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.

Have you ever wished you could hear how 8 different pro producers would mix the same song; find out how they did it; compare the results and apply what you've learned to your own music ?

Well, that's exactly what a recent article in August's issue of Sound On Sound magazine allows you to do !

Mark Mynett asked 8 different mix engineers to work on the same metal tune, interviewed them about how (and why) they did what they did, and analysed the results.

Not just any engineers, either - the project involved some massive names like Andrew Schepps, Jens Bogren and Fredrik Nordström.

And as soon as I heard the mixes, I thought to myself - "ah, but how would they sound after mastering ?!"

So in this video, I react to hearing all those mixes for the first time, as if I were about to master them myself - and some of the results may surprise you.

Take a listen and let me know what you think in the comments !

And make sure you also check out the original article in Sound On Sound:

Masters Of The Art Of Mixing

AND also their own video where Mark analyses different aspects of each production, and gives examples:

8 Top Mix Engineers Mix The Same Track

It's articles like this that make SOS such an amazing resource - make sure you subscribe to their channel to get much more amazing content like this !

Waveforms are everywhere - in your DAW, in online audio platforms, in books... everywhere.

And the trouble is, you can't trust them !

At least, not in some fundamental and very important ways.

In this video I show you exactly what I mean by that, and explain why waveforms can sometimes be so deeply misleading – and how you can avoid being fooled.

You've probably heard of "Pareto’s Principle", or the 80/20 rule. In a nutshell, it says:

80% of your results will come from 20% of your activity

The numbers aren't exact of course, in reality they'll be slightly higher or lower, but the point is, not everything we do is equally valuable - in fact often most of the value we get often comes from things we don't spend a huge amount of time doing. You only spend 1/5 of you time getting 4/5 of the results !

Usually this idea is used to help us improve our productivity - for example, I spend a lot of time on social media, but the reality is it almost certainly doesn't do nearly as much for my success as writing blog posts like this one.

But it occured to me the other day that it also applies in exactly the same way to actual mastering - the process and skills we use when we're working. So what do I mean by this ?

Everybody keeps telling me that higher LUFS masters always sound louder, even when they're loudness-matched - for example when people listen via YouTube or online streaming services.

But I just don't hear it.

So in this video, I investigate...

Did I miss your favourite example ? Drop a comment on YouTube so I can check it our for myself, and maybe feature it in a future video !

To find out more about the Loudness Penalty Studio application, click here.