How to: Easily master a track on a budget

The final step for me when I finish mixing a track is to get it mastered and ready for release. I have released tracks on iTunes, Spotify and CD and always have some sort of mastering process. Here is my little handy guide on how to do that. I created it as a reminder and quick reference for myself but if you come across it and find it useful then brilliant!

For an album release I sent the tracks off to Pete Maher. A brilliant job from Pete as the tracks sounded so much ‘bigger‘ and better. Pete’s website is https://www.petemaher.com

Sometimes though for your own projects, or for budget projects for bands, sending your track to a professional mastering engineer is too costly. Good then that I found a couple of alternatives…

The first is LANDR. LANDR describes itself as an an online, cloud-based, automated mastering service. Sounds cool right? It’s cheap too. Join the website for free and then pay for each track you master. The last time I used it the track cost £10 to master. The results were quite amazing. A tenner to master a track. Wow. It doesn’t help the mastering engineers out there make a living of course but great for me for things like drum videos for YouTube. No need to learn how to use plug ins etc. Upload your track and away you go. https://www.landr.com

Another approach is doing your own simple two step mastering process in ProTools using the Maxim and Dither plug ins. Good news is the plug ins are freely bundled in with Protools.

On your master fader track click on the inserts area to add a new plug in by selecting multichannel plug-in > Dynamics > Maxim Stereo

Up pops the Maxim plug in. Here are my settings. Ceiling set to -0.1 and threshold set to -3.8. Make sure the dither button is not selected (lit up). Adjust the threshold as you listen to the track.

Next add the Dither plug in. Go to inserts on your master fader track and then Multichannel Plug In > Dither > POWr Dither (stereo)

The settings are 16 bit and Noise Shaping 3:

Next bounce out your track and send it to your band or upload it to your preferred streaming platform.

Also check out drum and bass producer and mastering engineer Tom Freeth at https://www.facebook.com/AmbisonicMixMasters/

Happy home mastering!

Written and published by
Steve Hogg
29 March 2020