
These are essential to have your music truly follow the loudness guidelines. With the Loudness Standards nowadays, it’s important you have a Limiter that allows you to have TRUE PEAK LIMITING with a TRUE PEAK METER ( FabFilter Pro-L 2 has this built-in!). Now each song is different, and that’s why a mastering chain can change from song to song, but the most important thing to understand is having a LOUDNESS METER as your last plugin, and then a LIMITER as your second last plugin.

but what I want to say is the more plugins you have, the more problems that can happen down the road. You may see a lot of tutorials about having a HUGE stacked mastering chain. But there are some rules to comply with loudness standards! Setting up a Mastering Chain in FL Studio A mastering chain allows you to process audio exactly how you’d like. Want to Make Beats? – Learn What Version of FL Studio to Buy!.In mixing, we often use a lot of parallel processing to add fullness, which you can also do in mastering, too, but sometimes the set-up is a little involved! I was just illustrating the order your mastering plugins are in will change how your audio sounds because the effects are in SERIES, which means only one path for your audio to flow, and the audio gets processed more and more through each mastering plugin that touches it. In Example 2, if you use the same settings on the Compressor, there would be LESS gain reduction happening, then the EQ would boost the volume, and your Limiter would now have more gain reduction because of this EQ boost. In Example 1, if you boosted lots of EQ, your Compressor would have MORE gain reduction because of the volume increase the EQ made, which then went into the Compressor. However, if the Compressor is first, your audio can be a lot different: Example 2: Your audio will be EQ’d, then Compressed, then Limited. In other words, if your plugin order is: Example 1: In basic mastering, we typically work in SERIES.

PARALLEL means multiple paths your audio can flow. SERIES means only one path for your audio to flow. In audio, we have SERIES and PARALLEL processing. Please use this image to help you understand signal flow! audio gets processed more and more after EACH plugin! It gets processed, then goes into the next plugin.

It gets processed, then it goes into Pro-MB (a multi-band compressor). The Order Your Mastering Plugins are In Matters: In this example image, the mastering chain starts with Pro-C 2 (a single-band compressor). Golden Rules to a Good Master Every Time 🙂.
