MasterCheck Pro is the complete solution for optimising your mixes for today’s music delivery services. Streaming apps, download stores, websites and podcasts all use data compression, loudness matching or both. These processes can affect your mixes in various undesirable ways: your loud punchy mix could end up quiet and flat, or suffer clipping or distortion. The good news is you don’t just have to mix for CD and hope for the best. MasterCheck Pro reveals problems ahead of time, and enables you to deliver masters perfectly tuned for specific playout systems.

Cross Platform Mastering

How do people listen to the music you mix? You work hard to deliver masters that sound great at home, in the car or on earbuds, but that’s only half the story. How does your mix sound on Spotify, Apple Music or Google Play? What about YouTube, digital radio, or Beatport? MasterCheck Pro will show you; giving you a unique advantage and enabling you to take back control of the listening experience. You’ll instantly hear how your tracks are affected by loudness matching algorithms on different devices and services, and you’ll know how your masters respond to different codecs and bandwidths.

One Plug-in, Complete Toolset

MasterCheck Pro gives you the tools to make sure your mix reaches the listener sounding as you intended. Industry standard meters show the Loudness and PLR (dynamic range) of your mix and how they compare to your target platform. Loudness auditioning reveals any level changes and compression that will be applied. External reference auditioning and metering lets you A/B your master FX chain with other music or your uncompressed mix. True Peak Metering ensures you’re within the delivery spec and guarantees you’ll stay clip-free at later encoding stages. Real-time codec auditioning previews your mix through different encoding schemes and quality settings.

Loudness  

Playout services have a ‘letter box’ through which they deliver your audio. If you’re lucky it slides through; if not, the service will force it to fit .A heavily maximized master might win the loudness war on CD, but could simply be turned down on your music service or player. This leaves valuable headroom you could have used for transient detail and punch. With MasterCheck Pro’s Loudness and PLR features you can find the sweet spot between perceived loudness and dynamics, perfectly tuning your master to the format.

Codecs

The major online music services and stores encode your music in various formats, often using different bit-rates depending on your device or account type. Encoding “hot” mixes can often introduce true peak overs that will clip on playback. MasterCheck Pro will detect these errors, allowing you to stay within a safe limit. You’ll also be able to hear any obvious frequency masking or other artifacts, and try to mitigate these effects at the mixing and mastering stages.

Applications

Music Mastering
Mastering for digital music services
Mastering for podcasts and digital radio
Codec distortion detection
Loudness and dynamics comparison with reference material

Music Mixing

Dynamic Range Measurement
Loudness matching across album tracks
FX chain auditioning with matched loudness
Preparation for Mastering

Features

Service Presets

Spotify
Apple Music
YouTube
Pandora
BBC iPlayer
Tidal
TV Europe
TV USA
TV Japan
AES
DAB+ Radio

Industry Standard Metering

Program Loudness
Short Term Loudness
PLR (Peak to Loudness Ratio) dynamic range
ITU compliant inter-sample peak

Realtime Preview

Loudness Adjustments (Level Trim and Peak Limiting)
Audio Codecs

Reference & Comparison

Simultaneous metering of reference track with mix
Reference monitoring (A/B)
Loudness matching
A/B Pre/Post Mix Master FX with matched loudness

Specifications

Supported Standards

Our loudness products are compatible with all recommendations and guidance based upon the international standard ITU-R B.S. 1770, revisions 1, 2, 3 and 4 including:

ATSC A/85 (CALM ACT)
EBU R128
EBU R128 S1
ARIB TR-B32
OP-59
AGCOM 219/9/CSP
Portaria 354
DPP

Supported Audio Codecs

HE-AACv1 (AAC+)

HE-AACv2 (DAB+)

Ogg Vorbis

AAC-LC

Available formats

We support AAX, VST, VST3, and AU. OSX 32 & 64-bit and Windows 64-bit.

Minimum System Specification

Mac OSX 10.7.x, 512 MB RAM

Windows XP or above, 512 MB RAM