SchoolBlog

Mastering Your Music: A Professional’s Guide to Master Bus Processing

Reading time: 7 minutes

Mastering, the so-called “dark art” of music production has more mystique than it deserves. Once you know what the goal is (and how to hear what you’re doing) it’s a blend of straight-forward technical procedures and nuanced creative decisions.Download the Mastering Rack (free for a limited time)

Master Bus Compression

Master bus compression is the foundation of a professional-sounding master, acting as the “glue” that binds your mix elements together into a cohesive whole. In dance music, where loudness is critical, rhythmic compression offers a clever solution: by allowing the compressor to work in time with your drums, you can achieve significant gain reduction while maintaining the natural feel of your track.

Master Bus Compression Settings

Steps for Master Bus Compression

  1. Locate Glue Threshold in the Mastering Chain
  2. Pull the Threshold macro down until the loudest elements (kick and snare) trigger the Gain Reduction (GR) meter
  3. Attack and Release times are pre-configured to preserve transient punch while ensuring the compression moves rhythmically with your track

Soft Clipping

Think of soft clipping as your master’s safety net – it’s a subtle but powerful tool that serves multiple purposes. By gently rounding off the harshest peaks in your signal, soft clipping helps enhance perceived loudness while adding pleasing harmonic saturation.

Soft Clipping Settings

Steps for Soft Clipping

  1. Enable the Soft Clipper on the glue compressor
  2. Gradually increase the Glue Makeup macro until peaks begin engaging the clipper (threshold is just below 0dB)

Limiting

Limiting is your master’s final safeguard, ensuring your track never exceeds digital full scale (0dBFS) while maximizing loudness. At this stage, we’re fine-tuning rather than doing heavy lifting, as most of our volume was achieved in previous stages.

Limiting Settings

Steps for Limiting

  1. Locate the Limiter Max macro
  2. Slowly increase the Limiter Max macro
  3. Since we’re using the Limiter’s ‘Maximize’ mode, increasing the macro will automatically adjust both threshold and output to optimise loudness
  4. Our limiter operates in Mid/Side mode, processing centre and side information independently

Next Steps

Up Next: Check out Part 2 of our introduction to mastering, where you’ll explore tone shaping, multiband compression, and techniques for controlling high-end harshness.

Ready to master these techniques hands-on?

Learn directly from industry experts like SUB-human in a training/mentoring program that covers Mixing and Mastering. Join over 1,000+ producers who’ve mastered their craft with Liveschool.

Produce Music

A comprehensive electronic music production course developed by award-winning artists, producers and Ableton Certified Trainers.

The Focus Series

Combines our four ‘focus’ modules, sequenced in a perfectly-paced schedule to get you making release-ready music by the end of the series.

Mixing and Mastering

Professional-grade mixing and mastering skills from Australia’s top mix engineers and Ableton-certified trainers.

PART TIME (50 WEEKS OF CLASSES AND MENTORING)

  • March 2025
  • May 2025
  • August 2025
  • November 2025

FULL TIME (6-8 WEEKS + 16 WEEKS MENTORING)

  • July 2025
  • November 2025

Next intake starting soon – Limited spots available!