On audio mastering (and a remastered song)

As I was “remastering” the songs that make up the third volume of Odes to My Triceratops, I started thinking, “surely there’s fancier stuff to do to improve a finished song’s quality other than just messing around with its sound levels.” That ominous thought led me on a few days-long journey into the art of audio mastering. At one point, I opened one of my previous songs I thought finished, only to find out that the exporting process had clipped the hell out of it. I had no choice but to face that I had no fucking clue what I was doing.

Some reading later, along with help from ChatGPT, led me to the following steps to master a song:

1. Normalize original WAV at -1db.
2. Save original WAV as a 24-bit/192KHz WAV stereo file.
3. Load exported WAV.
4. High-pass filter at 30hz (roll off 24 db).
5. Filter Curve EQ with preset (looked up good general values).
6. Normalize at -1db.
7. Apply multiband compression with the OTT plugin at 20% depth.
8. Normalize at -1db.
9. Split the stereo track and pan the channels to -70% and 70% respectively.
10. Perform a thorough EQ check using the spectrum analyzer, adjusting frequencies along the way.
11. Use the Limiter, Hard limit to -1 db to ensure the track doesn’t peak.
12. Normalize at -1db.

[check out the rest of this post, and a remastered song]