In this video, I’m showing you my simple mastering chain to get that louder and punchy sound from scratch—no stress. First thing first, I load up Youlean Loudness Meter to watch my LUFS and overall loudness, and I also add an imager so I can check the wideness of the song while I’m working. From there, I start with EQ using FabFilter Pro-Q 3: I brickwall low cut around 22–24 Hz (don’t overcut or you’ll lose bass), and I also brickwall high cut around 18 kHz to remove extreme highs you can’t really hear. After that, I do only slight EQ moves (I’m talking like -0.5 dB, not more than 1 dB) because mastering is polishing, not fixing. Then I use a Waves EQ to lift the highs around 12 kHz—boost 2 dB and attenuate 1 dB at the same time for a cleaner shine. Next, I widen specific bands with an imager (I keep the correlation knob from going below zero to avoid phase issues), then I hit The God Particle for that final glue—sweet spot only, and I turn off the built-in limiter because I prefer my own limiter. Finally, I clip a bit, then limit with FabFilter Pro-L 2 (attack up, release down, true peak off) and push to around 8–9 LUFS depending on the record.