Studio · · 5 min read
What really happens in a mastering session
The last 3 dB are where a record is won or lost. A walk through the chain, in plain language.
Mastering is not "turning it up". It is the last critical listen before the song goes out, and the stage that decides how it will sound on twenty-dollar earbuds and on a festival rig.
The typical chain: tonal correction with fine EQ, dynamics control with gentle compression, stereo image adjustment and, at the end, the limiter that sets the output level. Each step moves tenths of a decibel; together they change everything.
What a mastering engineer listens for: imbalances between songs on the same record, low end that disappears on a phone, sibilance, and whether the mix already arrives too compressed to breathe.
What to bring to the session: the mix without a limiter on the bus, with 3 to 6 dB of headroom, at the same sample rate as the recording. And a commercial reference that sounds the way you want to sound.
