17 · Mastering

Mastering is the last step before you share a song: the point where you set its overall tone, tighten its dynamics, and bring it up to a competitive, consistent loudness for streaming, video, or disc. AnalogDAW gives you a one-button Mastering Assistant on the master strip that does the analytical heavy lifting for you — and, crucially, hands you back an ordinary, fully editable master chain rather than a locked "master" effect.

Think of it the way a good assistant engineer works: it listens to your mix, proposes a sensible starting point, and then gets out of your way so you can taste and tweak. Every move it makes shows up on the normal master controls — high-pass, EQ, tape, glue compression, and the Maximizer — so you can nudge any of them afterward, or undo the whole thing.

This is a starting point, not a black box. Like the mastering assistants in Logic or Ozone, the Assistant writes settings you can see and change. It never replaces your judgement — it just saves you the tedious first pass.

Where to find it

The Mastering Assistant lives on the master strip, in the metering area of the master's channel. Switch to the MIX view and look at the last (right- most) strip — the master — or open the master's detail view. You'll see a small panel with STYLE, AMOUNT, and MASTER FOR controls above a Master This button.

Because it's on the master, it always works on your whole mix — everything summed through your buses and the master's own console tape stage.

The three choices

Before you run it, you make three quick decisions. All three can be changed after a run and re-apply instantly (see After a run).

STYLE — the character

The character is the tone, glue, and saturation the Assistant aims for. Names are descriptive, not brand-based:

AMOUNT — how hard it leans in

Subtle, Normal, or Strong scales how strongly the character is applied — how much EQ, tape, and glue the Assistant dials in.

Loudness is never scaled by AMOUNT. You always land on your chosen target; AMOUNT only changes how much coloration gets you there. Pick the tone you want and the loudness takes care of itself.

MASTER FOR — the delivery target

This is the integrated-loudness target the Assistant masters toward:

Choosing a target here also sets the master's loudness meter target, so the meter's reference bar and the Assistant always agree on where you're aiming.

Running it — "Master This"

Press Master This and the Assistant works in the background. Playback stops first so it can render a stable, representative section of your mix. Under the hood it:

1. Finds the loudest ~30 seconds of your song with a quick scan — the same trick commercial masterers use, so it analyzes the loud part of the track rather than a quiet intro or the whole timeline.
2. Renders that section with the console stages neutralized and measures its loudness, true peak, tonal balance, and stereo correlation.
3. Builds a fresh master chain for your chosen style, amount, and target.
4. Verifies and refines — it re-renders the same section with the new chain and adjusts the Maximizer until the output truly lands on your loudness target, rather than just estimating.

When it finishes, a Mastering Complete card summarizes what happened: the measured → target → landed loudness, the true-peak level, a bullet list of every stage it set, and any cautions (for example, a low stereo correlation warning if your mix may have mono-compatibility issues).

What it builds

The Assistant writes an ordinary master chain. After a run you'll typically see:

• A subsonic high-pass at 30 Hz — a universal cleanup that clears inaudible rumble and tightens the lows so the Maximizer works cleaner.
• Corrective EQ — gentle band moves that nudge your mix's tonal balance toward the chosen character (with an extra, targeted cut if the upper-mids are harsh). If nothing needs moving, EQ is left flat.
• Tape — the master's tape stage, driven to taste for styles that call for it (Warm and Punch use it; Clean and Open leave it off).
• Glue compression — a small, loudness-neutral amount of bus-style compression to steady the mix, with auto-makeup so it doesn't come out quieter.
• Maximizer drive into a −1 dBTP ceiling — the loudness stage. It leaves 1 dB of true-peak headroom so the file stays clean after streaming-service encoding.

The master fader is post-Maximizer, so the Assistant never uses positive makeup gain there (that would defeat the ceiling). If your mix is already louder than the target, it trims down instead.

The small value row under the button — DRIVE, CEIL, TARGET, LUFS — shows the Maximizer drive, the ceiling, your target, and the loudness the chain is expected to hit.

After a run

Once the Assistant has analyzed your mix, it caches that analysis so you can audition options without re-rendering:

• Change STYLE, AMOUNT, or the target and the chain re-applies instantly from the cached analysis — no waiting. The button changes to Re-master if you want a fresh, fully-verified pass (which re-runs the loudness loop for the exact landing).
• A/B momentarily bypasses the master chain — loudness-matched, so "louder" can't masquerade as "better" — to compare before vs. after.
• Revert restores the master chain exactly as it was before the run.

And because every setting the Assistant wrote is just a normal master control, you can tweak any stage by hand afterward — pull an EQ band back, back off the glue, change the Maximizer release — or undo the whole thing with ⌘Z. Your insert slots, processor order, and any master-fader automation are always left untouched.

Notes & good habits

• You need audio on the timeline. The Assistant analyzes real sound; add at least one clip before running it.
• Master last. Get the mix feeling right first (see Mixing) — the Assistant polishes a finished mix, it doesn't fix a rough one.
• Trust your ears over the numbers. The loudness target is a delivery convention, not a quality score. If Subtle at −16 sounds better than Strong at −14, that's the right master.
• Heed the correlation warning. If the summary flags low stereo correlation, check your mix in mono before you commit — it can point to phase problems that no master will hide.

A quick mastering pass

1. Finish the mix; make sure it plays back the way you want.
2. On the master strip, pick a STYLE and AMOUNT, and choose MASTER FOR your delivery target.
3. Press Master This and read the completion summary.
4. A/B against the bypass; adjust STYLE / AMOUNT / target and let it re-apply, or fine-tune stages by hand.
5. Happy? Export your master. If not, Revert and try a different character.

Next: Exporting & Sharing →