How to Master Loud and Clear Without Sounding Harsh

Click the link below to start making mixes that accurately translate what you hear in your head.

[itssylv]

I've been a pro sound engineer for more than 10 years. Sometimes even the pros need revision and renew (NEVER STOP LEARNING). I've rarely seen videos as clear and innovative than yours. GOOD JOB!!!!

[mixphantom]

Worth noting is FabFilter L2 is sort of 2 limiters... "look ahead" is the transient limiter only and "attack & release" are the RMS/average limiter. So, a longer "look ahead" will trim the transients and the "attack & release" are focused on controlling the "body" of the sound.

[Jisooee]

OmG this is what I've been waiting for💌

[xtldubz]

Tried these and the steps work. I love the calculation of attacks and releases. My master sounds miles apart from my old tracks were.

[ATank]

I don't want to sound like I'm disagreeing with a professional mastering engineer, but I feel like the attack and release times on limiters are misunderstood. For me, I use Sonible Smart:Limit which also has the same concept of attack and release times as FabFilter Pro-L2 which sets the attack time before the release is initiated. In my understanding and experimentation, the release time needs to be extremely fast, like under 3ms because the real culprit is the attack time. When you have your release time too long, it messes with the ability of the limiter to sound clean and instead pumps the track. At least with Sonible Smart:Limit, an attack time of 150ms with a release averaging around 2ms acts more natural and basically no artifacts. 150ms sounds like a lot for an attack time on a limiter, but trust me, it's crazy how clean it is and no pumping occurs. Of course, I'm typically not limiting more than 6dB so with harder limiting scenarios, this may not work out the same, but with these settings, you'll still hear the "clipping" effect in the limiter in "Delta" mode, but it acts a lot more like a clipper in this scenario but cleaner sounding. KClip3 is great for clipping, but there's a very unpleasant distortion with clipping I don't particularly like even without hardly clipping at all, it just removes soul from the track whereas the limiter trick I describe keeps everything the way it is and just gets rid of those nasty peaks. Sorry if that's too long.

[theslideguy]

The best straight-forward video on mastering on YouTube. I learned much in ten minutes. Thank you!

[vancenichols]

Oh man! I love it! Keep feeding us this information! AWESOME!!!

[OneStepToday]

You should use that yellow highlight for mouse pointer for better display . This one is great video with lots of technicalities and maybe it will take some time to really test and use those techniques. Thanks

[Pear_slingshot]

What i do is I use a compressor and afterwards do a makeup gain of -3db then find an analog modulating plugin to give it an additional +3db before clipping and limiting.

[catocaydoh]

i wish i had the ear to understand more intuitively the differences here or what half of what you were saying meant lol. This however is a fantastic video and will keep it for reference once I get more foundational knowledge.

[georgezorbas]

You are incredible..thanks for info. So well explained man..you gonna reach 100K easily

[AsiCmusic]

Thanks ! Great Video ! Will Def Use this knowledge in my next Masters !!!!

[kingaya.]

Thanx Alot your Videos Are always Helpful

[Reggi_Sample]

This is the lesson I needed. How did I get it so wrong. Got this on repeat watch 😭

[h.n.r_funi]

i'll be needing a tutorial of this tutorial

[phnxjordan]

Perfect timing literally. I just exported a mix lmaoo

[HLRxxKarl]

I would've loved if you went as in-depth with the attack parameter as you did with release. When you said you were going to demonstrate it, I was hoping you were talking about the attack, but then you didn't touch it at all. Thankfully I can test it myself, but missed opportunity for everyone else tbh.

[joemarta]

Great video as always! Could you do something on pros/cons of mastering on a track by track basis vs loading all of the 2-buss tracks on the album into a single session and mastering the album as a whole? Thank you!

[pavendax]

gotta watch this in the studio to make sure i understand what every action does on the track

[rafalvarezsevilla]

uhhh ursa dsp boost and newfangled punctuate sound awesome!