How to prepare your mix for mastering
Mastering gets the maximum out of your mix — but it can't fix what's broken in the mix. This guide is a concrete checklist to run through before you upload. Golden rule: send the mix the way you hear and like it — clean, dynamic, with no “mastering before mastering”.
1. Headroom — leave room to work
The loudest peak of your mix should land between −6 and −3 dBFS. That's not lost loudness — loudness is our job. It's the space that lets EQ, compression and saturation work cleanly, without distortion.
Don't normalize the file to 0 dBFS and make sure NOTHING clips — neither the bus nor individual tracks. Digital clipping baked into a mix stays in the master forever (our de-clip only rescues minor cases).
2. Take processing off the master bus
Disable the limiter, maximizer and anything that “makes it loud” on the bus. The mastering engine picks its own compression, saturation and limiting — feeding it pre-limited material can only hurt (we detect it and go gentler, but you lose potential).
Exception: if a gentle bus compressor (1–2 dB of reduction) is part of your sound and the mix “falls apart” without it — keep it. A deliberate bus EQ can stay too. Rule of thumb: keep the character, remove the loudness.
3. Export format
Export WAV or FLAC at 24-bit, at your project's native sample rate (44.1 or 48 kHz — don't upsample). No dither at 24-bit.
Never send MP3/AAC for mastering — lossy artifacts only get amplified with loudness. An MP3 from a beat store is a last resort, not the norm.
4. Mix loudness doesn't matter — dynamics do
Don't pump the mix for streaming loudness — hitting commercial loudness (LUFS, true peak) is our job. A mix should have dynamics: the kick should hit, the drop should be bigger than the verse.
The song's dramaturgy (quiet intro, transitions, the drop) belongs to you. The engine respects it — we make sure the intro stays an intro instead of being “leveled up” to the drop.
5. Low end: kick, 808 and sub
Set the kick↔808 relationship in the mix: either the kick punches and the 808 carries the sustain (sidechain/EQ), or they smear into mud that mastering can't untangle. Tune your 808 to the key.
Keep everything below ~120 Hz mono and centered. Don't force-boost the sub — small speakers won't play 30–40 Hz anyway; our engine translates the 808 to phones (harmonics), so a healthy foundation is enough.
6. Midrange: clarity over quantity
Check 200–400 Hz (“mud”, “boxiness”) — the most common mix problem. Gentle cuts on sources work better than one big cut on the bus.
In beats a mid scoop is often intentional — leave it, the engine won't “fix” it. With vocals: the vocal should sit in the mix, not on top of it; automate vocal level instead of crushing it with compression.
7. Top end: sibilance and harshness
Tame sibilance (s, sh, ch) with a de-esser on the vocal track — on the bus it can only be done at the cost of the whole top end (our bus de-esser is conservative for this reason).
Cut harshness at 3–5 kHz (hi-hats, synths, distortion) at the source. Don't add a precautionary “air” shelf on the bus — if the master should be brighter, the engine (or your uploaded reference) will handle it tonally.
8. Stereo and the mono test
Build width on sources (panning, doubling, delays), not with a widener on the bus. An overdone widener = phase problems that show up in clubs and on phones.
Listen to the mix in mono before uploading. If something disappears (usually bass or wide synths) — fix the phase in the mix. Bass below 120 Hz always centered; we additionally guard low-end mono compatibility and the fidelity of your stereo image.
9. Noise, clicks, beginnings and endings
Remove clicks, pops and stray noise (dirty edits, recording pops) — mastering loudness will amplify those too. Leave natural reverb tails at the end; don't chop them with a hard fade.
Trim excess silence at the start (leave ~0.5 s max). Don't do a last-minute fade-out — if the song should fade, do it deliberately in the mix.
10. Reference — tell us where we're going
You can upload a reference track — the engine will match the master's tonal balance and stereo image to it (per band, mid and side separately). Pick a commercially mastered song with a similar vibe and instrumentation.
Without a reference the engine detects the genre itself (a soft blend: trap/drill/afro/pop/edm/rnb/rock/acoustic…) and targets the sound of current releases in that style.
Pre-upload checklist
- Peaks at −6…−3 dBFS, zero clipping (bus and tracks)
- Limiter/maximizer off the bus (a deliberate 1–2 dB glue can stay)
- WAV/FLAC 24-bit, native 44.1/48 kHz, no MP3
- Bass <120 Hz mono, 808 tuned, kick↔808 relationship set
- Mix checked in mono — nothing disappears
- Sibilance tamed at the source, no 3–5 kHz harshness
- No noise/clicks; natural tails; ≤0.5 s of leading silence
- Optional: a reference track in a similar style