The Mastering Show

I used to say that the Loudness Range (LRA) measurement wasn't really useful when mastering - but recently I changed my mind. In this episode I explain why, and how loudness range is actually something you might want to pay attention to, as well.

Topics include:

• What is the Loudness Range ?
• How is it different to Dynamic Range ?
• What even IS Dynamic Range, anyway ?
• Why did I say that LRA wasn't helpful ?
• How I changed my mind, and wh...

More and more people are choosing to get vinyl copies of their music made one at a time, rather than having hundreds of copies pressed at once. Or in very small batches, or allowing fans to order copies on demand.

So how does this work, and what does it mean ? How do you get the best quality results, and minimise the risk of getting something back that you're not happy with ?

Mastering for vinyl is a whole different ball-game, as I d...

I see it every day: “The Loudness Wars are over - loud won. Get over it”

And it’s easy to see why. The average mainstream release hits -8 LUFS integrated or more; club releases regularly hit -6 or even -4 LUFS and are peaking well above zero; every other post you see on social media is about a new limiter or clipping strategy…

As the creator of Dynamic Range Day and Loudness Penalty, I should probably just give up and get my hat, rig...

It was the Grammys this week - you can't have missed it !

And somewhere along the way I saw an article by Ian Vargo assessing the loudness and dynamics of the nominees for Best Song.

In this episode I talk about what he discovered, and what my reaction is – and along the way, I talk about:

1. The highest (and lowest !) LUFS measurements of the Best Song nominee...

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 process ?

Chris SD from Sync Songwriter is an expert in this topic – just in the last year they've had artists get songs placed in the soundtrack for the Oscar-winning movie "Anora", for example! And this episode I talk ...

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 ?

Questions like:

1. When the client wants songs to sound different
2. When to ...

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 crappy earbuds, or via any data-encoded stream, when we don't have any control over those playback systems or streaming platforms ?

The answer to this paradox is deceptively simple - and powerful. In this episode I explain...

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 Emre Ramazanoglu talking on the Working Class Audio podcast about re-mixing and mastering many of Brian's classic albums for Dolby Atmos, my ears immediately pricked up. I just couldn't miss the chance to talk to him in...

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 Class Audio podcast invited me back onto his show, and it occurred to me - I could get Matt to interview me, which would be way more fun and get some much more interesting questions !

So here it is. Matt and I talk a...

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 describes himself as an "Indie Classical" musician, which I think is a pretty good summary - but doesn't really take into account the fact that he also toured with Sky, worked as an accomplished session musician for many yea...

'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 true, why would Abbey Road, one of the biggest mastering studios in the world, offer a dedicated stem mastering service ?!

In this episode I talk to Oli Morgan, who specialises in stem mastering and mixing in mastering...

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 Supertramp amongst so many others, so I was delighted when he agreed to join me for this episode !

There were so many things we could have talked about it was hard to know where to start, but here are just a few of t...

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 how amazing it sounds.

Except it doesn’t.

At least – not all the time, and not for all material.

In this episode Joe Caithness and I dig deep into the details and talk about:

* What clipping is, and what it isn’t

* Th...

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 it’s a bit more complicated than that. This is only one of the interesting results that Ian Stewart presented in his latest blog post for iZoTope, and in this episode I asked him back on to really dig into some of the det...

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 this episode I decided to talk to a genuine expert on the topic - Scott Hull from Masterdisk - and really get into the details.

Scott’s knowledge and experience of cutting vinyl is enormous, as you’ll hear, and I took f...

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 loudness is important regularly on his YouTube channel. So in this episode I invited him on to explore that idea in more detail, and really get into the nuances of the topic. Do you need to be mastering loud ? Topics ...

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"

...but they can't all be right !

In fact, none of them are, and even more importantly, they may not even be talking about the same thing. And the differences are really important. So in this episode I try explain really c...