Audio mastering with no limiter smashing!
March 23, 2026
Im on a mission to re-mix and re-master alot of my old audio with a plan to NOT make it a loud, smashed master. Seeing loud mastered audio all over the place fine but id prefer to hear it punch and dynamic. This is not to say I don't want my stuff to be super loud, by I just prefer a more dynamic sound.
For years, I've been experimenting with saturation, dynamic equalisation and automation techniques to get the audio the way I want it without resorting using limiters, compressors and clippers. Saturation does a wonderful job of that I do not need a compressor in a lot of instances or even limiters and clippers. I still use them to deal with outliers but there is other ways and more natural ways to deal with them than just chopping them off at the knees.
Here is an example of one of my demo songs I did for a pedal I have called the vShock Chorus. Great pedal!! Love it!
The song is called vShock and here is the wave forms for the original master
This is the original master I did for track and as you can see it is squished and lacks the dynamic range it should have. It also sounds like it is squished. This has a Dynamic Range measurement of DR6.
Here is the wave form the latest re-mix and re-mastering! MUCH BETTER! I reckon I could go lower to DR7 and it would still sounds clear and punchy. As a matter of fact, ive been rendering tracks at LOWER SAMPLE RATES!
Here is the waveform for the same track with the sample rate reduced to sample rate of 22khz (22050)
You can see its not as much detail as the 44.1khz sample rate but thats the point! The reduction in audio quality and detail seems to be in my mind, a better result! It even sound great to my ears (especially given how shot my ears are anyway haha)
I come from listening to cassettes most of my life and that hiss and non perfect audio is just fine by me! Actually think that we are in a world of TOO MUCH accuracy and perfection that people have forgotten the most important rule, striving for that perfection is the enemy of good. I will be working on my own music now using this paradigm of lower resolution capture, mixing and mastering. Even using tape/cassette bouncing as a part of the process.
This is pre-master version of the song vShock after I bounced it to my cassette deck (Yamaha KX-W592) and then back into the PC. It sounds great and It has the tape hiss imparted on it! Sounds of nostalgia.
Personally, I think if music and music production is fight the AI slop that is infecting the music we here, musicians and producers need to go back to a realistic form of production rather than trying to thread the needle as it were with perfect mixes and perfect loud brickwalled masters.
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