6 Steps To Releasing Your Music 


with Complete Confidence


Part 1
by Ian Shepherd

Thanks for downloading this guide! As a professional mastering engineer myself, I know
the goal of every musician in the home studio is to make your music sound the best it can
possibly be – on any platform, online and everywhere else.

You probably have some strategies for home mastering already, that can get it sounding
great on your own system. But maybe they don’t work so well when you listen to your
music out in the world – in your car, on earbuds, other people’s monitors or online. Or
maybe you’re just baffled by all the standards and requirements for all the different formats
and online streaming platforms. I’m going to help you with that.

In this brief guide I’ll going to walk you through the 6 steps that every master must go
through in order to sound its best.

We all want our music to sound fantastic, so that people connect directly with the emotion
and the passion behind it.

My promise to you is that after reading this guide, you’ll know exactly what it takes to
release your music with complete confidence, and what you can to get the best possible
results, listening online – or anywhere else.

Ready to get started? Let’s dive in

Ian Shepherd
(Mastering Engineer, www.ProductionAdvice.co.uk)
Overview
There are six crucial steps to mastering.

Everyone thinks about the fun stuff when they think of mastering. Expensive EQ, compression,
limiting and more, but the truth is that processing is just one of the six steps. And without the other
five, you’ll never get the best possible results.

The good news is that each step is simple to understand, with clearly defined goals. Mastering isn’t
easy, but it is simple.


The 6 steps are:

1. Calibrate – Optimise your monitoring and listening environment

2. Compare – Identify your goals using reference material at matched loudness
3. Adjust – Level, EQ, compression, limiting and more
4. Repair – Spot and correct common technical faults
5. Preview – Hear your music through your listener’s ears – the ultimate real-world test !
6. Deliver – Export your files in the correct format for each platform

Understanding what these steps are and how they fit together will help you get better home
mastering results.


STEP 1: Calibrate
To make the best decisions for how your music will sound, you need to hear it clearly. That
means your monitoring and listening environment have to be up to scratch, and this is one
of the hardest challenges to deal with for home mastering.

Professional mastering studios have been finely tuned over many years to be as neutral
and accurate as possible. Often they’re purpose-built, with insanely expensive speakers
and amps. Most of us don’t have the luxury of doing this at home ! 



The good news though is that you don’t have to. Mastering monitoring doesn’t need to be
insanely great to get good results (although it helps!) but it does need to be good enough.

That means it needs to be capable of reproducing a wide enough frequency range, and
many affordable modern monitors are up to the job.

In a minute I’m going to suggest three guidelines, or “Monitoring Maxims”, that’ll help you
get better results with any monitoring setup. First we need to tackle an important topic,
though - and understand why it matters.
The Loudness Deception


Our ears are more sensitive to bass and treble for louder sounds. No-one knows quite why
– it might be the result of evolution, perhaps. It’s more valuable to pay attention to the
sabre-tooth tiger breathing down our neck than the one over there watching that herd of
gazelles, for example, so our brain pays more attention to louder sounds.



Whatever the reason, the practical effect is that most people think that louder sounds
better. Bigger, wider, richer, deeper.

I call this the “loudness deception”. If you do nothing else but turn something up, it sounds
better – this is the root cause of the “loudness war”. To hear the loudness deception in
action, watch this video.

The effect for mastering is critical, because in order to get the music to sound right, you
need to get the loudness right first. If you add EQ and compression to something but then
change the loudness afterwards, you’ll change the way it sounds and have to adjust the
EQ again.



All of which leads to the first monitoring maxim:

Monitoring Maxim #1 - Choose ONE fixed mastering monitoring level

Since loudness affects how we hear things, and we want to listen accurately, our
monitoring level needs to be right. If your monitors are too quiet, you’ll always end up
making things too loud. If you monitors are too loud, you won’t make things loud enough -
or you’ll damage your ears.

The goal is to find an ideal monitoring level where things sound good and loud when they
need to be, but not too loud. Finding this will take some trial and error, but once you find it,
mark the level on your amp or monitoring controller, and don’t change it.

This one simple step makes a huge difference to success in mastering. Over time you’ll
learn exactly how things should sound, and how loud they are. You’ll hear EQ and
compression differences more clearly, and make better decisions for the music you’re
mastering. It’s amazing !

(Of course, the perfect monitoring level depends on how loud you make your masters.
How loud should they be ? We’ll dig into this in Step 3)

Monitoring Maxim #2 - Make it as accurate and neutral as possible


If your monitoring has too much bass, your masters won’t have enough. If it has too little,
they’ll have too much. If they’re too toppy, your masters will be too dull everywhere else…
and so on.



Put another way, you want you monitors to be as flat and neutral as possible, when
mastering. “Average”, if you like. That way, when someone plays your masters on earbuds,
they’ll sound tinny and harsh – just as they expect. In a car with massive bass bins, the
low end will sound massive - just as they expect. The less your monitoring changes the
sound of what you’re listening to, the better your masters can be.

Whatever you do, don’t fall for the idea that because people are listening on earbuds and
phones, we should too. By all means double-check on phone speakers and earbuds, but
don’t use them for final decisions. To find out why not, read this. Mastering monitoring
should be as accurate, and as neutral, as possible.

Monitoring Maxim #3 - Use acoustic treatment



This is probably the single most important step there is when you’re getting your
monitoring to sound as good as possible, and also the one most people don’t bother with.



Don’t be that person. Your room is lying to you, colouring the sound - all rooms do, even
professional designed studios. Adding decent acoustic treatment to your room is the best
way to solve this problem – the best monitoring upgrade you can buy, and easily the most
cost-effective.



DON’T use acoustic foam - and don’t just put it where you think it needs to go. There are
simple straightforward guidelines to get great results, which work in almost any room.



All rooms need acoustic treatment, and almost any treatment will help the room sound
better, and make it easier to get good results. Yes, you can cope without - but it’s really
hard.



To see how I added acoustic treatment to my own “home mastering studio” (and how I
almost got it wrong) take a look at this video:



Building a home mastering studio - Part 3: Acoustic treatment



The treatment I describe in this video literally changed my home room from unusable to
sounding great.
Monitoring Maxim #4 - Learn how your monitoring sounds


This one is simple, easy and free. You don’t even have to try !



Just listen to a ton of music in your studio. That’s it !



It’s such a simple idea, but so few people do it. We only work on our own music in the
studio, so we have no idea what the other music that we like sounds like.


So just listen, all the time, whenever you’re not actually working on music. When you’re
backing up files, or mending cables, or reading PDFs, whatever – over time, you’ll learn
how the music you like should sound, and unconsciously start to make yours sound more
like it, too.


And this idea leads us naturally to…




STEP 2: Compare
One of the most important goals of mastering is to help the music translate - to make it
sound great everywhere, not just on our own monitoring.



But how do we know that ? Our monitoring is all we have !

The answer is to find songs that already translate well - that sound great to you wherever
you listen to them, and work to make your music sound more like them.

Since these reference tracks sound great to you everywhere else already, if you can make
your music sound great compared to them, it should also sound great out in the real world,
too. There are some rules you need to follow to get this to work really well, though.


Comparison Concept #1 – You Need To Be Brave


I’m going to be honest with you - comparing your mixes and masters to reference tracks is
going to hurt. 



Because the chances are, your favourite songs were performed, recorded, mixed and
mastered by legends, at the top of their game. That’s why you love them so much in the
first place.



You’re comparing yourself to the best of the best, which is the toughest comparison you
can make.

So be brave - it’ll be worth it, because you’ll learn a ton. But it’s going to hurt. The next two
Comparison Concepts will help, though !
Comparison Concept #2 – You Need To Choose Wisely

True story: someone once sent me a metal album to master. Hardcore aggressive metal -
but their references included Steely Dan, Simon & Garfunkel and Fleetwood Mac.

!!!



Don’t get me wrong, those are some great-sounding references, and they told me a lot
about the breadth of taste of the artists - but they told me nothing about how the album
should sound, because they sounded nothing like it. 



In terms of their goals for the sound, it would be much better if they had chosen reference
material in the same genre, at least.



You should do the same. Look for reference material that fits well with you music - so that
you might be included together in a playlist, for example. That way the comparisons you
make will be more relevant.

Comparison Concept #3 – ALWAYS Loudness Match when comparing

Now you know about the Loudness Deception, it should be obvious why this is important.

If one of the reference files is even a dB louder than yours, there’s a chance it’ll sound
better to you just because it’s louder.


That’s not a fair comparison, and it’s not realistic, either.




In 2017, over 85% of all music industry revenue in the US came from non-physical
formats.

That’s code for streaming and downloads, and almost all streaming services these days
use loudness normalisation. They turn down the loudest songs, to stop you being
blasted by sudden changes in loudness, because it’s the biggest source of user
complaints.



This applies by default to all the main streaming services – YouTube, Spotify, TIDAL,
Amazon Music, Pandora and Deezer. And only 15% of users bother to turn it off. On
YouTube and Pandora you can’t turn it off ! iTunes has a similar feature but is the only
platform where it’s off to begin with.



What that means is that online, most people won’t hear the file at it’s original
loudness.

And even on physical formats like CD, the first thing people do is adjust the volume to their
own preference.


So when we’re making comparisons to try and make our music sound better, there’s no
point in trying to match loudness. In fact we learn far more by taking loudness out of the
equation.



A quick note - I’m not telling you not to master your music loud, if you want to ! That’s a
personal and creative choice, and we’ll talk about it more in Step 3. Just don’t get hung up
on loudness. You don’t need to compete, any more. Master your music so it sounds the
best it can be, so it sounds great when the loudness is matched, and decide exactly how
loud that should actually be as a separate issue.




How to Loudness Match
Loudness matching be ear is a tricky skill that can take years to learn, but luckily there’s a
short-cut.


We just measure, using Loudness Units (Full Scale) or LUFS for short.


The LUFS method isn’t perfect - sometimes your ears will tell you something different than
the numbers, but it’s really pretty good on most material.



And importantly, it’s an international standard, which is already used by TV & radio
stations, plus YouTube, TIDAL and Amazon Music.

So the loudness of your music in LUFS determines how many people will hear it for the
first time, making it an important step in the comparison process.



There are a ton of LUFS meters available, ranging from expensive pro hardware options to
affordable and free plugins – in fact there may already be an LUFS meter in your DAW.

They all give the same results, so just pick one that suits you and your budget.



The process is then simple:

1. Play your song and reference tracks all the way through, and look for the
“integrated” or “program” loudness value. This is an overall value that can be
measured for any piece of audio – if you watch it in realtime you’ll see it changing
quite a bit to begin with, and finally settling on a single value. Play each song from
start to end and make a note of the value for each one.


2. Adjust your song and all the reference tracks to all have the same integrated LUFS
loudness - use the lowest value for now to avoid clipping distortion.

That’s it - you’re now listening to the songs at the same overall loudness in LUFS. Any
differences you hear now when you compare will be the way people hear them on many
streaming platforms.




How to Compare Masters
Comparing is easy. Listen, and decide what you do (or don’t) like about each song. Try
and figure out why you do or don’t like it, and make some notes.



The trick is to make sure you compare as many different aspects of the music as possible,
to make sure you’re listening like a mastering engineer.



Here are the four main things I listen to, and questions I ask myself about when I’m
comparing songs in mastering:



EQ Balance


What is the overall EQ of each song ? Is one brighter or darker than the other, does one
have tight, punchy bass and the other has deep, booming subs ? Does one have a harsh
or cutting mid-range, does another have open, spacious top end ?



We’re going to look more deeply into EQ and how to figure out what you’re hearing in Step
3, so for the time being just listen and pay as much attention as possible to the differences
you hear.

Dynamics

How compressed is each song ? Are some varied, open and lively, while others are dense,
controlled and intense ? Do some have big contrasts between the louder and quieter
sections, but others all sound a similar level throughout ?



Does the sound you hear match the style and emotional intensity of the song ? Are the
verses louder than the chorus, does the drop really hit you ? Do the songs maintain energy
throughout, or do some sections lose presence and impact ? Listen especially to the
drums - how much snap and clarity do they have, and which do you prefer ?

Distortion

There are many different types of distortion. Some are beautiful creative decisions, others
are a side-effect of extreme dynamics processing. Some sound soft and mulchy, some
sound harsh and aggressive.

How does the degree of distortion relate to the dynamics and intensity of the music in your
song and the reference tracks ? Think about how distorted each song is, and whether it
suits the style and the emotional impact of the music.
Stereo image

There are two aspects to stereo image for me - width, and depth.



Width simply describes the spread of the elements in the mix or master - how widely are
they panned, how much contrast is there, does the image sound very tightly focused in the
centre, or much more spacious ?


Depth is more about the “3D” nature of the audio. Does everything sound like it’s coming
from a simple left-right line between the speakers ? Or is there a sense of space in the
sound ? Do some elements sound as if they’re set further back behind the speakers, and
others are more up-front ? Sometimes sounds can even sound almost as if they’ve come
from outside the speakers, or behind you.



Again, think about whether the choices suit the music and the emotion. Is the wide stereo
image cool, or distracting ? Does the space add to your enjoyment ? Or does the sound
seem clustered and muddled ? Reverb and delays can have an important impact on the
way we hear stereo.

Time For Action

Before we move on to Step 3, I’d like to ask you to apply some of the ideas from these first
two steps to your own music. So before you go any further, take these steps:




1. Choose 3 reference tracks




These need to be in a similar genre to the song you want to master, and they need
to sound fantastic to you, wherever you listen to them.


2. Loudness-match them by measuring their integrated LUFS values




Any LUFS meter will do - just measure the three reference songs and your own,
and turn them up or down to match.



So for example, if your mix measures -18 LUFS, and the first reference song
measures -12 LUFS, you need to turn it down by 6 dB before you compare


3. Adjust your monitoring level so they all sound good and loud



This isn’t your fixed mastering level yet, we’ll be deciding that in Step 3 - we just
want to listen at a good healthy level so we can hear what’s going on clearly


4. Compare the songs, and make notes




Think about all the categories I listed above, and decide which songs sound best to
you, and why. If you want to try and improve you own mix, think about what you
might need to change in the mastering.



And remember - be brave ! Your mix isn’t mastered yet, so there’s plenty of scope
 to improve it. If it doesn’t sound great yet, that’s OK. We’re going to improve it - this
stage is all about learning to listen objectively, before we start adding mastering
processing.




That’s it – you’re done. Great work !

I hope you found the ideas and suggestions in this first part of The Home Mastering
Guide interesting and helpful – next we’ll move onto adjusting the sound of your song to
achieve your mastering goals, including deciding how loud to master them, and settling on
your own fixed mastering monitoring level.



Good luck !