Mastering is simple. Not easy, but simple.

That's the message behind this series of 6 video tutorials I made recently for Sound On Sound magazine.

In them, I walk you through my entire mastering process from beginning to end, explaining how and why I work the way that I do at every stage.

1. The level you choose to master at influences every other aspect of the way your music sounds
2. The final level of your master is virtually irrelevant, and music fans don’t care

These two facts are both true - even though they seem to flatly contradict each other !

I call this the ‘Loudness Paradox’, but what does it mean ? How can both of these statements be true, and what are we supposed to do with that information ?

I'm excited to announce that we've released a major update to my Dynameter plugin – Version 2 allows you to get even deeper insight into the dynamics and density of your audio with:

• Powerful new analysis modes — Stereo, Mid-Side, and Multiband
• The new PSR Overview bar for instant visual feedback
• Fully resize-able vector graphics interface
• The unique new Peak Aware functionality — easily understand if limited dynamics are due to heavy processing or just a natural property of the audio

It's always nerve-wracking releasing something new, and this was no exception !

Will people like it, will they find the new features interesting and useful, will we have missed any bugs...!

But the feedback so far has been fantastic, which is great news !

Everyone is talking about AI, especially in mastering.

And there are certainly some exciting developments and interesting new products.

But can AI really take the place of a human engineer ?

I recently had the chance to test this idea for myself, using an actual mastering project, and in the video above I show you what I found, and the conclusions I drew from it.

Take a look, the results may surprise you !

I just watched an interesting video that Drew Oliver made for iZotope, where he notices a "peak level bump" in a recent release, and suggests it might be a deliberate production strategy.

And maybe he's right, but I assumed something very different when I saw what he was talking about – and in fact I can think of several other possible explanations, too.

I thought you might be interested, so I made a video explaining my thoughts. Take a look and let me know what you think ! And be sure to check out the original video - the section I'm commenting on starts @ 12:31