The first effort at mastering. The big issue was a really low note popping out in the chords that I had to filter, as well as some EQ adjustments toward the upper end. One of the bigger takeaways was that a lot of the channels and instrument tracks I thought were pretty balanced were actually overly loud. Loudness standards are way higher than the LUF ~-15 and RDB ~-1 that Spotify likes to take, but I was clocking about -9 and 6 respectively. Echoes had to come down, the click I have with the kick needed to drop a lot, the extra kick section needed to come down a lot, the high hats were way too loud. I think it’s more or less fixed now, and it’s actually still surprisingly close to the Spotify targets at -12 and 1.
Looking around, there are definitely some plugins that can be used to compare tone balance in a track compared to the usual in a genre, and some much more impactful eq plugins, but budgets are a thing.
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