EDM Audio Mastering: How to Master Electronic

Good EDM audio mastering comes down to four things: control the sub-bass, keep the sidechain pump intact through the limiter, keep everything below about 100–120 Hz in mono, and pick a loudness target that fits where the track will actually play. You can do the final stage in the free Audio Master tool in your browser. It's plain DSP (EQ, multiband compression, stereo width and a limiter), and your audio never leaves your device.

Before we start, one honest point. Electronic music gets mastered hard, and a hard master shows every mix problem you haven't fixed. If the kick and bass fight in the mix, no mastering chain will separate them. Fix that first. Then come back.

Why audio mastering for EDM is different

Most genres can get away with a generic chain. Electronic music can't, for three reasons.

• The low end carries the energy. In a lot of dance tracks the kick and sub-bass eat most of the headroom, so they decide how loud the whole track can get.
• The groove lives in the dynamics. Sidechain pumping, where the pads and bass duck on every kick, is a rhythm in its own right. Heavy limiting can quietly squash it flat.
• The playback systems are extreme. Many club rigs are mono or close to it below the crossover, and they move a lot of air. Phone speakers barely reproduce sub-bass at all.

For the general sequence, see what the mastering chain is. This guide sticks to what changes for electronic music.

Step 1: Get the mix ready for the master

Bounce a stereo mix with no limiter on the master bus and peaks around -6 to -3 dBFS. If your mix only sounds right with a limiter slammed on, print a second version with that limiter bypassed. That's the one you master from.

Three checks that matter more in EDM than anywhere else:

1. Mono the bass in the mix. Collapse your sub and kick to mono below roughly 100–120 Hz, using a utility or bass-mono plugin in your DAW. Wide stereo sub can partly cancel on mono systems, and it wastes limiter headroom. Our tool's stereo width control is full-band, so it can't do this for you. It has to happen in the mix. Mono vs stereo audio explains the cancellation problem.
2. Pick one owner for the lowest octave. Either the kick or the sub gets the fundamental around 40–60 Hz. The other one gives way there.
3. Check the sidechain depth. If the pump is subtle in the mix, the master will make it subtler. Push it a little further than feels right.

Not sure the low end is clean? Run the track through the Stem Splitter and solo the bass stem. It's AI separation, so it takes a while to process, but hearing the sub on its own shows up mud fast.

Step 2: Load the track and set the rumble filter

Open Audio Master and drop in your WAV. The tool measures the original loudness first, so you get a before-and-after readout.

The Rumble filter is a high-pass filter you can set between 20 and 100 Hz (it starts at 30 Hz). For EDM, set it low, around 20–30 Hz. Your sub probably sits at 40–50 Hz, and a 60 Hz setting would carve into the very thing that makes the track work. Just take out the sub-sonic stuff nobody can hear but the limiter still reacts to.

Step 3: Shape the sub-bass with the EQ

The Equalizer has five bands: a low shelf at 100 Hz, peaking bands at 250 Hz, 1 kHz and 4 kHz, and a high shelf at 8 kHz, each adjustable by ±6 dB.

• Low 100 Hz: hold back. A +1 to +2 dB lift is plenty on most dance mixes. More than that, and you're just feeding the limiter energy it will squash straight back down. If the track already booms, try a small cut here.
• 250 Hz: this is where muddy kick tails and bass harmonics pile up. A -1 to -2 dB cut often tightens the whole bottom end.
• 4 kHz and 8 kHz: a little lift brings out hats, claps and synth bite. Go gently, because loud masters make harshness worse.

The Genre preset menu has Flat, Warm, Bright, Punchy and Vocal-Forward. For most electronic tracks, Punchy is the closest starting point. It lifts the low shelf, dips 250 Hz and adds some 4 kHz presence, which is roughly the move described above. It also sets compression to Firm, so check that in the next step. Start there, then trim.

If boosting bass keeps making things crunchy, how to boost bass without distortion goes into why.

Step 4: Compression that doesn't flatten the pump

The Compression control steps through Off, Gentle, Firm and Aggressive. Under the hood it's multiband: the signal is split into three bands and each one is compressed separately. That's handy for EDM, because a big sub note doesn't pull the hats down with it. What is multiband compression covers how that works.

Here's the trap. Your mix already has sidechain compression doing rhythmic work. Stack Aggressive mastering compression on top and it fills in the dips between kicks, and the pump goes soft.

A good way to work:

1. Start at Gentle, even if a preset set it higher.
2. Loop the drop and flip the A/B toggle between Hearing: Mastered and Hearing: Original. The comparison is level-matched, so louder won't fool you into thinking it's better.
3. Only step up to Firm if the track sounds loose or uneven. If the pads stop breathing on each kick, step back down.

Aggressive has its place on some hard, dense styles, but treat it as a deliberate choice, not the default.

Step 5: Stereo width, the careful way

Stereo width runs from 0 (mono) to 1.6, and 1.0 leaves the image alone. Remember that it's full-band, so widening also widens the bass. For electronic music, keep it between 1.0 and about 1.1. If the drop needs to feel bigger, that width should come from the synths in the mix, not from a master-bus stretch that also smears the sub.

Step 6: Choose your loudness target

The Loudness target menu gives you Spotify (-14 LUFS), YouTube (-14 LUFS), Apple Music (-16 LUFS) and Club / Loud (-9 LUFS). The tool trims gain into a limiter with its ceiling around -1 dB, so picking a target drives the limiter the way a real mastering chain would.

LUFS (loudness units relative to full scale) measures perceived loudness; what is LUFS explains it. This is the real decision for dance music, so here's the trade-off.

Target	Where it plays	What you give up
Club / Loud (-9 LUFS)	DJ sets, USB sticks, promo pools	Some punch and pump; normalization will turn it down on streaming
Spotify / YouTube (-14 LUFS)	Streaming releases	Sounds quieter next to other tracks in a DJ set

Streaming services turn loud tracks down. Spotify normalizes to about -14 LUFS integrated by default, so a -8 LUFS master gets pulled down by roughly 6 dB. What's left is the flattened transients you paid for that loudness. How streaming loudness normalization works walks through the numbers.

There is no published club standard, but many EDM masters aimed at DJs land somewhere around -9 to -6 LUFS integrated, because DJs mix tracks back to back and a quiet one sticks out. The exact number varies by subgenre. The tool's loudest preset is -9, and that's a sensible ceiling for a browser-based chain. Going louder mostly buys distortion.

A practical approach many producers use is to make two masters: a club version at Club / Loud for DJs, and a streaming version at -14 for release. The tool doesn't remember settings between sessions, so note your EQ and compression choices before you run the second pass.

For more on choosing a number, see what LUFS should I master to.

Step 7: Listen for limiter damage, then export

At Club / Loud, the limiter works hard. Loop the busiest part of the drop and listen for:

• Kick losing its click, a sign the limiter is grabbing every transient.
• Bass that sounds like it's buzzing or folding over, usually too much low shelf going into the limiter.
• Pads that stopped pumping, too much compression. Go back to Step 4.

If you hear any of these, back off the low shelf or the compression before you blame the target. Why your master sounds distorted covers the common causes.

Then pick a format in the export selector and download. Export WAV for anything going to a distributor or a DJ. MP3 is fine for a quick share, and Opus shows up in browsers that support it. If the track comes out lower than you expected, why your master is too quiet is worth a read.

Check it against a pro track

Any mastering tool is only as good as your ears. Pick a released track in the same subgenre and compare the two at matched loudness. Listen to how much sub there is, how hard the kick hits, and how deep the pump goes. Mastering with a reference track explains how to do that properly. If your reference is in a different key or tempo and you want to see how close it is, the Key Finder and BPM Finder will tell you.

If you only need a level change and not a full master, say for a DJ edit, the Volume Normalizer matches LUFS without adding EQ or compression.

What a browser tool can and can't do

A free browser chain covers the essentials: EQ, multiband compression, width and a loudness-targeted limiter. What it doesn't give you is per-band bass-mono, adjustable crossovers, or a true-peak ceiling you set yourself. If you need those, look at dedicated software for audio mastering in your DAW. For a lot of producers finishing a club edit or a SoundCloud upload, though, the browser chain is plenty. For a wider look, see free vs paid audio mastering or the general walkthrough in how to master a song online for free.

Frequently asked questions

How loud should an EDM master be?

It depends on where it will play. For streaming, around -14 LUFS integrated is a safe target, since services like Spotify normalize to about that level anyway. For club play, many producers go louder, commonly somewhere around -9 to -6 LUFS, so the track holds up next to others in a DJ set. Louder always costs some punch.

Should the bass be mono in EDM?

Yes, for most tracks. Keeping everything below about 100–120 Hz in mono stops the sub from partly cancelling on mono club systems and gives the limiter more consistent headroom. Do it in your mix, because the stereo width control in Audio Master affects the full frequency range.

Why does my sidechain pump disappear after mastering?

Heavy compression and limiting fill in the gaps between kicks, which is exactly where the pump lives. Use Gentle or Firm compression rather than Aggressive, choose a less extreme loudness target, and compare against the original with the level-matched A/B toggle.

Is audio mastering online free good enough for EDM releases?

For many releases, yes, as long as the mix is solid. A free browser tool handles EQ, multiband compression and limiting to a LUFS target. It can't fix a muddy mix or give you advanced controls like bass-mono crossovers, so treat it as the final polish, not a rescue.

Does Audio Master use AI?

No. It's a DSP chain built from standard audio processing: a high-pass filter, a 5-band EQ, three-band compression, stereo width and a limiter. Everything runs in your browser, and your audio never leaves your device.