Mix problem or master problem?
The most useful question you can ask about a track that is not working — and a way to answer it in two minutes without opening the session.
Notes
What actually happens on sessions, written down. No listicles, no gear worship, no affiliate links.
Why your master sounds different on Spotify
It is not the normalisation, or not only. Something happens to your file between upload and playback, and you can hear it in advance.
True peak, explained properly
Your meter says the file does not clip. Your file clips. Both things are true and the reason is worth ten minutes.
Does your mix survive mono?
Mono did not go away. It moved into clubs, phone speakers, kitchen speakers and every Bluetooth device someone left in the corner of a bar.
Why your EP does not sit together
Every track passes on its own. Played end to end, the record wanders. The fault is in the set, and nothing measured per-track will find it.
Phase correlation is not a pass or fail meter
The number is useful. The way most people read it is not, and reading it wrong sends you looking for problems that are not there.
What AI mastering is good at, and what it flattens
An honest account of where the automatic services work, where they do not, and how to tell which situation you are in before you pay for either option.
Do you need an Atmos mix?
Spatial audio is now default on a lot of hardware. That is not the same as your record needing a spatial mix, and the honest answer depends on four things.
Gain staging is a scheduling problem
Everyone teaches it as a level problem. On a real session day it is a decision about when you stop being able to change your mind.
Nobody agrees what a stem is
Ask five engineers for stems and you will get five different things. Here is how to specify it so the wrong one never arrives.
What to charge when you have no idea what to charge
A method that does not require knowing what anybody else charges, which you mostly cannot find out anyway.
Loudness targets are a floor, not a ceiling
Streaming normalisation changed what loud means. Most advice about it is still wrong in a specific and expensive way.
Your first session as an assistant
What the job actually is, which is almost never the thing people prepare for.
The room is the most expensive thing you own
And usually the thing people spend least on, in the wrong order.
Two revisions, in writing, every time
The single clause that prevents most of the disputes in this trade.
Comping is an editorial job, not a technical one
The best comp is rarely the one made of the best individual moments.
Write the brief down or argue about it later
Every disagreement on a session day is a disagreement that could have happened cheaply a week earlier.
The headphone mix is a performance tool
It is worth more to the take than any decision you will make about tone, and it is the thing most often rushed.
The last mile is where records get lost
Everything is finished, approved, and about to be undone by a file name.
Reference on something bad, deliberately
Your record will mostly be heard on things you would never choose to listen on.