't have enough money to buy any of those plugins