RecordingLab

The mastering room

Drop in a mix. The engine measures it against the same loudness standard streaming services use, shows you what it found, and masters it to your target – then lets you A/B the result at matched loudness, so you judge the sound, not the volume.

What the chain does

Subsonic cleanup, tone EQ, optional tape-style saturation, three-band Linkwitz–Riley compression, stereo width, a measured loudness lift to your target, and a lookahead limiter with a true ceiling of -1 dBTP – checked against 4× oversampled inter-sample peaks, the ones that clip cheap MP3 encoders.

Which target should I pick?

  • -14 LUFS – Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music. The safe default.
  • -16 LUFS – podcasts and spoken word.
  • -9.5 LUFS – club playback and DJ pools, where loud wins.
  • -18 LUFS – dynamic material you want left breathing.