Can you master in Ableton Live?
Yes. Live’s stock devices cover the whole job: EQ, compression and a limiter with a true peak mode. What no software can supply is distance from your own mix, which is the hard part of mastering a song you made.
Master a finished mix. A master works on everything at once, so it can only move the whole song; if the vocal is buried or the low end boomy, fix it in the mix. Mixing vs mastering explains where the line falls.
The device chain on the Main track
On the Main track (called Master before Live 12), in this order, each device doing a little:
- EQ Eight, gently. A small cut where the mix is crowded, a small lift where it is dull. More than a few decibels means the mix needs the work.
- Glue Compressor, lightly. A low ratio and a couple of decibels of gain reduction on the loudest parts. It holds the song together; it is not where the loudness comes from.
- Limiter last. Since Live 12.1 it has three modes, Standard, Soft Clip and True Peak, and Ableton says True Peak prevents peaks between samples. Use it, with the ceiling below 0 dB, and raise the input gain until the song is as loud as you want and no further. With Maximize on, the controls change: Ceiling becomes Threshold and Input Gain becomes the output level.
- Utility to check mono. Its Mono switch folds the song to mono; turn it on and off to hear what disappears, and remove it before you export.
Measure the loudness
Live’s track meters show peak and RMS levels, and it has no built-in LUFS meter, which is the measure streaming services use. A loudness meter device on the Main track gives you one, or you can export and measure the file itself, which is what ships: our free LUFS and true peak meter reads both in your browser without uploading it.
Then compare against a released song you like at the same loudness; how to use a reference track explains how, and why the louder of two versions always seems better for a few seconds.
Export it
Choose File > Export Audio/Video and set:
- Rendered Track: Main. Ableton’s manual describes it as the signal at the Main track’s output, which is what you hear.
- Bit depth 24 or 32. The manual says dither belongs only once in a file’s life: render at 32-bit if more processing will follow, and keep the POW-r dither modes away from files going on to another mastering stage.
- Normalize off. The manual describes it as raising the gain until the loudest peak reaches the top of the available headroom, which undoes the ceiling you set on the Limiter.
- The whole song. Check the export length covers the end of the last reverb and delay tail, not only the last bar.
Or hand the mix to a mastering service
To have someone else’s ears on it, export the mix instead of the master: the same settings at 32-bit, with no dither, and with the Limiter and anything else you added on the Main track for loudness switched off, so the master has room to work.
Euphona’s mastering takes that file and delivers it under a true peak ceiling. Without a reference it changes your mix’s tonal balance only where it falls outside the range finished records occupy, and it can play the master at the streaming standard beside its default level, at matched loudness, so you choose by ear.
Questions
How loud should the mix be before mastering?
There is no single number. What matters is that the Main track never clips and no limiter is doing the work yet; the master sets the final level.
What loudness should I aim for?
Streaming services turn loud songs down to their own playback level, so loudness past that point buys nothing for most listeners. LUFS for Spotify explains how one service does it.
Should I master in the same Set as the mix?
You can. Exporting the mix and mastering it in a new Set has one advantage: you stop changing the mix while you master, so every decision is about the whole song.
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