One-click mastering — right in your browser

1. How to prepare a track before mastering

• Export from your DAW as WAV at the same sample rate as your project (44.1 or 48 kHz), ideally 24-bit — unnecessary resampling or exporting to MP3 before mastering just throws away information you can't get back.
• Leave headroom on the master bus: mix peaks should sit around −6 to −3 dBFS, not slammed up to 0 dB. If you have a limiter or maximizer on the master, turn it off (or back it off a lot) before exporting — mastering needs room to actually do something.
• Check for, and trim, any silence at the start/end — or leave that to the "Trim silence" option in Advanced settings.
• Mastering fine-tunes loudness and dynamics, but it won't fix a bad mix. Instrument clashes, an overpowering bass, a vocal sitting too quiet — sort those out back in the mix, not through mastering.

2. What mastering can and can't do (no sugarcoating)

Can do: bring the loudness to the right target for a given platform, gently even out dynamics, protect the track from clipping on playback and after MP3/AAC encoding, and add a touch of tonal polish or warmth.

Can't do: fix an out-of-tune instrument, a poorly recorded vocal, an unbalanced mix, harsh sibilance, room rumble, or recording noise. Those belong in recording and mixing — mastering is the last bit of polish on top, not a rescue.

3. How to pick a preset

Smart Auto is a sensible default if you're not sure — it derives a target loudness from your track's crest factor (peak-to-RMS ratio), so a dynamic acoustic track gets treated differently from a dense electronic mix.

There's no point chasing the highest possible loudness for its own sake. Spotify, YouTube, and most other platforms renormalize your track to their own target anyway — extra loudness on top just eats into dynamics and makes the track sound tired, without it ending up any louder in the player.

4. Common mistakes

• Mastering from an MP3/AAC file instead of WAV — the compressed format has already thrown information away for good, and mastering can't bring it back.
• Mastering "on top of" mastering — running an already-mastered file through mastering again and again. Each pass adds a bit of distortion and eats into dynamics.
• A master bus already slammed loud before mastering — a limiter or maximizer left on the final mix only leaves mastering with whatever headroom is left over.
• Trusting the numbers (LUFS, true peak) blindly without listening — they're useful tools, not a substitute for your ears.

5. After mastering

• Use the Original / Mastered toggle and listen at matched loudness — a louder version will almost always sound "better" even when it objectively isn't. DZMASTER doesn't loudness-match the two versions for you in the player, so keep that in mind while listening.
• If the track is also headed somewhere it'll play in mono (older radios, some clubs), check mono compatibility — or just turn on "Mono bass" in Advanced settings.
• Before you sign off on the final track, listen to it on more than one device — headphones, a phone speaker, a car. What sounds great on studio monitors doesn't always hold up everywhere.