Click a frequency zone above to isolate it and hear what that range sounds like.
Circuit topology shapes character: VCA (voltage-controlled amplifier) responds in microseconds — ideal for bus glue. FET (field-effect transistor) adds harmonic edge and punch. Optical compressors react to light intensity — inherently non-linear, musical. Variable-Mu uses tube gain reduction — the slowest and most gentle, for "gluing" a mix.
| Platform | Target LUFS | Your Track | Action | Result |
|---|
The loudness war is over. The platforms won. Every major streaming platform applies loudness normalization. Mastering louder than the target means your track gets turned DOWN to match — and you've lost dynamic range for nothing. Master at −14 LUFS for streaming, −23 LUFS for broadcast. Leave headroom. Let the dynamics breathe.
A reference tone plays with an injected frequency problem. Use the 5-band parametric EQ below to find and fix it. When you're within ±2dB and ±200Hz of the solution, you pass!
Reading the phase scope: Vertical line = perfect mono. Oval tilted 45° = healthy stereo. Nearly horizontal = over-wide (mono-incompatible). Red areas = out-of-phase content that will cancel in mono.
Parallel compression preserves the natural transients and dynamics of the dry signal while adding the density and sustained body of a heavily compressed version underneath. At 40% wet blend, you get the best of both: punch from the dry, sustain from the wet. The "New York" technique uses infinite ratio on the wet path.
Vinyl is not digital. The physical groove has hard limits. Bass below ~150Hz must be mono — a wide stereo bass causes the stylus to skip. Sibilance cuts too deep and damages the groove wall. The cutter head has maximum excursion limits that translate directly to maximum level. A vinyl master requires different processing than a streaming master.
Click a stage above to learn about its role in the signal chain. Gain staging is the art of setting levels optimally at each stage — above the noise floor, below clipping.