Recall Notes
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This is a blog written by a mastering engineer about mastering, but it is not a “how to master” blog. There are other places on the internet for that.
Mastering music has been my full time occupation for over 20 years, and during that time I’ve noticed some of the same ideas and conversations coming up repeatedly. At some point I decided to keep an informal journal of some of these ruminations, sometimes to clarify my thinking about them, and sometimes just because they wouldn’t go away until written down!
Each entry is like a little note-to-self. Things to remember or build upon as the months and years have passed.
And though I didn’t originally intend to make any of these notes public, I decided to share them here because I personally really like reading what other professionals have to say about their craft. So if you’re a mastering engineer or mixer, please write and publish your version of this blog - I would read that!
- J. LaPointe (August 2025)
Stop When You’re Tired
This should be obvious, but being tired leads to mistakes. When you feel your focus waning, give yourself permission to call it a day.
Most digital equalizers use the same math
Forgetting for a moment the special cases that set out to model analog non-linearities, nearly all digital equalizers are capable of identical results if tweaked to match curves. So why choose to use one over another?
Because ergonomics matter.
The eq that gets the best results fastest wins. Not only because it saves time, but because it gets to the target while the first impression of what the user set out to accomplish is still vivid, without confusing detours into unexpected results.
Virtual tape machine plugins will never sound like tape
… because the best part about recording to tape is not what it adds, but what it doesn’t take away.
Sure you can use a tape plugin to add noise, distortion, head bump, saturation, flutter, eq anomalies, etc, and sometimes those processes can make a source sound subjectively better. But no process can undo what’s lost in the initial conversion from analog to digital. Good argument here for using the best converters possible.
A corollary to the above is that re-recording a digital source back to tape in the mastering process does not have nearly the same benefits as mastering from an analog tape derived from an analog source. In fact more often than not a tape layback of a digital source sounds no better than the source, and often worse.
Tape is best used when recording a source that is going to be in the analog domain anyway, not to add “that tape sound”, but to preserve the real analog sound of the source:
1. tracking
2. output of an analog console
3. output of analog mix buss processing (instead of back into Pro Tools)
In the case of 2 and 3 the tape is what should be delivered to mastering. Re-recording the tape back to digital defeats the purpose.
There is no shortcut
Any music that deserves your attention as a listener is the result of effort expended by the person who created it. Effort during the creation process doesn’t guarantee the end product is worth hearing, but worthwhile work cannot be made without it.
Your limiter is trying to tell you something
Sometimes the inability to get the level up cleanly is actually just a warning that your eq balance is not where it needs to be.
Nail the eq balance and the level comes easily.
Maybe compression is the wrong choice?
Sometimes I’ll hear a mix and immediately think it needs some compression. But then after getting the eq really right the need for compression all but disappears, or the compression actually makes it sound worse.
Then again, other times a track really just needs some compression to sound right.
Two ways to listen
a) What technical parameters does this have to fit within to translate into real world listening environments?
b) Is this music to my ears? Can it be pushed or pulled or nudged in any way to make it even better?
It’s likely every track gets a bit of both, but you probably don’t want to be thinking either way consciously.
Don’t take my word for it
A few typical quotes you may see online regarding mastering:
“I never use more than 1-2db of eq at any one frequency”
“Analog always beats plugins”
“1db of compression or less is typical”
Etc. Maybe true in some cases, maybe not. So?
Disregard all that nonsense. If a track needs +4db at 5k do it and don’t look back. Make decisions swiftly and confidently and move on.
Mastering Notes
“Make it sound like my mixes only better but don’t change anything.”
“Here’s a very detailed list of all the things I couldn’t get sounding right in the mixes, so please fix all of these, but also I love the sound of the mixes overall so please don’t change anything.”
The lesson is this - when clients share their music for mastering they are some combination of vulnerable, hopeful, scared, excited, protective…
Treat the work with genuine care, respect, openness and curiosity and notes like these start to make perfect sense.