Adjust your master with controls
What each of the 11 mastering controls does, from loudness and ceiling to stereo width and warmth, and how saving makes a new revision.
The Adjust panel on the left of the workspace lists 11 controls. Each one has a short list of options, and the first option is the default.
| Control | Default | Other options |
|---|---|---|
| Loudness | Balanced | Gentle, Loud, Aggressive, Crushed |
| Ceiling | -0.1 dB | 0 dB, -1 dB, -2 dB |
| Stereo width | Natural | Narrow, Wide |
| Mono safety | Off | Club-safe, Mono |
| Space | Off | On |
| Saturation | Light | None, Color, Heavy |
| Warmth | Neutral | Warm, Gritty, Hot |
| Clarity | Neutral | Clear |
| Tape | Off | Analog |
| De-esser | Normal | Off, Heavy |
| Compression | Normal | Tight, Off |
What the controls do
- Loudness sets how hard the track is pushed into the limiter. Balanced suits streaming. Loud, Aggressive and Crushed are for club play and genres where density is part of the sound, and they trade away dynamics.
- Ceiling is the highest the true peak is allowed to go. -1 dB leaves room for the small overshoots that MP3 and AAC encoding can add.
- Stereo width makes the stereo image narrower or wider.
- Mono safety keeps the low end in the center. Club-safe is a good choice if the track will be played on a mono sound system; Mono folds the whole track to mono.
- Space adds a little reverb across the whole master.
- Saturation, Warmth and Tape add harmonic color in different amounts and flavors, from subtle to obvious.
- Clarity brings out detail and air in the top end.
- De-esser controls harsh “s” and “t” sounds in vocals and cymbals.
- Compression controls how much the dynamics are evened out. Off leaves them as they are.
For choosing Loudness and Ceiling for a release, read How loud should I master for streaming?
Save changes
Picking an option doesn’t render anything yet. Changed controls get a dot, and the old value is shown crossed out next to the new one, so you can line up several changes at once.
When you are ready, select Save changes. The workspace renders a new revision with your settings, names it Revision 1, Revision 2 and so on, and plays it as soon as it is ready. Discard puts the controls back to the revision you are listening to.
Only one revision renders at a time. If Save changes is greyed out, wait for the current render to finish.
On a free account, each saved revision counts toward the free revisions for that track.