Once uploaded, the mastering interface is really nice. Then something stood out to me (feel free to correct me if I’m wrong), the background image looks as though a guy has a pop filter placed at the top of a side-address condenser microphone…?! I hope this isn’t a visual metaphor for the mastering quality! Features When you upload a mix, a series of vague terms such as “fixing audio defects”, “matching against billboard hits” and “optimizing for CD/Radio/Streaming playback” are displayed. Apparently, eMastered was created by Grammy award-winning engineers, although it doesn’t say who these engineers are… Either way, if that’s true, then I guess I should know what it’s doing. The eMastered website has a nice, simple aesthetic and you’re immediately greeted with a big, bold heading that says “Master your track, instantly”. Can we really trust AI to have this sort of intuition? Certain parameters may need to be automated to preserve consistency from section-to-section. What I do know is that mastering can become tricky if songs are relatively dynamic. Surely AI isn’t going to care about this, It’ll just want to hit certain figures and hope that I like it, right?! When you start to squash a song to get modern-day loudness out of it, it can make elements of a song jump out more than the mix originally intended. A real-life human mastering engineer has the ability to request technical changes based on their experience and overall judgment, which can help create a better end product. I have never used AI technology to master a song so I can only guess. This was only a very minor adjustment and I’m confident that it will give you a better idea of the sonic characteristics of each service.Īnother note to add – I’ve used the lowest price plans necessary to get a ‘’HD’’ WAV master. I’ve also assigned a score to each of them, with notes about what I liked and what I didn’t like.Įven though I’ve indicated the peak volume for each master after processing, I decided to normalize them to make the comparison fairer. I’ve rated each master as it comes and treat it as though I was receiving it for a release. It is worth noting that each platform has slightly different parameters available to tweak, so getting each platform to apply exactly the ‘same settings’ was a bit of a stretch. I’ve also included the master submitted by my chosen human mastering engineer (Zac Zikis of Zikis Mastering), so you can be the judge of whether AI beats real ears in an actual mastering studio.įor consistency, I’ve gravitated towards similar settings for each of the platforms. The track was then mastered by these four “best” online mastering services: It’s by no means a modern sounding production – we’re just not into that as a band. There are quirky production choices obvious throughout and this needs to be reflected at every stage. The main reference for the overall vibe of the tune is pretty much anything from “Lullabies to Paralyze” by Queens of the Stone Age, a Joe Barresi production-especial. Now…let’s see if AI can beat an experienced mastering engineer. Yes, you CAN do it yourself, but you will always be told that it’s best to pay the premium and get another set of ears to topcoat the song!Īnd now we have cloud-based, online mastering services that can master your song within minutes! What’s not to love about that? Mastering engineers also seem to scrape at the barrel when it comes to explaining why it’s essential. Many people fail to see the point of something that they deem to be little more than “making it louder” and chopping the beginning and the end of a song. Mastering is but one area of music-making where the process itself seems to be under threat by artificial intelligence and advanced algorithms. In Pursuit Of The “Best Online Mastering Service”
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