---
title: 'How To Master ANY Song To Sound LOUD & Professional (Stock Plugins) | FL Studio Mastering Tutorial'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=OZy1yqTXlYQ'
video_id: 'OZy1yqTXlYQ'
date: 2026-06-30
duration_sec: 829
---

# How To Master ANY Song To Sound LOUD & Professional (Stock Plugins) | FL Studio Mastering Tutorial

> Source: [How To Master ANY Song To Sound LOUD & Professional (Stock Plugins) | FL Studio Mastering Tutorial](https://youtube.com/watch?v=OZy1yqTXlYQ)

## Summary



## Transcript

Cuz I' been in my head and I don't want
to run. Been through this before my
heart in the underground.
[Music]
I don't want to run out of love. If
you've ever wondered how your favorite
songs sound louder, clearer, and just
more professional than yours, chances
are the problem's been your master. So,
to make this easy, I simplify mastering
into three core steps. And I only use
stock plugins so anybody can follow
along at home. You guys have been
asking, so I finally delivered. And if
you guys want to see the full mix for
this as well, also using stock plugins,
just let me know down below. All right,
let's get into the master. We're going
to be mixing an alternate version of
Deéja Vu by Geom Mafia. It's an old
unreleased song. And normally with
traditional mastering, you're not using
stems. This is not stem mastering. This
is mastering. Play the most loud part of
your track. That's going to be the hook
for me right here where the uh drop is.
So,
first thing you're going to want to
start with is a parametric EQ. We're
going to use this to shape the tonal
balance of the entire track. Let me
explain. So, generally audio is made up
of your lows down here, your mids right
here, and then your highs up here. Tonal
balance just means having the right
amount of each. Think of it as adjusting
the shadows and the highlights like with
your uh photo app editor. Right before
that, the first thing we're going to do
is we're going to add a low cut. Come up
to this purple band right here, drag
until it looks just like that. And then
this right here, you're going to pull
that down until you see four squares.
That's as sharp as it's going to get.
And then you're going to come over here,
last step, use your scroll wheel, and go
one notch down. Play your track. in my
head and I don't want to run alone. Been
through this before my heart in the
underground.
We're going to cut off up to about 25
hertz right here. You can do up to 30
because then you're going to cut out the
actual sub itself. This keeps your sub
clean. Sometimes when you do this on
trap beats like this, it does have some
weird artifacts just because of the way
the parametric EQ works. Use a wide bell
right here and we're going to pull down
just a little bit and correct any weird
volume changes at the low end.
want to run. Been through this before my
heart.
You can see how much you're reducing by
looking up in the top leftand corner.
We're going to move it down like I don't
know maybe a dB and a half. All right.
Next, let's move on to the mid-range. If
your track sounds unclear or muddy, it's
living in this range right here from
about right here all the way to about
right here. So, just to enhance this
clarity, we'll take band number four and
we're going to do a couple dB reduction
there as well. Make sure to use really
wide bells, some nice broad reduction.
If you boost it, you can kind of hear
what you're reducing. my head and I
don't want to run. So that's that boxy,
you know, muddy sound that I was talking
about earlier.
I don't want to run.
My heart.
Next, we're going to grab band number
five. Ultimately, the end goal with
mastering is you want to be able to turn
it up really loud and it shouldn't hurt
your ears. If it does hurt your ears,
probably because you have some really
harsh top end and generally that's going
to live right around here in the high
mid to the present section. This track
does have a lot of that.
[Music]
And then let's bring down those high
highs just a bit just to clean up the
top end some so it's not too hissy.
[Music]
Remember these changes are going to be
very minimal and they're going to add up
a lot over time. And you'll see how
drastic of a change it's going to be as
we finish up. Next thing we're going to
need to do here is add a surgical EQ.
Now, this is where you get to go crazy.
We're going to be doing exactly what we
just did except with tighter notches and
a lot more of them. So, you want to do
the bulk work and then finetune. I'll
put a massive cheat sheet on the screen
that has pretty much every single
frequency range defined as a term, but
the main things I'm hearing here are
just a little bit of boxiness and some
harshness up in the top end. So, my
strategy here, take a really narrow band
with your scroll wheel and boost it. Any
frequencies that are really loud in
volume, turn it down a little bit. Don't
go too crazy with this because you might
actually turn down a frequency that's
helping the track. If you can try to
hear out which frequencies you like and
which ones you don't like. Just go with
your gut.
[Music]
All right. You hear that? 650. I hate
that frequency so much. So, what I'm
going to do is notch that and turn it
down some.
[Music]
All right. Let's do it again.
I generally don't like that frequency,
too. There's a bunch of them here that
are just kind of right next to each
other. Uh 650 8,000 1100 1250
[Music]
to the shut it down. I don't want to run
out of love and so long.
All right, perfect. Find some low mids
now.
[Music]
All right, last one. Let's do one more
up here in the top end.
[Music]
Yeah, there's a whistle right there. So,
let's turn that down some. Uh, I'm not
going to do too much. Just like I said,
maybe a dB reduction max. This is all
going to be amplified as we move on
here, but try not to do anything crazy.
Maybe 4 dB max over here if you're in
really bad shape. But generally, if
you're having to do stuff like this
right here, you're going to want to go
back and reevaluate your mix. Is it
really ready for mastering or do you
need to work on it some more? All right.
Now, the final step of the cleanup
process, midside EQ. In general, this is
what a midside EQ is. Editor, flash it
up on screen for me, man, cuz I'm too
lazy to explain it. But yeah, we're
going to use this to add a little bit of
width, clean up some muddiness, or, you
know, make everything clearer. Open up
patcher. I love patcher so much, dude.
There's so much stuff you could do with
this plugin, man. I swear to God. I
really advise everybody check out the
presets in here. I mean, you're going to
find some really awesome [ __ ] We're
going to head straight over to the
filter section and click midside EQ.
It's going to open up two EQs right
here. One of them is the side and one of
them is mid. Close those out for now.
Grab onto this little yellow dot and
unlink the side. So this way we're only
hearing the mid frequencies for now. Get
rid of a little bit more of that
harshness that I was telling you guys
about earlier. It's going to live right
up here.
[Music]
All right. And then we're going to do
the same thing we did earlier and scan
for boxy frequencies.
I don't want to.
[Music]
All right. Once I found two like that,
another trick I like to do is just take
another band on top of it and do like a
wide sweep just to kind of reduce both
of those. Like there two little teeth
sticking out.
[Music]
Okay. So, let's relink the side. And
then we're going to unlink the mid.
A good trick to add width to your track
is to add some shimmer to the side. And
then we're going to knock all those
lows. Use your scroll wheel to make a
less harsh slope there. We're just going
to roll them off.
All right, relink it.
[Music]
Nice. Okay, now before we move on to the
next step, it's always a good idea to
reference. Now, what's a reference in
the most simple terms possible? It's
basically a track that you're comparing
to your own when mastering or mixing.
This could be a Spotify song you
downloaded. This could be one of your
own tracks that you already love to mix
on. Drag it into your DAW and you uh
swap back and forth until the one you're
working on sounds as good as the one
that you're reference. And now that AI
is becoming really sophisticated,
there's a platform called Master Channel
that I've been using that has two great
AI powered engines. AI mastering used to
be horrible, man. It's gotten so good so
I actually use it as a reference point
to see if what I've done or what I'm
doing was actually good. Let me show you
exactly how I do this. We're going to go
to master channel.ai. And you can see
I've already uh run a master on it right
here. But we have the AI mastering and
the Wes Clark AI. The Wes Clark AI is
exactly what it sounds like. It's
modeled after the famous engineer Wes
Clark. And then you have the AI
mastering over here, which is obviously
the original mastering engine. So, we're
going to do both. Grab our mix file. And
as soon as you upload this thing, it'll
give you a finished sounding master in
under a minute. So, if there's any
blaring issues that I'm not hearing,
this will expose that for me. So, let's
also upload to Wes Clark just to have
that processing in the background as
well. All right, they've both finished.
So, click play and then go to Wes Clark.
Click play. And here's a standard engine
master
[Music]
and I can't seem to find no luck. I
can't seem to get no [ __ ] And then
let's take a listen to the Wes Clark AI.
[Music]
[Music]
Personally, the Wes Clark AI is the
best. So, I recommend that model the
most. Download that one. Drag it in.
Turn the gain down just a bit. And we're
going to listen to what we have here and
compare it to our master just to see if
there's anything that sticks out that I
missed.
run. I've been through this before. My
heart in the underground. I run to the
stop and shut it down. I don't want to
run out of
Okay, so there's definitely a little bit
more body in here. So, what we can do is
go back to our patcher and we'll go to
the mid section and we're going to boost
some of the low mids just to add a
little bit more body back into this
vocal.
[Music]
run to the shut it down.
Awesome. Yeah, that is perfect. And hey,
if I already got your track sounding
better than it was, it always helps to
push the video if you subscribe and
leave a comment down below, especially
if it's a question you have to ask me.
I'm always very happy to answer those.
Appreciate it, man. All right, now on to
the cool stuff. Next up is peak control.
To briefly explain, peaks are these
things right here. You see how it's a
bit higher? Right here, right here,
right here, how there's a spike right
there in the waveform. And if you have
anything sticking out like that, it's
going to stop the track from getting as
loud as it can be. Mostly your 808s,
your kicks, and just your bass in
general. And the goal here is to tame
those and push those down just a little
bit, right? And let's break out Fruity
Limiter. I'm so serious. Fruity Limiter
is the goat if you know how to use it.
Let me very quickly explain this. You
have the attack, release, and sustain.
Here's what those do just so I don't
have to explain them anymore. So, let's
start by setting the attack to between
10 and 20 milliseconds. You can see how
many milliseconds you're at by looking
at the top left corner over here. I'm
going to do probably about 10
milliseconds just to start out with. The
release time should be between 100 and
200 milliseconds. So, let's move that to
about 150 right in the middle. No need
to really mess with the sustain for now.
And then we're going to use a
compression ratio of 3 to one. Okay.
Now, let's pull the threshold knob down
just enough to catch those peaks. And
you'll see it start to work right here.
[Music]
And mostly the 808 there. Just make sure
you have the envelope settings set up
right. And we'll go over to imaging and
stereo enhancements. The method we're
going to go with here is just some
simple stereo enhancement. Stereo width
in this case is referring to how wide
your tracks feel. You know how much it
fills up your headset. So let's add
stereo enhancer. It's the easiest way to
do it. No more than about 25%. And 25%
is a lot.
[Music]
Yeah. So right about 18% sounds the
best. If you made it this far in the
video, let's confuse everybody else in
the comments by commenting the word
llama. As mentioned earlier, it's also a
funny way to help push the algorithm.
So, yeah. Okay, now we've reached the
final stage. At this point, the goal is
to get the track as loud as humanly
possible. First thing to do here is
control a little bit more of this low
end. This master reference right here.
[Music]
It has way less bass and low end than
ours does. And there's a reason for
that. This master is very, very loud.
Usually when you're struggling to get
your track loud enough, it's because
there's too much low end. So what we're
going to do is we're going to roll a lot
of that off.
[Music]
I think that's perfect. Mine still does
have a little bit more, but like I said,
I want to hang on to some of that. Open
up a Maximus. This is going to be the
last plugin. We're going to want to
navigate to the clean master preset
right here. This is a lot to look at, I
know, but the first thing you're going
to want to do is click on the bands tab
right here. And you can see your lows,
your mids, and your highs are split into
three different sections. And you can
view them each individually right here.
Don't even worry about all this other
stuff. All right. It already does a
relatively good job at dividing the low,
mids, and highs. So, we won't even need
to adjust any of this right here. Click
on the low tab right here. And you're
going to mess with this knob right here.
This is our stereo separation knob. This
works with the stereo field. Now, lows
on a track should always generally be in
the dead center, just so it sounds
cleaner on all speaker systems. So to
the right is going to be more center and
to the left is going to be more wide.
Make sure to click solo so you can just
hear the lows.
All right. Next we're going to spread
the mids out a little bit.
Generally no more than about 50% but do
what sounds good to you. It's your
master. And we're going to leave the
highs as they are unless you want to
spread that out a little bit too. But
okay. Now the master. All you're going
to want to do is click on that enables
all this stuff right here. Only two
knobs you're going to want to mess with
are the attack. I would lower the attack
just a little bit and then just raise
this knob up as high as it can go before
it starts sounding like
[Music]
it.
All right, cool. It's normal to have
just a little bit of pumping, but try
not to overdo it. So, this is this is
too much.
It's just a little bit too compressed.
And like I said, if you're not happy
with how loud it got, reduce your lows
until you can get it loud enough. And
then, as always, you can always go back
and cross reference this to this just to
see if you're on the right path. If you
see anything that sounds too off, make
sure to go and uh correct it in your
original mix as well. So, yeah, once
you're happy with your master, just go
to file, export as wave file. And make
sure to copy these settings right here
and start. So, yeah, there's a full
in-depth mastering process, start to
finish using only stock plugins. I think
it turned out pretty good. Let me know
what you think in the comments and let
me know what you guys want next. So,
yeah, till next time.