MASTERING
What Is Mastering?
Short version: it's the difference between a mix that sounds great on your studio monitors and a track that holds up everywhere else too — a car stereo, a phone speaker, a club system, someone's earbuds on the bus. It's not a final coat of polish slapped on at the end. It's a genuine pass of critical listening, technical correction and creative shaping, and it's a skill in its own right, separate from mixing.
In practice that covers a handful of things at once: listening hard enough to catch anything technically wrong (clicks, pops, clipping, the odd accidental count-in left in the file), using EQ and compression and limiting to bring out what's already good in the track rather than flattening it into something generic, thinking carefully about loudness in a way that respects the genre rather than just chasing volume for its own sake, and — when it's useful — having an honest conversation with you about the mix itself if something there is holding the track back.
Is mastering actually necessary?
Yes — even a genuinely good mix usually benefits from it. Mixes tend to come out quieter than a finished, release-ready track needs to be, and there are almost always small balance or translation issues that only become obvious once you hear the track on different systems — something mastering is specifically designed to catch and correct.
There's also a real creative dimension to it, not just a technical one. Careful processing — using the right tools with intent rather than running everything through a generic chain — can add a genuine sense of life and presence to a track that a rushed or automated pass simply won't achieve. That's the whole point of having a second set of ears and a deliberate process at this stage, rather than treating mastering as an afterthought.
So what does mastering actually involve, in practice?
At its core, mastering means doing whatever the track genuinely needs to feel finished and ready for release — nothing more, nothing less. Most of the time that's a fairly standard set of moves: some broad, balancing EQ, a touch of subtle compression, and a careful mix of limiting and gentle clipping to bring the track up to a competitive, commercial level.
Some mixes need more than that — surgical dynamic EQ to fix a specific frequency that's only causing trouble in one section, or an extra stage of compression to settle something that's still moving around too much. Others need almost nothing at all beyond a limiter to lift the level.
That's really the value a mastering engineer brings — not a fixed checklist applied to every track the same way, but an experienced ear that can tell the difference between what a particular mix actually needs and what it doesn't.
YOUR RECORD.
DONE RIGHT.
Mastering an album or EP is a different process than finishing a single. It's about the bigger picture — creating consistency across every track, shaping transitions, and making sure the entire record feels cohesive from start to finish.
All album and EP mastering includes unlimited revisions. We keep working until you're completely satisfied with your record.
Send your mixes from anywhere in the world.
Mastering Before and After Examples
Same 30 seconds, two different versions. Listen for the difference in clarity, balance and loudness between the unmastered mix and the finished master."
Before: Unmastered Mix
After: mastered MP3 Mix
MASTERING FAQ
A few practical things people usually want to know:
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Fabrik Audio is based in Didsbury, Manchester. The mastering setup leans digital — a carefully chosen chain built from FabFilter, iZotope, Slate Digital and Universal Audio, put together with real intent rather than just defaulting to a preset chain.
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There is a booking form here, where you can book an available slot, and the finished track/tracks will be completed by the end of the day.
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Head over to the Portfolio page — recent finished masters are there to listen to.
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Stems, or just a stereo mix? Right now I work from a finished stereo mixdown rather than individual stems — it keeps things simple and is the standard route for most independent releases. Got a project that genuinely needs stem-level work? Just ask.
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Fill in the contact form here, and I will get back to you as soon as possible.
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Back them up somewhere safe, ideally in two different places. Everything will be delivered clearly labelled with what's included, but keeping hold of your own files long-term is on you.
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The most important thing, always, is that it sounds the way you want it to sound — that's the whole point of the mix, and nothing in mastering should override your creative decisions. Beyond that, a few practical things make the process smoother:
Export as 24-bit WAV
Keep it at the same sample rate as your DAW project
Leave the master bus free of limiters or clippers, unless they're genuinely part of the mix itself rather than just there to push loudness
Make sure there's no clipping anywhere in the file
You may have come across the advice that mixes should be delivered at -6dB. In practice, that's not really necessary — levels can always be adjusted up or down without any loss. The thing that actually matters, and the one thing that genuinely can't be fixed afterwards, is making sure the file never goes above 0dB.
Once you've decided where it's going to live, just let me know and I'll fold it into the right page properly — into the FAQ list, as its own short prep-guide page, or wherever else makes sense once the structure's clearer.
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Short answer: as loud as the material genuinely calls for, and not a fraction louder than that.
Longer answer: it depends — on the genre, and on how the track needs to sit alongside the rest of a release if it's part of an album or EP. My general preference sits somewhere in the middle ground between loudness and dynamics, but I'm always happy to lean further one way or the other if that's what the track or the artist needs.
I do keep an eye on LUFS as a general reference — most of my masters land somewhere between -11 and -8 LUFS — but chasing a specific number as a fixed target is a mistake. LUFS metering was originally developed for post-production work, mixing for TV and film, with the actual aim of getting engineers to stop staring at a meter and trust their ears instead. That's still the right instinct here — the number is a useful check afterwards, not the thing driving the decision.