How to Master a Song in 5 Steps (Works in Any DAW)

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”

Your mix sounds great on its own, then you play it right after a song on Spotify and it suddenly sounds small and quiet. Learning how to master a song can feel like a secret only expensive engineers know. It isn’t, and the steps below work in FL Studio, Ableton Live, Logic Pro, Reaper or any other DAW, because only the plugin names change. They come from a loudness video by Max, the founder of Mix Elite, with his starting settings.

What is mastering, and do you need it?

Mastering is the last step before you release a song. You work on the finished mix as one stereo file, not on single tracks, and make small changes so it sounds clear, loud and balanced on every speaker, from cheap earbuds to a club system. Mixing balances the tracks. Mastering polishes the result.

Do you need it? If the song is going on Spotify, YouTube or Apple Music, or to a label or a playlist, yes. Without it, a song usually sounds smaller and less finished than the songs it plays next to. For a rough idea you only send to a friend, you can skip it.

Before you start: get your mix ready

Max is blunt about where a good master comes from: “your master will suck and not be crispy, not because of what you do on the master mainly, but what you do while mixing.” So fix these four things in the mix first. He says they give you about 80% of a clean mix:

• Delete parts that fight for the same space. A pile of melodies on top of a sub bass can’t all be loud at once.
• Sidechain to make room. Sidechain means one sound briefly turns another one down. Use it for kick and bass, and for whatever matters most in your mix.
• Clip the peaks on single tracks and groups. Clipping chops the tops off the sharpest peaks.
• Keep everything below 100 Hz in mono. The lowest notes should come from the middle.

Then set up the master session:

1. Export the mix with nothing on the master channel. Render it as a 32-bit float file, a format that doesn’t clip even if a peak goes over 0 dB.
2. Open it in a new, empty project.
3. Pick a reference track: a released song in your genre that sounds the way you want yours to sound.

How to master a song in 5 steps

Run your mix through five plugins, in this order: an EQ with a low cut, a mid/side EQ that makes the bass mono, a clipper, a multiband compressor and a true peak limiter. The video below shows all five on a house track, and the same chain works for every genre, from EDM to trap and hip-hop.

Step 1: Cut the lows you don’t need

Low frequencies carry the most energy, so useless rumble eats room your kick and bass could use. Put an EQ first on the master and add a low cut, also called a high-pass filter, which removes everything below the frequency you pick. Set it just under the lowest note your song plays, and never lower than 30 Hz. The track in the video is in E, at about 41 Hz, so the cut starts just below that.

In this frame, the low cut (1) sits at 35 Hz in FL Studio’s Parametric EQ 2. Leave linear phase (2) and oversampling off on this EQ, and save both for the final limiter. If the low end turns boomy after the cut, try a gentle low shelf instead.

Step 2: Make the bass mono

Stereo means your left and right speakers play slightly different sound. That difference is called the side signal, and it’s what makes a song feel wide. Wide bass is a problem. When the left and right versions of a low note work against each other, they cancel out, so the bass can vanish on a mono speaker or in parts of a club.

So take the lows out of the side signal with a mid/side EQ, an EQ that treats the middle and the sides separately. The video uses a free mid/side preset for Patcher: raise its Side Low Cut (1) until everything under about 120 Hz is mono. Any EQ that can work on the side signal alone does the same job.

Step 3: Shave off stray peaks with a clipper

Zoom in on the waveform of a mix and you’ll see small, sharp peaks sticking out above the rest. You barely hear them. They do push your limiter around later. A clipper simply chops the tops off.

Mix Elite’s chain uses a small free plugin called GClip, right after the EQ.

1. Turn the Clip knob (1) until you can just hear the knock of your drums change, then back it off 10%.
2. Keep Softness (2) at 0%.
3. Switch oversampling (3) on.

Why clip before the limiter? A limiter tries to be smart. When a big snare hit comes, it softens the hit to squeeze it under the ceiling. A clipper doesn’t think, it just cuts. In Max’s words, “clipper is dumb, and that’s why we love it.” Here’s more on compression vs clipping vs limiting.

Step 4: Even out each band with multiband compression

A normal compressor turns the whole song down every time the kick hits. A multiband compressor splits the song into bands, usually lows, mids and highs, and compresses each one on its own. That shrinks the gap between the loud and quiet parts without the kick dragging everything else down.

In FL Studio, Maximus does this job, and FabFilter Pro-MB works too. Set each band like this:

1. Select a band (1).
2. Turn its pre gain (2) up by 7 to 10 dB, so the compressor has more to work with.
3. Compress until the band drops a few dB, from about +8 to +5 dB in the video’s example, then turn the post gain (3) up by those 3 dB.
4. Repeat it for the mids and highs.

Step 5: Make it loud with a true peak limiter

The limiter goes last. It holds the audio under a ceiling while you turn the volume up, so the loud parts stay put and the quiet parts come up. Set two things before you touch the gain. Turn on true peak (3), which also catches peaks that form between the digital samples during playback, and set the output level, your ceiling, to -0.3 dB (2).

Now raise the gain (1) until you hear distortion, then back off a little. The video uses the Maximizer in iZotope Ozone, but any limiter with a true peak mode works. Our guide to true peak meters explains those in-between peaks.

How loud is loud enough? Max’s rule: “we always master our tracks as loud as possible without it starting to sound worse.” For electronic music he aims for at least -8 to -6 integrated LUFS, a measure of how loud the whole song feels. Spotify’s -14 LUFS is the level it plays songs at, not a target you must hit, as our page on LUFS vs RMS explains.

Two extras from Mix Elite’s chain: if peaks still stick out after the multiband step, add a second clipper there. And right before the limiter, add a stereo imager, keeping the lows fully mono and the mids and highs a little wider.

Mastering in FL Studio? Our guide on how to master in FL Studio walks through a full chain with stock plugins only, with a screenshot for every setting and the export window.

In what order do mastering plugins go?

EQ first, then the mono bass, a clipper and a multiband compressor, with the true peak limiter last and only a loudness meter after it. Order matters, because each plugin works on what the one before it hands over. Here’s the full order with the optional extras, and it works in any DAW:

1. EQ with a low cut
2. Mid/side EQ to make the bass mono
3. Clipper
4. Multiband compressor
5. A second clipper, only if peaks still stick out
6. Stereo imager (optional)
7. True peak limiter, always last

Anything after the limiter can push peaks back over your ceiling. The only thing that goes after it is a loudness meter, which changes nothing. Put the free Youlean Loudness Meter at the very end, so it reads what listeners will get.

Which stock plugins do you need on the master channel?

Three are enough: an EQ, a multiband compressor and a limiter or soft clipper, plus a free loudness meter at the end. In FL Studio, Fruity Parametric EQ 2 and Maximus cover all of it, because Maximus has a soft clipper built in. That’s the stock chain in Mix Elite’s free 4.5-hour FL Studio course:

1. Fruity Parametric EQ 2: load the preset that cuts below 30 Hz and above 18 kHz, then make small tone moves of 2 dB at most.
2. Maximus, band by band: compress the lows, mids and highs by about 2 to 3 dB each, never more than 3 or 4, and make up the level with each band’s post gain.
3. Maximus, Master band: turn its soft saturation threshold a hair to the left, set the ceiling to -0.3 dB and turn on linear phase. Raise the post gain until you hear distortion, then back it off by 0.5 to 1 dB.
4. Youlean Loudness Meter (free) last: for a loud electronic track, around -8 to -7 integrated LUFS is plenty.

Big moves on the master usually mean the mix needs fixing, not the master. If an EQ boost doesn’t make the song sound better, leave it out.

Why does my song sound quieter than commercial songs?

Because commercial songs are mastered loud and yours isn’t yet. Clippers and a limiter shave off their short peaks, so the whole song can be turned up to a much higher average level. A raw mix still has those peaks, so it hits 0 dB long before it sounds loud.

Peak meters don’t show this. Loudness you hear is measured in LUFS, so check your song with a loudness meter instead of the peak meter in your DAW.

How do you make a song louder without ruining the dynamics?

Spread the work over several steps instead of one limiter. Clip the short peaks first, compress each band by a few dB, and let the limiter add only the last bit of gain. Stop as soon as it starts to sound worse.

Most of the loudness is won in the mix, before you master: fewer parts fighting for the same space, sidechain, clipped peaks and mono lows. Our guide to making a loud mix without losing dynamics covers that side step by step.

How loud should you master for Spotify and Apple Music?

As loud as it still sounds good, then let the apps turn it down. Spotify plays songs at about -14 LUFS and turns louder songs down without changing your file, and Apple Music’s Sound Check setting plays all songs at the same volume. Keep true peaks below -1 dB, or below -2 dB if your master is louder than -14 LUFS.

Those true peak numbers come from Spotify’s loudness guide, and Apple describes Sound Check in its Music app guide. The check below shows why the lower ceiling matters for loud masters.

How to check your master before you release it

Your ears are easy to fool, because a louder version almost always sounds better to them.

Play it on everything you can find: your phone, earbuds, the car, a laptop. Switch to mono once and check that the bass and vocal are still there. If something sounds wrong almost everywhere, fix it in the mix.

For the final export, save a 24-bit WAV with dithering on, plus a 320 kbps MP3. Upload the WAV to your distributor and keep the MP3 for sharing. Dithering adds a tiny bit of noise that hides rough edges when the bit depth goes down, as our guide on what dithering is explains.

Check how it sounds as AAC or MP3

Most people will hear your song as a compressed file like AAC or MP3, not as your WAV. Converting can create new peaks, and true peak mode doesn’t stop that. So preview the conversion, for example in Ozone’s codec preview. Pick AAC (1), one of the formats Spotify streams in, and a bit rate (2), then watch the peak meter. The master in the video clipped right away, even with true peak on.

That’s why Spotify asks for a lower ceiling on loud songs. Its advice: if your master is louder than -14 integrated LUFS, keep the true peak below -2 dB. At -2 dB, the video’s master still had about half a dB of room at AAC 128 kbps. No codec preview? Export an MP3 and check it with a true peak meter.

Can you master your own music?

Yes. With these five steps and a good reference track, you can master your own songs at home. A mastering engineer adds trained ears, a treated room and a fresh listen, which helps most when you can’t tell what’s wrong anymore.

Some mastering engineers ask for stems, separate files for the drums, bass and vocals, so they can fix things inside the mix. Automatic AI mastering gives you a quick polished version, but it can’t fix the mix either.

Mix Elite’s mastering chain at a glance

Here’s the whole chain in one place:

Step	What it does	What to use	Starting point
1. Low cut	Removes rumble under your lowest note	Any EQ with a low cut	Just under the lowest note, never below 30 Hz
2. Mono bass	Keeps the low end in the middle	A mid/side EQ	No side signal under about 120 Hz
3. Clipper	Chops off short, sharp peaks	Any clipper	Push until the drums change, then back off 10%
4. Multiband compression	Evens out the lows, mids and highs	A multiband compressor	Pre gain up 7 to 10 dB, then make up the loss
5. True peak limiter	Makes it loud under a ceiling	Any limiter with true peak	Ceiling at -0.3 dB, gain up until it distorts

Frequently asked questions