The One Part of Making Music No One Talks About

1. 

   @MicTheSnare

   March 28, 2026 at 6:42 am

   Sitting down with Adam Ayan was such a good time. He’s a phenomenal guy and a stellar engineer. I’ve left his website and IG in the description if you want to follow his journey.

   There were also a few extra questions I asked him that didn’t make it into the video. I’ll be releasing a bonus video with those answers on Patreon and Nebula in the near future. Go sign up if you wanna see it!

   Thank you all for watching!!!!

2. 

   @soph3154

   March 28, 2026 at 6:42 am

   since I started to work with music 10 years ago there's a lot of AI mastering tools, no single one is better than master enginneer

3. 

   @Paul-b2s3w

   March 28, 2026 at 6:42 am

   Well I am actually mixing and also mastering my first EP currently. A friend of mine wrote lyrics for all but one song, and I wrote the music to all but one song. I also played all hte instruments on the whole EP and we produced it like 80-20 percent me. With that I can say mastering is underrated. I heard it is also the art of track listing and when which fades in or starts or fades out or how long of a break there is

4. 

   @lildoggi7649

   March 28, 2026 at 6:42 am

   i love the music in this, what are the songs?

5. 

   @MrvlZmb

   March 28, 2026 at 6:42 am

   Distracted by the latin arrangement of a Chopin nocturne.

6. 

   @parasiteunit

   March 28, 2026 at 6:42 am

   In effect – if the recording engineer is building a house, the mixing engineer is putting that beautiful center piece in the living room. The mastering guy is more like the one who polishes that nicely fitted tiled floor to allow you to see every detail the tile guy put into that show stopping floor.
   Some argue that it's a needless step – but all of those folks have only ever seen that floor witithout that final polish.

7. 

   @tektologist

   March 28, 2026 at 6:42 am

   Incredible interviewee. I lack the patience and ear to do what he does

8. 

   @JaxxHunter

   March 28, 2026 at 6:42 am

   9:34 Hahaaaaaaa, mastering jokes

9. 

   @Scowly88

   March 28, 2026 at 6:42 am

   Clickbait thumbnail, attempting to spook people that "fatten the sausage" (like they should). Boo.

10. 

    @valentinpedersen6144

    March 28, 2026 at 6:42 am

    Loudness is also an aesthetic. For many genres you need to do brickwalling to make it glued togehter.

11. 

    @thebaccathatchews

    March 28, 2026 at 6:42 am

    Ken Burns' "The Loudness War"

12. 

    @CyrilleParis

    March 28, 2026 at 6:42 am

    About the loudness war : in the beginning of the 2000s, it hit the live world. I've heard perfect live gigs dawned under criminal sound engineers armed with massive compressors. It didn't last long but it was terrible.

13. 

    @milehighgambler

    March 28, 2026 at 6:42 am

    That's why I never cheap out when it comes to quality. It makes the difference

14. 

    @WMixYT

    March 28, 2026 at 6:42 am

    “Mastering is a process that is often unknown even to people in the industry. Very few people knows what truly goes into it.”.
    Well no, really most people with technical jobs in the music industry knows what it implies. And I know because I work everyday in that industry, so I have hands on experience. I can also add that a lot of ME moved from actual technical operators to glorified mixbus processing engineer, which is a bit of a shame imho.

15. 

    @Gettin_chunky

    March 28, 2026 at 6:42 am

    Who told you I eat corn dogs in the shower?!!! You spying on me?😂

16. 

    @leonardschorm8158

    March 28, 2026 at 6:42 am

    What do you Think about the opinion Dead a good Mix don’t Need a Lord of Mastering so Mixes Better the Masteringhas to be done Less

17. 

    @forestvvv

    March 28, 2026 at 6:42 am

    you Gotta talk to an illuminati engineer duh

18. 

    @xmgaming2444

    March 28, 2026 at 6:42 am

    As a fully solo artist (at least thus far), mastering is the hardest step for me. It's really hard to have that neutrality going into the process when you've been the one calling the shots ever since you started the project.

19. 

    @jacobskovsbllknudsen5908

    March 28, 2026 at 6:42 am

    Sounddesigner here. I've mastered others and my own tracks with variable degrees of succes. My expertise lies in mainly mixing and recording and I like to use a mastering engineer for that final touch or quality control, primarily it's a thing I do to have a set of totally neutral ears on it, making sure I' haven't accentuated or diminished something in a mix in a bad way. Sometimes they do very noticeable stuff and other times I get the file back and all they've done is run it through good analog gear that I can't afford myself and that's it.

    I've tried AI mastering on some stuff of my own that I cared less about artistically, but in the end, I can usually do a better job myself. That being said, AI mastering is great for making client-mixes sound louder and fuller and spend less time doing so, but with good recordings and good mixes normalization should get you the same. I'm the same as Adam in that I don't believe AI will ever be able to fully match the sensibilities of a human mastering engineer, at least not in the ears of a pro musician or audio engineer.

20. 

    @vinylmastersgr222

    March 28, 2026 at 6:42 am

    In Greece many new songs greek laiko and greek pop are around -8 to -6 LUFS integrated with True Peak over +1 and extremely bassy, with hard subbass, hard kick drums in front and full autotune. They lack of dynamics, they lack of detailed instrumentation. Also remastered are around -9 to -7 LUFS integrated. I prefer first editions that they are around -16 to -13 LUFS integrated. They are quiet but with clarity and balanced bass/treble. No drums in front. And they sound crystal clear.

21. 

    @Suremane

    March 28, 2026 at 6:42 am

    Plot twist. Sublime IS Trash.

22. 

    @dusty1593

    March 28, 2026 at 6:42 am

    So many bands sound good on albums but suck in person. I wish people would actually listen to demo tapes and live albums that’s where the best version of your favorite song is sitting.

23. 

    @israelagalaba5493

    March 28, 2026 at 6:42 am

    Always thought of Mastering as: getting the music as loud as possible without clipping!

24. 

    @DoorskipDNB

    March 28, 2026 at 6:42 am

    I've been mastering my own music for years and I think more emphasis needs to be put on really perfecting the mix and mastering all elements. If you want a loud master its better to get all the instruments to your preferred loudness in the mix. Like he said he isn't able to adjust those individual parts which sometimes are the main problem that a master cant fix. The less you have to saturate or compress the better. If you can naturally get everything to sit at -6db evenly you will have no problem with loudness. I can push my masters super loud and still be dynamic without distorting if I really wanted.

25. 

    @disfuncionexe

    March 28, 2026 at 6:42 am

    To each their own man I like my shit loud

26. 

    @newtzrcool

    March 28, 2026 at 6:42 am

    most of what i genuinely make is music doodles and not stuff fit for everyone to hear right this second, so most of my flps (which go untouched for months) are completely unmastered and i always have to say "ohh guys remember this isn't mastered this isn't mixed!" lolol

27. 

    @isaisotarriva8162

    March 28, 2026 at 6:42 am

    Does anyone else have a list of mastering engineers that they like how their post production work sounds like?
    I have, finding their name in a disk is like a quality stamp for me.
    I think who mastered the sound is a clearer predictor for me liking a song than who the lead singer is.

28. 

    @davidmendez6303

    March 28, 2026 at 6:42 am

    awesome documentary

29. 

    @Mduenisch

    March 28, 2026 at 6:42 am

    I get the meaning of what it is, but I wish it had a little bit of an explanation in terms of things like "I change the levels at various frequencies, reverb," or something else to kind give an idea on what the process is rather than the abstract idea of "I just make it sound as nice as I can"

30. 

    @jademonayzz

    March 28, 2026 at 6:42 am

    mastering sucks. just throw a clipper on the master

31. 

    @juniorsilvabroadcast

    March 28, 2026 at 6:42 am

    On Radio loudness war did a shitty job of increasing audible distortion and crunch year over year. Every station out on the wild uses some form of dynamics compression and limiting to prevent audio carrier overmodulating (occupied frequency gets too large)
    99% of all modern post 1980s audio processing for radio employs some form of automatic gain controller. Pushing records loudness just made no result on radio. AGC will always make everything quieter to meet the desired level. Today in 2025 we have extremely advanced tech with multiband psychoacoustic ecpanding. Mathematical algorithms to restore distorted clipped masters. And advanced AGC and multiband processing that actually works like "human ears". Loudness wars between records actually made radio industry seek research on how to undo all the crap.

32. 

    @jollyog

    March 28, 2026 at 6:42 am

    2:23 I got two unskippable ads and thought you actually e ded the video there, lol.

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