Discover the most common mastering mistakes

Before we jump into the mastering mistakes top list, we should clarify the biggest misconception about mixing & mastering.

There is one thing what beginners don’t know about mastering. It’s not putting all the tracks together, making the EQs and things. This is mixing, not mastering. Mastering is polishing the complete track. There is stem mastering somewhere between when engineers work with groups and they can change the ratio between each stems. But stereo mastering is all about to make a mixdown brighter, fatter or wider.

Now let’s see what are the biggest mastering mistakes what people do

1. Making the mixdown too loud

Sometimes you don’t hear the disadvantages like distortion or flattering. This is coming from the limiters and if you have no idea about limiters, just don’t touch it. Especially if you are about to use a limiter in your mastering chain.

2. You are producing while your mastering chain is on

A lot of people already have a complete mastering chain like multiband compressor, stereo imagers while mixing. It leads to a bad mixdown because – for example – if you raise mid frequencies with 3dB then you have to reduce everything with 3dB to get the normal sound again without distortion. Keep it simple before mastering.

3. Using presets for mastering

You will need to set and optimize every parameters to your music. There are no magic tricks or buttons what solves everything. You have to put the effort into it and discover your mixdown’s weak points to tweak.

4. Using too much compression

You could be surprised about how the sample packs are processed nowadays. Some of our talented ghost producers working with sample pack companies as well. So we have insider information about the compression and limiting they are using due to the loudness war which exist even in the sample pack industry.