Mastering Plugins: The Chain, the Settings and the Best Picks

The mastering chain: plugin types in order

Mastering is small moves on the whole mix. If something needs more than a couple of dB of EQ to fix, go back to the mix and fix it there. A typical chain looks like this:

1. EQ: broad tonal balance, plus a low cut for sub rumble you can't hear.
2. Compression: a light bus or multiband compressor for glue and control.
3. Saturation or clipping: density and a little peak control before the limiter.
4. Stereo width: gentle widening of the sides, with the low end kept mono.
5. Limiter: raises loudness and sets the final ceiling. Always last.
6. Metering: a loudness meter after everything, reading LUFS and true peak.

Mastering plugins compared

If you only buy one mastering plugin, make it a limiter or an all-in-one suite. iZotope Ozone puts EQ, dynamics, imaging and a maximizer in one window with an assistant that suggests a starting chain.

What is a limiter in audio?

A limiter is a compressor with a very high ratio and a near-instant attack. It sets a ceiling and stops the signal from ever crossing it. Push more level into it and the average loudness rises while the peaks stay put. Push too far and you hear it: pumping, flattened drums and a crowded, tiring sound.

Mastering limiters add lookahead, which lets them see a peak coming and turn down smoothly, and true peak detection, which catches overs that only appear after conversion or encoding. More in what is a limiter and compressor vs limiter.

Mastering settings: starting points

• EQ: wide bells and shelves, rarely more than 1 to 2 dB. A low cut around 20 to 30 Hz.
• Compression: a low ratio (1.5:1 to 2:1), slow attack, 1 to 2 dB of gain reduction.
• Clipping: shave only the tallest peaks, about 1 dB, so the limiter has less to catch.
• Width: keep everything below about 120 to 150 Hz mono.
• Limiter: ceiling at -1 dBTP, then raise the input until it's loud enough and back off at the first sign of distortion.
• Loudness: Spotify normalizes playback to around -14 LUFS integrated, so a much louder master just gets turned down.

Contour's Mix Bus Polish preset is a good model of mastering-sized moves: a 25 Hz low cut, +1 dB at 90 Hz, a wide -1 dB dip at 300 Hz and +2 dB of high shelf at 12 kHz.

Apex's Mastering Light preset keeps multiband compression gentle: Depth at 15%, little upward compression and the Mix at 70%, so it controls the bands without flattening the mix.

After that, Heat's Master Clipper preset (Tape mode, low drive, -1 dB ceiling) can take the edge off peaks, and the free Spread widens the sides while its Mono Bass control keeps the low end centered.

Mastering in Ableton, Pro Tools, FL Studio and Logic

Ableton Live: EQ Eight, Glue Compressor, Utility and Limiter on the master track. See plugins for Ableton.

Pro Tools: EQ3 7-Band, Dyn3 Compressor/Limiter and Maxim on the master fader or a bounce. See plugins for Pro Tools.

FL Studio: Fruity Parametric EQ 2, Maximus and Fruity Limiter on the master insert. See plugins for FL Studio.

Logic Pro: Mastering Assistant analyzes the mix and builds a starting chain; Adaptive Limiter and Linear Phase EQ cover manual work. See plugins for Logic Pro.