Master your own records, properly.
Short, technical, producer-to-producer guides on the things that actually decide whether your track holds up on a club system — loudness, true peak, tonal balance, and low end. No mystique, just the engineering conventions the pros work to.
How Loud Should My Master Be?
Streaming normalizes around −14 LUFS. Club masters commonly land at −7 to −5. How to pick a target that fits where your track will actually play.
True Peak · dBTPTrue Peak Explained: Why Masters Clip on Cheap Systems
Inter-sample peaks, lossy encoding, and why a master that never touches 0 dBFS can still distort on earbuds — plus the −1 dBTP convention.
Reference MatchingHow to Master Against a Reference Track
Choosing a reference, matching tonal balance, loudness, and width — and the level-matching trap that fools almost every A/B comparison.
Premaster PrepPreparing Your Premaster for Mastering
Headroom, why the limiter comes off the master bus, sample rates and bit depth, and a checklist to run before you export the bounce.
Low End · ClubMixing Low End for Club Systems
Kick and bass separation, keeping the sub mono, sidechain basics, and how to check your low end without booking a club.
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