MasterCheck is the complete optimization solution for today’s delivery services, a plug-in providing the tools to make sure your music reaches the listener as intended. Streaming apps, download stores and podcasts all use data compression, loudness normalization or both.
These processes can affect your track in undesirable ways: your loud, punchy mix could end up quiet and flat, or suffer clipping and distortion. MasterCheck reveals these problems ahead of time, and enables you to deliver masters perfectly tuned for specific playout systems.
Audition codecs
How do people listen to your output? You work hard to deliver masters that sound great at home, in the car or on earbuds, but that’s only half the story. How does your music sound on Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, SoundCloud or YouTube?
All major online services encode your music, using different specs and formats depending on the playback device, the connection speed, or even whether the user is a “basic” or “premium” customer. Hot mixes can introduce True Peak overs that will clip on playback.
MasterCheck detects these errors, and you’ll be able to hear obvious frequency masking and other artifacts. You can monitor the following codecs, with presets for specific streaming services:
Reference & comparison
Via the 'External ref' function, MasterCheck allows you to A/B with reference material in order to check differences in loudness, PLR and True Peak measurements. If you wish, you can use 'Offset to match' to match the loudness for a direct comparison.
'Offset to match' can also be used to remove loudness from an FX chain. This can be useful for evaluating the impact of signal processing, without being influenced by the 'feel good factor' of increased loudness.
For Mixing
The most popular streaming platforms now only differ by 3 LU between the loudest and quietest target for normalization. Clearly there is no benefit in mixing louder than the loudest platform, at which point all platforms will be turning down your audio.
Much of this is primarily a concern for the mastering engineer, but if you over-compress a mix then the mastering engineer has nowhere to go. If you compress above a platform's target level, transients lost cannot be regained at a later stage.
Typical applications
