Why AI Online Mastering is Worth Trying in 2024
AI online mastering isn’t anything new in the music production field, but it’s progressed in the years since its inception. Whatever your genre, skill set or style, it’s worth giving a try - Here’s why.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve no doubt heard all about new ways in which artificial intelligence can make our lives easier. This seems to have been amplified in the last couple of years, with the likes of ChatGPT and its creator OpenAI becoming household names. This is partly down to the speed at which AI has improved, becoming faster, more effective and more accessible than ever before.
To put things in perspective, artificial intelligence-powered online mastering has been around for nearly a decade, in which time the technology has become significantly more advanced than it once was. Maybe you’ve never tried AI online mastering, or perhaps you tried it years ago when the complex technology was still finding its feet. Either way, if you’re still asking yourself if AI mastering is worth it, read on to find out the answer.
1. You can Preview Your Masters for Free
We're going to start with arguably the biggest reason why AI mastering is worth taking for a test drive, which is that it's free (yes, free) to try out. Simply head to the Waves Online Mastering page, log in to your account and click Try Free.
From there, you can add your pre-master, wait for the AI-powered mastering engine to analyze and process your track, before previewing the loudest part. You can then compare your mastered track to the pre-master,. You even have the opportunity to adjust the mastering settings to your preferences. Once you’ve had time to evaluate the preview of your high-quality master, you can decide whether or not you want to go ahead and pay to process and export your fully mastered track.
2. Cheap and Flexible Pricing
Which leads us nicely onto the second reason why trying AI mastering is well worth your time: it's a cheap mastering solution when compared to paying for an engineer to master your music for you. If you like the sound of your AI-mastered preview and want to master your entire track, you can invest as little as $2.99 per track for 60 Master Credits.
Alternatively, if you just want to try mastering a single track to see how it sounds in various playback scenarios, before committing to more Master Credits, you can buy a single Master Credit for $5.99. There are other payment options available too, so whether you're an up-and-coming producer who just wants to dip their toe into online mastering, or a record label with a huge pipeline of releases on the horizon, there's a suitable choice for you.
3. It’s Fast and Convenient
On top of being one of the cheapest ways to get your music mastered to a professional standard, it’s also one of the quickest. When hiring a professional mastering engineer to master your music, it can take days or even weeks to get the final versions back. In some cases, that might not be a dealbreaker, but at times you might want or need to get your music ready for performance or publishing at the drop of a hat.
In those circumstances, AI online mastering is your friend. From logging in to Waves Online Mastering and uploading your pre-master to adjusting and exporting your high-quality master, the process can be completed in as little as ten minutes. Not only that, but your pre-masters, masters and reference tracks are all stored in one place, making it easy to jump back into your mastering sessions wherever and whenever you need..
4. It Delivers High Quality, Release Ready Masters
As the final stage in the production process before your music is shared with the masses, you need to be confident that the mastering being applied is of a professional quality. Waves Online Mastering uses highly advanced machine learning technology to apply the knowledge of experienced mastering engineers using Waves’ award winning audio processing. The result is a simple to use online mastering platform that applies release-ready mastering to your audio in minutes.
Piper Payne, an award winning mastering engineer, played a crucial role in the development of Waves Online Mastering. If you want to see how an industry-leading mastering veteran approaches mastering, check out Piper's Mastering in Depth Course.
5. It Gives You Creative Control
When using AI tools in a creative discipline such as music production, it's common to feel like you've left your art in the hands of a machine. On the other hand, using AI to take care of certain tasks allows you to focus more on other areas of your artistry such as songwriting or sound design. With Waves Online Mastering, you get the best of both worlds. The advanced AI engine looks after the general analysis and processing of your master, and the inbuilt Style and Tone modes allow you to retain some of the creative control of your master.
6. You Can Master to a Reference Track
In addition to being able to adjust the Style and Tone of your master, you can also direct the Waves Online Mastering engine to analyze the tone, dynamics and level of a reference track of your choice. This can have a profound effect on the final master. The platform allows you to upload and save multiple reference tracks and it’s super simple to switch between them to see how each reference track impacts the mastering processing being applied to your music.
7. You Can Use it to Reference Your Own Masters
While AI online mastering is an affordable and practical mastering solution for artists and producers of all disciplines, there is still merit to mastering by other means, whether that's using high-quality mastering plugins to master your own music, or paying a professional mastering engineer.
Regardless of your chosen mastering approach, Waves Online Mastering can be used as an additional reference point to check your masters against. Let's say you're just learning the ropes of mastering, and you're pretty confident in your work but you want to see how your attempt holds up. Using the free preview functionality, you can critically listen to the differences between your master and the AI-master. This might give you clues or cues on how you could tweak the tone, level, dynamics or stereo width of your own mastering processing.
Why AI Online Mastering is Worth Trying in 2024
In the world of services, it's often said that you can have something quick, good, or cheap, but not all three, but that doesn't hold true for AI online mastering. Artificial intelligence and machine learning within creative industries has made huge advances, professional masters are instantly accessible to producers and artists and are regarded as the most affordable low cost option. Now is a great time to experiment with using AI to discover new ways of improving your creative workflow, and given it's free to try, Waves Online Mastering is the ideal place to start.
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