Level and loudness
The most common complaint. A quiet mix played through a system set for the previous competitor is the difference between a routine that arrives and one that apologises.
Arena mastering
Can you make my music sound better on arena speakers?
The short answer
Yes. Mastering for a venue means controlling the peaks so the average level can sit higher, balancing the frequency range for a large reverberant room rather than for headphones, and evening out sections sitting at different volumes. Every edit we deliver is finished this way, at no extra cost.
Why the room changes everything
Your edit is not competing in your headphones.
Headphones deliver the mix directly to your ears in a quiet room. A rink, a gym or a competition hall is large, hard-surfaced and reverberant, the speakers are distant, and the whole thing is competing with a crowd. The frequency balance reaching the floor is far less even than what you heard at your desk.
Mastering is the stage that prepares a finished mix for that. It is why a commercially released track played straight after a home edit sounds so much bigger — not because the song is better, but because it has been through a stage the home edit skipped.
What mastering fixes
The four things that usually go wrong.
An uneven frequency balance
Home edits often carry too much low-mid, which turns to mud in a reverberant room, and not enough presence in the range that actually cuts through crowd noise.
Sections at different volumes
Songs from different eras and different masters arrive at different loudness. Left alone the routine steps up and down at every join — far more obvious on a PA than in headphones.
Peaks that force the system to duck
Uncontrolled peaks make a venue limiter clamp down on everything around them, so the whole mix audibly dips. Controlling them is what lets the average level sit higher.
What it cannot fix
Where mastering is the wrong tool.
Worth knowing before you spend money on the wrong thing.
A cut in the wrong place
Mastering is the finishing stage, not the editing stage. If a transition lands mid-phrase, no amount of finishing hides it — that needs the edit rebuilt from the source.
A low-quality source file
A heavily compressed download has already lost detail before we start. Mastering can make it louder and better balanced, but it cannot restore what was discarded.
A bad room
Some venues are simply difficult. We prepare the file for a large reverberant space, which helps considerably, but nobody masters their way out of a poorly-tuned PA.
If the problem turns out to be the edit rather than the master, that is a different job — rebuilding an edit that sounds wrong covers what to send and what it costs.
Already have an edit you are happy with?
If the cuts are right and it just does not hold up in the room, you do not need a re-edit. Get in touch with the file and what bothers you about it, and we will tell you honestly whether mastering alone will get you there.
Ask about mastering only Questions
Browse all answers
Mastering, answered.
Can you make my competition music sound better on arena speakers?
Yes. Mastering for a venue means controlling the peaks so the average level can sit higher, balancing the frequency range for a large reverberant room rather than for headphones, and evening out sections that sit at different volumes. Every edit we deliver is finished this way.
Is mastering included, or is it extra?
It is included in every competition edit at no additional cost. It is not an upsell — an edit that has not been finished for the room is not finished.
Why does my music sound quieter than everyone else’s?
Almost always because it has not been mastered. Commercially released tracks have been through a mastering stage that raises their average level; a home edit exported straight from an editor has not, so it plays noticeably quieter through the same system at the same setting.