Recording technology has come a long way in the last few decades, and now it's increasingly the norm to record songs using nothing more than a good computer and a basic audio interface or a couple of bits of good outboard gear. But, when it comes to mixing those tracks, getting your finished song to sound as good as the ones you hear on a streaming service or the radio is often an elusive goal. You can hit it with as many plugins, professionally-tweaked presets, or AI-power

Mastering is the final step in the music production process, and it can be the difference between music that sounds polished and professional, and music that sounds not-quite-there-yet. Understanding Mastering Mastering used to refer strictly to the process of preparing and transferring recorded audio from a source to a means of duplicating it in mass quantities: for example, transferring an album from a reel-to-reel tape to a laquer master copy (the first stage in pressing