Mastering: The Quest For Loudness

In an effort to make your music louder, what are the realistic ways of making your masters stand out from the crowd? Mark Cousins explains the art of loudness...

Ask nine out of ten readers how they’d like to see their final masters improve – especially in the face of competition from commercial recordings – and the answer will undoubtedly be ‘to make them louder!’. This, of course, is no great surprise – loud music simply sounds better than quiet music, and many of us are hungry to acquire the tools and techniques of professional loudness mastering. Sooner or later, though, you’ll realise that achieving loudness isn’t as easy as running your mix through a limiter (although it will get you part of the way there), but actually involves a level of artistry, technical mastery and intuition that’s well beyond a multi-band compressor’s preset list.

This feature first appeared in Music Tech Magazine issue 46
Filed under General Features

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