MUSIC
PROMO

Mastering is the final stage before release. It evens out loudness and tonal balance, adds density and brings the track to the reference level that streaming platforms expect. Without it, even a well-mixed song can sound quieter, duller or less focused than the tracks next to it in a playlist.

Mixing balances the individual tracks inside a song - vocals, bass, drums and so on. Mastering works on the finished stereo mix as a whole: it does not change the balance between instruments, it brings loudness, tone and peak level to a final, release-ready state.

Three steps in one pass: EQ adjusts the tonal balance (automatic analysis or one of the presets), compression makes the sound denser and more cohesive without killing the dynamics, and a lookahead limiter raises the loudness exactly to the target you picked, measured to the BS.1770-4 standard, with no clipping.

The style sets the target loudness (LUFS) the limiter brings your track to. Different genres are traditionally mastered to different levels: club music and hip-hop are louder and denser, classical, jazz and spoken word are quieter and keep more natural dynamics. If your genre is not listed, choose the closest one by sound or set a custom value.

• Ambient (−16 LUFS). Quiet and spacious: the limiter barely works, so pads, reverbs and slow swells keep their full dynamics.
• Classical & Orchestral (−18 LUFS). The quietest preset: the limiter barely touches the music, keeping the full range from pianissimo to fortissimo.
• Country (−11 LUFS). Competitive loudness with a clear, upfront vocal and natural acoustic instruments.
• Dance (−8 LUFS). Dance-pop and commercial dance: loud and bright, with a clear vocal on top of a driving beat.
• Drum & Bass (−7 LUFS). Fast breaks and heavy bass: very loud, with crisp drum transients kept intact.
• Dubstep (−6 LUFS). One of the loudest presets: massive bass and aggressive drops, as dense as club releases in the genre.
• Electronic / EDM (−7 LUFS). Trance, big room, festival EDM and other electronic styles: loud enough for your track to hold its own in a DJ set.
• Folk & Acoustic (−12 LUFS). Moderate loudness so live instruments and voice stay natural.
• Hard Dance (−6 LUFS). Hardstyle, hard dance and hardcore: maximum loudness and a distorted kick that cuts through.
• Hip-hop & Rap (−8 LUFS). Loud and dense: the kick and bass hit hard and the vocal cuts through the beat. Works for trap, drill and phonk too.
• House (−8 LUFS). Deep, tech, progressive and classic house: a solid four-on-the-floor kick and a warm groove with room to breathe.
• Indie & Alternative (−11 LUFS). Slightly below mainstream loudness to keep the character of the recording.
• Jazz & Blues (−14 LUFS). Close to the streaming reference, with room for live dynamics and space.
• Pop (−10 LUFS). A loud, radio-ready sound that still leaves headroom for the vocal.
• R&B & Soul (−10 LUFS). Smooth low end and a polished vocal: loud, but never harsh.
• Rock (−9 LUFS). Loud, but keeps the punch of the drums and the attack of the guitars.
• Techno (−8 LUFS). Loud and hypnotic: a tight kick and a dense low end that still keep their punch on a club system.
• Voice & Podcast (−16 LUFS). For podcasts, audiobooks, voice-overs and a cappella vocals. −16 LUFS is a common podcast target: speech stays clear and easy to listen to.

This is EQ: it changes the tone of the track, not its loudness or density.

• Auto - the service analyses the lows, mids and highs of your track and picks a correction for that particular recording, without a fixed colour.
• Warm - lifts the lows and slightly softens the highs: a smoother, fuller, “analog” sound.
• Neutral - leaves the tonal balance untouched: no EQ is applied in this mode.
• Bright - trims the lows a little and adds mids and highs: a clearer, crisper sound that translates better on phones and small speakers.

These are about loudness and density, not tone (tone is set by the tone mode above).

• Gentle - light compression with a slow attack: keeps more of the original dynamics and sounds more natural.
• Medium - balanced compression that suits most tracks: noticeably glues the sound together without flattening it.
• Strong - heavy compression with a fast attack: louder and denser, with a narrower dynamic range. Great for club and high-energy tracks.

ITU‑R BS.1770‑4 is an international standard from the International Telecommunication Union that defines how to measure loudness the way people actually hear it, rather than by signal peaks. Its unit is LUFS - the targets in the style list (−8, −14 and so on) are LUFS values.

• K-weighting. Before measuring, the signal passes through a filter that mimics the ear: the deep lows count less and the upper mids count a bit more, so a bass-heavy track is not rated louder than it sounds.
• Gating. Silence and very quiet passages are excluded, so a long quiet intro does not drag down the loudness of the whole track.
• Integrated loudness. The result is one number for the whole track, for example −9.2 LUFS.

Broadcast loudness rules (such as EBU R128) and streaming normalization are based on this standard. MUSIC PROMO measures loudness with the same algorithm: the before/after values in the result panel and the target the limiter aims for are LUFS per BS.1770‑4, verified on a reference test signal.

You do not need to choose anything: the service reads the sample rate and bit depth of your upload and delivers the master as a WAV in the same format. All processing runs at the source sample rate, with no unnecessary conversions.

• WAV, FLAC, AIFF, ALAC. The format is preserved: 44.1 kHz / 16-bit in - 44.1 kHz / 16-bit out, 96 kHz / 24-bit in - 96 kHz / 24-bit out. 32-bit float files are saved as 24-bit. AIFF and ALAC do not open in every browser - Safari is the most reliable.
• MP3, AAC, OGG, Opus. The sample rate is kept and the output is 24-bit: compressed formats have no bit depth of their own, and 24-bit keeps all the precision after decoding.
• Unusual sample rates. Files below 44.1 kHz are raised to 44.1 kHz; files above 96 kHz are converted to 96 or 88.2 kHz.
• 16-bit. When saving to 16-bit, dither is added - a very low noise that removes digital distortion in quiet passages and fades. This is standard mastering practice.

The source and output formats are shown as soon as you load a file, and in the report inside the download.

Streaming platforms - Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, Amazon Music, Tidal, Deezer and others - normalize playback loudness or recommend their own reference level (usually around −14 LUFS). So how hard you push the limiter does not directly decide how loud your track plays there: an overly loud master is simply turned down, and it loses dynamics and “air” along the way. Mastering to the right target still matters - it keeps the platform from turning your track down more than necessary and decides how dense and alive it sounds after normalization.

Yes. A good mix is necessary but not sufficient: mastering adds the final layer of polish - density, loudness and tonal balance - that puts your track on par with professional releases, and it often reveals small issues you did not notice on your own speakers or headphones.

For demos, drafts and most streaming releases, it does the job quickly and affordably. For high-stakes releases - an album, a single pitched to label playlists, a complex arrangement - a human mastering engineer will hear nuances an algorithm cannot and make decisions automation cannot make. We honestly recommend a human engineer for those, and automatic mastering for demos, drafts and fast releases.

Uploading, processing and previewing are free and unlimited: you can try every style and setting and compare the original with the master in the player. You only pay when you download a finished master.

Choose a package: 5 downloads for $4.99, 20 downloads for $9.99 or 100 downloads for $34.99. After payment through PayPal you receive an access code: enter it once, and each download uses one credit. The code does not expire and works on any device. Our other tools - BPM & key finder, stem splitter and audio to MIDI - stay free.