Mastering with Linux

Now your song is finished and you want to upload it or release it on CD or even vinyl. How to prepare your song for distribution on streaming platforms or physical media? In other words, how to master your song with Linux and open source tools?

This is a short but definitely no definitive guide on how to pursue this endeavor. In this guide we will use the Ardour DAW as the mastering environment, but it could be any DAW or even a plugin host like Carla through which you run your song. So yes, the mastering environment will be plugin based as there are a lot of good open source plugins that can be used for mastering. And since there is a lot of choice, the possibilities are seemingly infinite.

A recent release of Ardour, preferably an official release from ardour.org. Your original work feeding into the master bus of Ardour with a level between -9 and 0dB, preferably around -3dB.

A possible order of plugins could be:

1. EQ
2. Saturation (tube, tape)
3. Compression
4. Limiter

Options for EQ plugins.

Options for saturation plugins.

Options for compression plugins.

Some very commonly used options are:

1. x42 Digital Peak Limiter
2. Steve Harris' Fast Lookahead limiter