Skip to content

The Mastering Show #103 – Technical versus Creative Mastering (Q&A)

November 28, 2025 · 35 min

Show notes

This started out as a Q&A episode, but one way or another there turned out to be a real theme to many of the questions, namely - how do you choose between technical and creative considerations, when mastering ?

Questions like:

  1. When the client wants songs to sound different
  2. When to use mid-side processing (or not)
  3. Transient shaping - hardware or software ?
  4. How much distortion ?
  5. When is unbalanced EQ am artistic choice ?
  6. What to do when the "correct" thing to do goes against the emotion of the song

Take a listen and find out how these questions all connect !

Full links on our website:

www.themasteringshow.com/episode-103

Mentioned in this episode:

Mastering

Click HERE to work with Ian

Leapwing

Find out more about Leapwing's plugins

Learn to master !

Click HERE to see Ian's courses and mastering resources

All episodes of The Mastering Show

Settings

Display

Language

Decides which stations you see first on the home page.

History

Recently played stations and episodes and your latest searches are only stored in this browser.

Notifications

A short notice when a podcast you follow has a new episode. Turn off single podcasts with the bell on their page.

Account

Save favorites – in the app and on the website.

Keyboard shortcuts

/
Open search
Space
Play or pause
← →
In the player: back 15 s, forward 30 s (episodes) · in a row: next tile
↑ ↓
In a row: target within the tile
Home / End
In a row: first or last tile
Esc
Close window or menu
?
This overview
Now playing

Go to station page

Play next

    Add episodes with “Play next” – they play after the current episode.