Unpopular opinion: Mastering with a limiter is not the same as actual mastering

I spent 2 years smashing my tracks through a limiter thinking I was mastering them until my mentor in San Salvador played my track next to a properly mastered one on a club system. The difference was night and day, my kicks had no punch at all. Has anyone else caught themselves confusing loudness with quality?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_mary27d ago

A buddy of mine showed me his master chain once and it was just a limiter and a saturator cranked to 11. I took his track and ran it through a proper mastering chain with multiband compression and a little EQ before the limiter. The punch came back and the whole thing sounded wider without being harsh. What did you change first when you realized you were going wrong?

william_taylor27d ago

Man, that's exactly what I ran into. I was just slapping a limiter on everything and wondering why my mix sounded flat. Once I started adding a multiband comp before the limiter to tame the low end, it gave everything way more room to breathe... punch came back without me having to crank the limiter so hard. Huge difference.