[Welsh Steve]

Gonna be honest, I've no idea what I'm doing at the best of times. So when it comes to finishing off a song by mastering it, I really don't do much.
I'm a Cubase user and there seems to be a mastering thingy that I use in the master bus...and that's about it.
I'm half thinking of using an on-line AI system. I know Soundcloud does it, but I've never tried it. Has anyone else done this?

[Boydie]

Hi @Welsh Steve

Mastering is often seen as a bit of “dark art”

The original purpose was to tame the low end to stop needles jumping out of records in the vinyl days

It was then used as a way to make songs “louder” (louder is “better” right!?!?), which lead to the “loudness wars” of the 90s and 2000s - where mastering was used to make songs as loud as possible, but at the detriment of “dynamic range” within a song

Mastering simply made the quiet bits louder and louder bits quieter - SO THAT THE WHOLE THING COULD BE TURNED UP! This can sound great on a first listen as you hear all of the detail, but quickly becomes fatiguing to listen to!

So, nowadays I see mastering as more of an “artistic” decision and it is often a balance of making a song “loud enough” to compete with commercial mixes AND retaining a nice dynamic to the song 

The best way to understand the impact mastering has on your own material is to have a human master it and then explain what they have done and why

I would be happy to do this on one of your songs, so will send you a private message

[cowparsleyman]

@Welsh Steve - hmm mastering is all about making the best a song can be. If it's well mixed, then there's not as much to do, sometimes a mix is beyond repair, so some remixing, re tracking major surgery is required...

Give Boydie a try - you'll notice the difference, it can really make a song radio ready.

[Dorian]

There are a few youtube channels that cover the basics of mixing and mastering. As a non professional I’ve learned a lot from “Produce like a pro” and “In the mix”. Even with free downloadable vst’s, the basic knowledge, decent listening equipment and a good pair of ears you can make a huge difference yourself, although not on a truly professional level most likely. It does cost time and skill to really master mastering :-) Using commercial vst’s like Fabfilter and such even makes it better.
On most platforms like Soundcloud and Youtube ‘loudness’ lucky isn’t that much of an issue anymore since all tracks are leveled to minus 14 LUFS, meaning you can focus more on clarity and dynamics. Hope this helps you. I’m not a professional mixer, but I did walk the bumpy road a few miles.

[seriousfun]

I mostly use mastering to get my songs to play nicely together on a playlist.

I dont do any mastering during the production phase of a mix, it has to be completely finished and I leave a few db of headroom so that I have some leeway with the mastering process.

Then I use a completed and mastered track as a base and master the new track to the same dynamic and loudness. At the same time I am looking for anything refquencies that may need some taming or are too lost in the mix and need some extra space to shine through.

I use Isotope as my mastering software and find it extremely good and easy to use.

rider:  I dont really know what I am doing and fly by the seat of my pants but seem to get 'ok' results with this workflow.  The best advice I can give is @Boydie knows what he is doing so when he speaks, listen.

[Michaels Lyric]

When I do stuff on my own, it starts with mixing.  I compress some instruments, to give them their own "room." Then, I slightly compress the entire track with reverb, to give it cohesiveness.  Then, I use a hard limiter, usually to squeeze another 3–5 DBs.  Then, I use the equalizer.  Then, I hard compress again, like 1 DB.  You can hear the results in my introduction post, Introduction section, "Naronia......"  I try not to squeeze too much...