10 Tips For Louder Masters (Without Distortion)

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Here are 10 tips for louder masters WITHOUT distortion. Most people think you can have a loud mix OR a clean/dynamic mix. But with the right techniques, you can create masters that are both loud AND distortion-free.
One of the core themes of this video is avoiding heavy limiting, and instead relying on techniques such as clipping and automation to tame transients. Using a limiter isn't the only way to get your masters loud, and there are a lot of downsides to using a limiter aggressively.
If you find this video helpful... go to mastering.com/ to learn more about our full 28-week producing, mixing, and mastering program.
#mastering #masteringengineer

[@masteringcom]

Get the free Mastering Compression Cheatsheet here: go.mastering.com/mastering-compression?el=10-tips-for-louder-masters-youtubeorganic&htrafficsource=youtubeorganic

[@daen446]

Hey, Sonox Inflator is just one of the simplest waveshaper shapes/functions. You can easily create it yourself with any waveshaper and even null it. Interesting that not many people know this

[@underworldwarlock]

Why do audio engineering tutorials pick the most annoying tracks imaginable to demo 🤣

[@oompapompaa6543]

I swear man

[@FinnJain]

The reality of being a mastering engineer I suppose; you are going to come across some terrible songs that need mastering

[@Dr_App]

Im vibing bro✌️

[@RexVanCandy]

Ahh Human music

[@underworldwarlock]

@@FinnJainman that’s when you know your worth and don’t mix for garbage tracks. You’ve gotta pick and choose what and who to work with. I wouldn’t want my name on something like this and neither would most self respecting audio engineers 😅

[@HamedEmine]

The song playing in the beginning is just hilarious to me for some reason

[@masteringcom]

The background song? Or the before/after demo?

[@MrCool144]

From this to this😂😂😂 and it sounds shitty af 🤣🤣🤷🏻‍♂️

[@exin7778]

That's what it sounds like in a microwave. 😂

[@beigela]

Hahahah like a robotic seizure

[@MOSMASTERING]

Its a very wobbly melody with loads of pitch bending.

[@pinkenbajedi2119]

The fact that compression can make transients loader is totally overlooked in most tutorials, it took me years to figure this out, wasted so much time. This video would be great for beginners, still great with 15 years up my sleeve.

[@barrycole5930]

That fast compression visualisation just helped me understand something i have been struggling to understand for a while now. Thank you!

[@MarcusWolfMusic]

Hey you seem to be very knowledgeable for this subject. Why did you choose this track?

[@vestanpance99]

I’d started applying a lot of transient management within the mix just because I felt it made sense. Even though I run into CPU issues and feel like I’m breaking all sorts of mixing “rules”. Very comforting to know it’s a thing.

[@robebeats]

Just one thing. Thank you. After watching this I've increased the loudness of a track from -11 luvs to -7 luvs without any dist.

[@marianomartinez9763]

This is one of the best audio related videos on KZbin so far. Thanks!

[@Ryan-rn3cf]

I think reference plugins like Metric AB and others were the biggest game changer for home mastering. The ability to instantly flip back and forth between your mix any song instantly make using your ears everything.

[@NaymitMayne]

Amazing video. No clickbait title and full of real useful information based on experience.

[@davidhamilton6298]

this has got to be the most helpful mastering video I've ever watched thanks a ton mate my masters are loud and competitive now i really appreciate it!!!!

[@BobbyCrane]

This is the BEST mastering video I have seen in awhile. No gimmicks... and very useful info!

[@dizeezbiz4505]

Clear and useful discussion, especially about clipping; thanks.

[@BobbyLaneProductions]

very good explanations and tips.. thanks!

[@abrotherinchrist]

Wow, this is the way I thought of mixing and mastering when I first started recording. This kind of advice is not very typical, at least not in many videos I've watched. When I started learning about audio engineering I got in the mindset that you pretty much always needed some compression on just about everything. It's simply not the case, and I'm glad you took me back to my roots to start looking at both mixing and mastering with fresh eyes again (or rather, ears).

[@sub-jec-tiv]

Add parallel compression to this and you have a great tool kit for mixes that retain a sense of their original dynamics

[@DubZedProducer]

one of the best videos i have seen on this subject, thanks a million really helped :)

[@garyjames473]

Thanks My Teacher Rob for a lot of information~ A lot helpful and always respect 🙏

[@souletunes]

Thank you Rob, this edified my process and then, once you got to the sonnex inflater, it showed how much I still have to learn, lol. Appreciate all you guys do! 🙏🤛🎶

[@SecretCailev]

Just WOW. What a Video! I've learned so much and will put all of your tricks to good use. Thank you super duper much. Lovely guy

[@monkmusic5994]

Great and complete explanation mate, great!!!

[@post-man23]

Thanks for clear explanation!

[@sylvainlamo]

Amazing video, finally understood things i couldnt wrap my head around! THANK YOU

[@masteringcom]

Glad it helped!

[@waliddeui6725]

this is a complete course, thanks mate

[@LloydMajor]

Thank you for the class!

[@imno1_tekno]

I always thought that learning mastering first would make you better in mixing. I've realised it when I started mixing and noticed how that improved my production. However you are the first person I've heard talking about this reverse engineer concept. Thank you, great video!

[@alvarezgamers]

This is a goldmine! Thanks bud!

[@sheltersonic5499]

Thank you,your videos are always help me

[@art.allisone]

Thank you, that was just excellent!

[@SharigramaOfficial]

Thanks for sharing the knowledge... 🤟

[@tumpperi3891]

This was very insightful, thank you

[@crttom8413]

Thank you for your insight and tips.

[@masteringcom]

No worries!

[@philipmuller6519]

This is a super helpful video. Thanks man!

[@daynemin]

Nice video, even helps influence choosing samples early on. Loudness over time vs short transient knocks that will affect headroom and processing etc...

[@victorarrudadj]

Amazing content!

[@n-spired]

Such a helpful video. Thanks

[@btomas.]

This is Incredible!

[@MrDry2009]

this is SO HELPFUL thank you

[@lightningmusic17]

This really helped me out, tysm!

[@andrexerife]

Best mastering video on youtube. Period.

[@seb6690]

Perfects explainations, thank's !

[@E-1K]

This was really interesting. 👍

[@AlfValan]

Really good video! Easy to follow!

[@masteringcom]

Awesome!

[@cheery-hex]

thanks to your visualization at 8:40 I finally understand what threshold means! learned a lot here thanks

[@runa_wayra]

Uohh, really loved today's song. Actually the first time you work with music in the same genre as mine, Love it!

[@Grillvogel91]

Serial limiting was the big “AH-HA!” moment for me. It’s been a long road over the years but it’s all coming together now. Thank you!

[@joelarmendariz8876]

good insight and info

[@HappyMixingStudio]

Thank you so much, this video contains a lot of knowledge, thank you for sharing ^^

[@BuddhaB123]

awesome video

[@MarkVank]

Golden video

[@cekirdekci32]

one of my fav loudness videos on youtube. this guy is such a good teacher. only issue, that beat with tune glides. different beat, a couple of different ones would be nice. but its ok i m here for the top tricks. and definitely in good hands. than kyou

[@djmag4u]

Thanks for this

[@JamesPatricioMusic]

That lead drove me crazy.

[@awardwinningcritique6895]

Holy crap I haven't seen this guy in about 5 years on KZbin. Damn, algorithm!

[@FitzonDai]

Rob This Great 🔥🔥🔥

[@jamiestew]

the attack times with compression blew mind, seems so obvious but i never saw it that way!

[@jeremydbjbjbjb]

Hi, beautiful work, thanks for your dedication! Two nitpicks/suggestions on this one: your logo is wonderful AND it's in the way up to 72Hz and just in general I don't want it there while I'm working. Perhaps an option to disable it would be nice. Second, it would be great if we could mouse the output level up/down on the horizontal lines, rather than needing to turn the output knob. Thanks again!

[@craigburton4447]

That bit about compression and dynamic range was worth the watch alone, so obvious once explained, but I'd never considered it.

[@TheOriginalKendo]

Great information :)

[@masteringcom]

Thanks for watching!

[@echosynthe5i5]

From my experience, Sonnox Inflator is a soft-clipping saturator with a small volume boost. I achieved similar results with the soft saturation on the Logic PHAT FX but unfortunately, it doesn't do oversampling and introduces aliases in the upper frequencies. That was an ABSOLUTELY GREAT mastering tutorial by the way!!

[@precursor4263]

I think this has been singlehandedly the best mastering tutorial I've seen to date. I will say this though. I think in modern mastering one of the most important and 'new' things are the mid/side limiting and multiband limiting. I would really love if you could/would go more in depth on those topics because this is often not really explained well. Then one small thing about Saturn: the default settings are with the entire plugin on -1dB. This is also the case in your video. So if you want to understand why the LUFS go down with a dB mostly it's because you're literally turning down the thing as a whole with 1dB. And the reason you're lifting the transients mostly is because you are not affecting the bass/kick as you're working mutiband (above 530hz), so you're saturating the top end more, hence affecting more the transients of for instance the percussion as you mention.

[@moce727]

Speaking about mastering this video has a great balance... between very great and useful tips that I'll for sure implement from now on, but explained on a horrendous song. Never heard a melody this irritating sound so clean lol, just my liking tho I'm sure other people would love this.

[@DiLionMusic]

#1 Tutour💯

[@markushassel2737]

Great video!! And bonus point for staying true to mixing/mastering tutorials and having the weirdest songs lol

[@SkinnEmannProductions]

Shout-out to youtube to knowing when i need what video... perfect timing

[@spidif2544]

I like the musical example. More interesting than most

[@flyoverfredusa]

really really well put together video, lots of great tips and superb explanations. I'd disagree on the 9 ish LUFS for club music though, needs to be much louder than that (sadly). Glad you mentioned the inflator, superb tool

[@masteringcom]

8-9 should be competitive enough - good data here to back this up: www.masteringthemix.com/blogs/learn/mastering-trends-for-2023

[@masteringcom]

Glad you liked the video, thank you for the kind words!

[@Jaymendezofficial]

I produce club music so this is very helpful indeed! I got a question tho, How would I set the master on my tracks to upload to different streaming services since some require a certain db limit? Like 9 lufs ain't too bad, but I know some have strict requirements for uploading to their servers! I don't know if I would have to make numerous copies of each song with different volumes for each upload to apply with each streaming service requirement tho....that's what confuses me frfr

[@bankal1442]

@@masteringcom na man, loud music is now 3 LUFS, even below for Hardcore. Yeah, yeah :)

[@jorriffhdhtrsegg]

​​@@Jaymendezofficialpeople have really made something very simple and unimportant this massive complicated issues. - Master it above -14LUFS or whichever is the loudest service. -loud tracks get turned down so unless your limiters or clippers improve the sound don't bother going excessive. -tracks being turned down through normalisation just turns tracks down, they aren't limited or changed. -tracks being turned up, through normalisation? You can guess what happens to your peaks, they get clipped or limited...its actually more problematic keeping things below the recommended LUFS if your peaks are hitting near the top still. -no...you can't just set each track to average -14 or album dynamics between songa will be way off, mellow tracks will blast out of speakers and loud ones will be weak...not to mention dynamica within song structure too -loads of tracks at "club volume" on streaming services that isn't suffering. No they don't make loads of masters, except perhaps the necessary thing in vinyl pressing

[@panorama_mastering]

Appreciate the shout out on the final pointer; I will say credit to where the origins of that technique is from; are the passages on "manual limiting" in Bob Katz' Mastering Audio book;

[@NarendraU23]

Funny story. I used compressor like ReaComp and TDR for years, but I only understand ratio and gain reduction/addition. I finally understood what the attack/release speed does after using Airwindows compressors, which doesn't have any fancy GUI or indicator lol. It forces you to listen on the result instead of watching numbers appear.

[@trayoibry8246]

Finally some doing it the right way...👍

[@joeycovington4681]

Thanks!

[@sasarash]

Thank you for the interesting video 🎼🎵🎶

[@ilusions4]

The video was posted 47 minutes ago. It's 43 minutes long.. Your comment was posted 33 minutes ago.. must've been an interesting 30% of the video

[@chromezify7182]

​@ilusions4 Congrats? What's the point of this comment.

[@ilusions4]

@@chromezify7182 Op's comment is spam and this fact isn't obvious now that both the video and comment are over an hour old. What's the point of this comment?

[@sasarash]

@@ilusions4 yes you are right I have seen only 30m and I am going to watch it when I have time

[@chromezify7182]

@@ilusions4 Lol spam bot replies too

[@jeffroberts_tunes]

Super helpful post -- just as good as the gain staging one. Thank You!!! I do wish the reference track were a bit more musical--with the electrochirp stuff it's hard to hear the effects in a meaningful way. I've always thought of clipping as the hard, square wave distortion resulting from volume going past the capacity of the system to reproduce accurately. And here you're using 'clipping' to refer to an activity which might be better described as trimming. Am I just old and out of touch? Regardless it's a practice I hadn't seen before and will be trying this with the Standard Clip.

[@Shred_Rocket]

When using saturation, typically it adds harmonics which has an impact on perceived loudness. In other words, in simple terms, adds more information to the affected frequency range.

[@sub-jec-tiv]

And better have some good oversampling happening. Unless the specific track you’re working on sounds great with bizarre aliasing.

[@GrvMUSIC4U]

Video that is worth watching

[@masteringcom]

💪

[@anthonylouis1189]

Great video! BTW How did you create the visualization in the compression piece?

[@KeatingJosh]

Thanks! Really useful and helpful tips.. one thing tho is the demo song is very grating

[@MR_Cellarpop]

Thanks.

[@dystonic]

8:15 I have always wondered about that, it was so simple and logical and yet no one ever points that out. How am I supposed to get a more consistent level when I let an initial transient pass through, and level down what follows 🤷‍♀🤷‍♀ thanks for clarifying. Well, thanks for all this video, I am already putting your advice into practice.

[@pinkenbajedi2119]

I only figured the value of clipping for masters recently, had to go back to all my old projects and scrap the 5-6 tools I was using for 1-2 and everything is so much louder now 🤦‍♂️😂

[@DeiNostri]

Good video, learnt some new stuff while using some of my skills better

[@Rizzlyricist]

YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME. I went to school for audio engineering, but the market isn't acfepting of "fresh meat." Why is it so competitive? 😂. God be with me.

[@dimensiontv5634]

I am a not mastering engineer but this is a very interesting video 😊

[@MutebeFrank]

Thanks

[@mttlsa686]

Actually the attack parameter in proL2 controls the amount of time before the beginning of the release and the release parameter is an actual and classic release so i think that the actual attack of the limiter is always 0. Being a limiter, it would make sense.

[@happylittlesynth]

Correct, if the limited audio sustains longer than the attack setting, then the release setting is brought into the process.

[@773Currency]

You made it to the front page of google 💪

[@martijn_nl]

Awesome video! I use the RX phase tool as well but in the adaptive mode instead of using the suggest button. Is there a reason to avoid the adaptive mode?

[@jadedragon469]

Did many blind tests on adaptive phase. It somehow made my correlation worse 9/10 and just sounded plain terrible. Maybe its just me but the adaptive phase seems to readjust the balance of the original mix rather than just adjusting the phase correlation

[@Vanaves_FR]

it's more usefulll than my 10 years of searching the perfect sound

[@kirillreznik3546]

Great video! It was so useful. On a side note, is the song you're working on out anywhere?

[@jadedragon469]

The way you were shaking when the high pass filter modern issue came up 😂

[@protocolmystics2818]

Good tutorial. Would have been much better had you used a less annoying track to demo everything.

[@Sacredriver1008]

Thanks for the insights. But aren't those dutch and dutch 8c's placed now that the cardoid part doesn't function properly? The yamaha's seem in the way to me.

[@stevemcnamara2584]

Good video, but a quick note: @ ~29:48, in the Ozone Maximizer module, those sliders on the right are not "left and right" but "transient and sustain, and while they can be unlinked it appears they affect the stereo signal -- no L/R specific effect.

[@vancenichols9490]

This is VERY insightful and empowering content! Thanks so much for presenting such! I've come away from this with a better grasp on how to plan transient management further upstream before the mastering phase of audio production. Therefore, I have 2 questions: 1. As it regards the order of the 10 Tips you've presented, is there an implied order of plugin placement in the mastering chain based upon your presentation of these tips? Or is there another, better suggested approach to the chain plugin placement? 2. As it regards using multiple limiters in serial to tame transients, is there a best-practice to follow related to the optimum number of plugins to employ? Also, do I employ multi-band limiting before or after "whole-band" limiter processing? I've used this serial approach before but never employed such with multiband processing.

[@cekirdekci32]

guys that perception plugin mentioned in this video, for ableton users we have a max 4live device called volume body. it does exactly the same thing and i believe its 14-15 bucks. just letting you know before you jump on buying the plugin. i know its useful but we are on ableton we got m4live devices to save us money LOL andyou dont have to put one inthe end one at the end. its just one m4live device. just group all your effects and put a volume body at the end so you can A-B it.

[@liz369]

Which Podcast Mic are you using? Video was very awesome!

[@ctsguitar]

Great video. Should I be working to Short Term LUFS or Integrated LUFS? Platforms like KZbin are quite aggressive at -14 LUFS. If I want to limit my final master a few db or so, but it is either too loud or too quiet on the LUFS Loudness meter, what should I do: add another gain/volume plugin after my final limiter? Thanks

[@masteringcom]

You need to consider both. Definitely don't add gain after the limiter.

[@ctsguitar]

@@masteringcom Thanks for your reply. What would you do if it’s still too loud or quiet (LUFS) after the final limiter? But the desired amount of limiter db compression has been applied.

[@cheery-hex]

every platform will just auto reduce volume to their preferred luf level if your track is too loud. won't do the opposite though

[@ctsguitar]

@@cheery-hex Yeah that’s true. From what I’ve heard, it’s best to be close to the mark as possible otherwise each platform will compress audio - and sometimes substantially so if it’s too loud! Not good to be too quiet either, so I find it quite tricky! Sometimes I want to compress a little with a limiter, but I exceed the LUFS target before reaching gain reduction on my limiter?!

[@stevel5650]

Cool inforative video. I tried your approcah with the clipper, and I found that the loudness is good, but the mix/song lost the dynamic range. Before clipper it was 6 db LRA, after clipper it is only 2 db LRA. Any thoughts.

[@masteringcom]

Clip less

[@iMobinator]

i understand that this video could be geared more towards people who are receiving full mixes and cannot tweak, but for your example at 2:40 where it shows the clipping just happening mostly on the kick, in what scenario would you use a clipper on the individual channel vs the master? or if you have a drum bus, should it be clipped there before going into a master? i can try these out myself to test by ear but im the sort of person who needs to understand they why for everything so i fully can understand what im doing, but this gets confusing for me when trying to figure out how my mix should sound first, since most references are mastered. thanks!

[@masteringcom]

Both! I clip individual channels too. Then clip the whole track in mastering.

[@iMobinator]

@@masteringcom thank you for the reply!

[@pavlosberd.609]

You are not soft clipping with the StandardCLIP there, you need to slide the fader unde the mode the "soft-clip saturator" to the right to start soft clipping, if its at 0 you are hard clipping whatever your mode is. the more to the right you take it the softer the clipping.

[@ChaceBonanno]

Is there a way to do the phase rotation in real time with a plugin instead of using RX?