The Mastering Show

I see it every day: “The Loudness Wars are over - loud won. Get over it”
And it’s easy to see why. The average mainstream release hits -8 LUFS integrated or more; club releases regularly hit -6 or even -4 LUFS and are peaking well above zero; every other post you see on social media is about a new limiter or clipping strategy…
As the creator of Dynamic Range Day and Loudness Penalty, I should probably just give up and get my hat, right ?
Maybe….
But maybe not.
In this episode I dig into the evidence in 2026, and try to decide whether dynamics really are dead or not, looking at:
The LUFS of the biggest recent releases
Why no-one hears it
Are mixes built too loud to be dynamic ?
Why music fans don’t care (which could be good news) - and who does
What do we do about it ?
Reasons to be optimistic about dynamics in 2026

Links and more episodes here:
www.themasteringshow.com/episode-106
Mentioned in this episode:
Mastering
Click HERE to work with Ian
Leapwing
Find out more about Leapwing's plugins
Learn to master !
Click HERE to see Ian's courses and mastering resources

It was the Grammys this week - you can't have missed it !
And somewhere along the way I saw an article by Ian Vargo assessing the loudness and dynamics of the nominees for Best Song.
In this episode I talk about what he discovered, and what my reaction is – and along the way, I talk about:
The highest (and lowest !) LUFS measurements of the Best Song nominees
How I feel about that
What these songs sound like with more dynamics
What difference does it make ?
Is loudness really "part of the aesthetic" ?
And what really does make a difference ?

Links and more episodes here:
www.themasteringshow.com/episode-105
Mentioned in this episode:
Mastering
Click HERE to work with Ian
Leapwing
Find out more about Leapwing's plugins
Tools
For Ian's mastering plugins, click HERE

Getting your music "synced" for licensing in TV, movies or ads can be an amazing opportunity for indie musicians to make money and gain exposure. But is it just a pipe dream, and is mastering a necessary part of the process ?
Chris SD from Sync Songwriter is an expert in this topic – just in the last year they've had artists get songs placed in the soundtrack for the Oscar-winning movie "Anora", for example! And this episode I talk to him about this whole topic, including:
What sync licensing is
Why song supervisors might be interested in hearing your music
How people normally submit their music for possible sync opportunities
A better way that you can connect with them to improve the odds of getting your music taken on for use in film, TV and adverts
Which types of songs and artists are most likely to be taken on and
The role mastering and audio production play in this process

And lastly we talk about the free Sync Songwriter Music Supervisor Panel that he's put together to help you find out more about all this - which is taking place this January. For more details, click here – if you decide to give it a try, you'll be helping support The Mastering Show at the same time.
Mentioned in this episode:
Learn to master !
Click HERE to see Ian's courses and mastering resources
Mastering
Click HERE to work with Ian
Leapwing
Find out more about Leapwing's plugins

This started out as a Q&A episode, but one way or another there turned out to be a real theme to many of the questions, namely - how do you choose between technical and creative considerations, when mastering ?
Questions like:
When the client wants songs to sound different
When to use mid-side processing (or not)
Transient shaping - hardware or software ?
How much distortion ?
When is unbalanced EQ am artistic choice ?
What to do when the "correct" thing to do goes against the emotion of the song

Take a listen and find out how these questions all connect !
Full links on our website:
www.themasteringshow.com/episode-103
Mentioned in this episode:
Mastering
Click HERE to work with Ian
Leapwing
Find out more about Leapwing's plugins
Learn to master !
Click HERE to see Ian's courses and mastering resources

Translation is one of the main goals of mastering - make the music sound great on any platform, and any delivery format.
But how is that possible ? How can we optimise the audio to sound great on both a huge PA and crappy earbuds, or via any data-encoded stream, when we don't have any control over those playback systems or streaming platforms ?
The answer to this paradox is deceptively simple - and powerful. In this episode I explain the common misconception of what 'translation' is; what the term really means to me, and share three simple suggestions to help you get your music to translate - on any playback system.
Full links on our website:
www.themasteringshow.com/episode-102
Mentioned in this episode:
Leapwing
Find out more about Leapwing's plugins
Learn to master !
Click HERE to see Ian's courses and mastering resources
Mastering
Click HERE to work with Ian