15. Mixing, master & the limiter — the final polish
When all the instruments play together, the mix is balancing their volumes so nothing buries anything else — like making sure everyone in a group photo is visible, not hidden behind someone taller.
The master is the final stage everything passes through on the way out. The limiter is a safety net at the very end: if the combined sound gets too loud and would “clip” (crackle/distort ugly), the limiter gently rounds the peaks so it stays clean and loud without breaking up.
# overall output a touch below maximum
master 0.9
Between your mix and the limiter you can also add a touch of master compression — one
automatic volume knob over the whole song that tames the loud peaks and pulls everything
together so it sits as one punchy, glued block. Add an fx master compress line (0–1):
steps 16
fx master compress 0.4
kick x...x...x...x...
clap ....x.......x...
bass C2 . . . G1 . . . A1 . . . E1 . . .
compress 0 is off (no change at all); push it up toward 1 for a more obviously squashed,
“glued” master. It runs before the limiter, so the limiter is still there as the final
safety net.
Real names: mixing, master bus, compression, limiter. Clipping is the harsh crackle that happens when sound is pushed past the maximum — the limiter exists to prevent it.
✅ Live now:
master(output gain) and the soft limiter have always been real; the master compressor (fx master compress 0–1) is now live too — a single feed-forward compressor on the final stereo sum, before the limiter. There’s no per-instrument compressor; compression in.trackis a master-bus effect.