How to master a song

Mastering is the final polish that makes your track sound competitive on every playback system. It is not magic and it is not a compressor slammed on top — it is a small number of careful decisions.

1. Give the mix room to breathe

Before you master, make sure the mix bus peaks around −6 dBFS. If your mix is already clipping, mastering can only make it louder — not better.

2. Set the ceiling

Insert a limiter on the master and set the ceiling to −1.0 dBFS. This protects against inter-sample peaks that get introduced by lossy codecs.

3. Balance tone with a broad EQ

Ask three questions: is the low end tight? are the mids balanced? do the highs feel open? Use wide bells (Q of 0.7 to 1.5) and small moves (± 1–2 dB). If you need bigger moves, go back to the mix.

4. Glue with a bus compressor

1–2 dB of gain reduction with a slow attack and auto release. You're glueing the elements together, not squashing them.

5. Hit the loudness target

Reference the Easy-DAW LUFS meter and target around −14 LUFS integrated for streaming. If the loudness meter reads too low, raise the mix bus into the limiter rather than pulling the ceiling down.

6. Reference against your favourites

Import two commercial tracks in a similar genre. Level-match them to your master (same LUFS) and A/B. Trust your ears, not the graph.

7. Export

Bounce a 24-bit stereo WAV for aggregators, and an MP3 for quick sharing. Easy-DAW's mobile Master screen does both in one tap.

Common mistakes

• Mastering while fatigued. Take breaks. Come back tomorrow.
• Making the master louder than the song needs.
• Using someone else's mastering preset. Every mix is different.