The Mastering Show · The Mastering Show Podcast

The Mastering Show #106 - Are dynamics dead ?!

February 28, 2026·35 min·3 clips

Ian Shepherd investigates if the loudness wars are truly over and loudness has won, questioning the purpose of Dynamic Range Day.

Mastering starts with restraint. The host opens with a blunt point: modern DAWs already have enough inside them to make strong masters. Newer tools still get their due, especially ones that can adjust depth, width, density, and richness in ways that used to be harder to reach. But capability is not permission. Leapwing Audio's Stage One and Dyne One come up as useful mastering tools, particularly when a client needs to hear why a mix change could help. Then the episode turns to loudness. The argument is practical rather than dramatic: if most streaming listeners hear normalised playback, a lot of the work spent chasing a high LUFS number gets erased before it reaches them. YouTube matters most in his case. The host says 80 percent of online listeners use YouTube, where normalisation cannot be disabled, so a loud master will not play back at its original level there. Spotify adds a wrinkle. He says only 17 percent of Spotify users apparently change the default settings, which means most listeners there also hear loud songs turned down. Apple Music and Tidal fit the same pattern. With normalisation enabled by default on those platforms too, he does not see much reason to assume their listeners behave very differently. There are exceptions. Browser playback, SoundCloud, Bandcamp, CD, and vinyl can still reveal the loudness differences made in mastering. Even then, he thinks listeners mostly do not care. His point is not that level means nothing. It is that loudness as a competitive move has less proof behind it than many engineers and clients tend to assume. First impressions still matter, especially on discovery platforms, where loudness can feel like an advantage. The episode lands in a fairly no-nonsense place: use the tools, check the platforms, respect the client, and stop treating high LUFS as evidence that a master will hit harder with real listeners.

As heard by us

Modern mastering is simple in principle, but the right tools still matter when subtle control or practical mix fixes are needed.

The episode treats mastering as simple in theory and demanding in practice, making the case that modern DAWs already provide enough to reach strong results.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Press play if you want a sane answer to loudness, depth, and mastering tools.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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