The 5 Plug-in Mastering Chain For Musicians Who Want to Master Their Mixes

The mastering process can be a little intimidating.

The whole process, understanding the meters and what plug-ins to use.

Presets can go a long way, especially if you’re working with powerful plug-ins, but it’s also great to actually know the “tricks of the trade” and what’s actually happening to your audio.

I’ve gone into this before but my mastering chain is pretty simple:

• Gain
• EQ
• Multiband Compression
• Limiting
• Perception

Those are the basics.

With those processors, you can usually get 80% of the way there. Even if you’re just in your home studio and don’t have $200,000 monitors to work on you can still get decent results by mastering on your own.

Let’s run through the mastering chain:

• Gain – For when you need to add or subtract a little volume to the original master. Better to have it at a healthy level before you start.
• EQ – Mastering EQ is all about balance. EQ can be quite daunting but you want to put it right there at the beginning of the chain so you can get a nice balanced EQ before you move on to any other processors.
• Multiband Compression – Multiband compression is preferable to normal compression because you want to treat frequency ranges differently. If you want to get a juicy and compressed drum sound and low-end you don’t want to take the vocals and high-end with you. You want to keep the lows tight while making the highs breathe. That’s what multiband compression lets you do.
• Limiting – It’s scary how many people are afraid of limiting. If I’ve done everything well it shouldn’t be limiting that much and it should just be catching the stray peaks to glue everything together.
• Perception – Adding all these processors will inevitably raise the overall volume of the song. And when it sounds louder it’s gonna sound great! Louder is better so we’re all good there. Ehm…no. That’s why I have the Perception Plug-in from Ian Shepherd. It lets me quickly A/B the mix and master so I can hear if I’m making things better…or just louder.

So those are the basics. Of course, every session is different so there are more “tricks of the trade” to learn.

Like using M/S EQ instead of linear phase EQ, or parallel compression for the whole mix.

You might have used parallel compression to add some thickness to your drums so just imagine what it can do to your mix. And don’t get me started on saturation, stereo imaging, and knowing what all those meters are telling you.

But if you’re looking for the 20% of the tools that get you 80% of the way there and you just want to make your mix loud, punchy and powerful, those processors above will do the trick.

For more, check out the Master Your Mixes program that shows you exactly how you can master your own mixes from your home studio, even if you don’t have a “pro” mastering rig.

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