Learning how to master a song is really about learning restraint. Mastering is the final polish that takes a finished mix and prepares it for the world: balancing tone, controlling dynamics, and setting loudness so the track holds up on phone speakers, car systems, and streaming platforms alike. The moves are small and the numbers matter more than the gear, so before you touch a plugin you need a clear target and a way to measure whether you hit it.
Start with a mix that does not need rescuing
Mastering cannot fix a muddy low end or a harsh vocal buried under cymbals. If you find yourself reaching for 6 dB of correction, stop and go back to the mix. A master-ready bounce should peak around -6 to -3 dBFS with a little headroom, have no clipping on the master bus, and sound balanced on at least two sets of speakers. Export at the project’s native sample rate and 24-bit or 32-bit float. Leave the mix-bus limiter off; that job belongs to the master.
Set up a proper metering chain before anything else. A loudness meter such as Youlean Loudness Meter shows integrated LUFS, short-term LUFS, and true-peak in one window, and the free version covers everything you need to start. You are aiming to make decisions with your eyes as well as your ears.
How to master a song: the signal chain in order
Order matters because each stage reacts to what came before. A reliable chain is: broad corrective EQ, gentle compression, optional multiband control, saturation or tone, then a limiter last. Work top to bottom and commit lightly at each stage.
- Corrective EQ first. Use a transparent equalizer like FabFilter Pro-Q and think in gentle, wide moves. A high-pass around 20-30 Hz removes subsonic rumble that eats headroom. If the mix feels boxy, a broad -1.5 dB dip near 300-400 Hz with a low Q opens it up. If it lacks air, a 1 dB shelf above 12 kHz adds sheen. Nothing here should exceed 2 dB; if it does, the mix is the problem.
- Glue compression. A single band bus compressor with a slow attack (30 ms), auto or medium release, a 2:1 ratio and only 1-2 dB of gain reduction on the loudest sections adds cohesion without pumping. You want the meter to breathe, not slam.
- Multiband only if needed. If the low end swells on the chorus, a multiband compressor such as FabFilter Pro-MB can tame just the sub band (below ~120 Hz) with 1-2 dB of reduction, leaving everything else untouched. Do not process bands that are already behaving.
- Saturation for tone. A touch of harmonic saturation or tape emulation thickens the midrange and makes a master feel louder at the same LUFS. Keep it subtle enough that bypassing it is a small change, not a dramatic one.
Setting loudness: the numbers that actually matter
This is where most beginners go wrong. Streaming services normalise playback around -14 LUFS integrated, meaning a master crushed to -8 LUFS will simply be turned down on Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube, losing all its dynamics for no extra loudness. Aim for an integrated loudness between -14 and -9 LUFS depending on genre: acoustic and jazz sit comfortably around -14, pop and rock around -11 to -10, and aggressive electronic or hip-hop can push to -9. There is no single correct value, only a range appropriate to the music.
Whatever loudness you choose, protect the peaks. Set your limiter’s true-peak ceiling at -1 dBTP (or -1.5 dBTP to be safe for lossy codecs like AAC and MP3, which can overshoot on conversion). A transparent limiter such as FabFilter Pro-L 2 with true-peak limiting enabled lets you drive input gain gradually while watching the gain-reduction meter. Aim for no more than 3-4 dB of reduction on peaks; beyond that the transients flatten and drums lose their punch.
The discipline is simple: raise the limiter’s input in 0.5 dB steps, listen for the moment the master stops feeling louder and starts feeling smaller, then back off. That threshold, not a number on a spec sheet, is your real ceiling.
Reference, check, and export
Never master in isolation. Load two or three commercially released tracks in a similar style, level-match them to your master, and A/B constantly. A tool like ADPTR MetricAB makes loudness-matched comparison trivial and will expose tonal imbalances your ears adapt to after twenty minutes. If your master is 3 dB brighter than every reference, that is a decision to reconsider, not defend.
Check the master on the worst speakers you own. Phone speakers reveal whether the vocal and snare cut through; earbuds reveal harshness; a car reveals bass problems. Give your ears a rest between passes, because loudness fatigue makes everything sound worse and pushes you to over-correct.
When you export, match the delivery target. For streaming, a 24-bit WAV at the project sample rate is ideal; distributors handle the conversion to platform formats. If you must supply MP3, use 320 kbps and re-check true-peak, since encoding can add overshoot. Keep a -1 dBTP ceiling and let the platform normalise.
Where to go from here
Mastering rewards repetition more than any other stage of production. Master ten songs against references and you will develop the ear that no tutorial can hand you. If you want to sharpen your foundation, our mixing and mastering guides walk through the mix decisions that make mastering easy, and the free metering and analysis utilities in our audio tools hub let you measure LUFS and true-peak without buying anything. Learn the numbers, trust your references, and keep your moves small. That is the whole craft.
