More and more people are choosing to get vinyl copies of their music made one at a time, rather than having hundreds of copies pressed at once. Or in very small batches, or allowing fans to order copies on demand.

So how does this work, and what does it mean ? How do you get the best quality results, and minimise the risk of getting something back that you're not happy with ?

Mastering for vinyl is a whole different ball-game, as I discussed in detail with Scott Hull in Episode 94. So in this show, Joe Caithness and I dig into the topic in detail, discussing:

• What is a "lathe cut" or "dubplate"
• How are they made, and how are they different to traditionally pressed vinyl ?
• Do you always need to have your music mastered by a dedicated vinyl cutting engineer ?
• How do you get the specs for the audio you should supply ? And
• Why this can be trickier than it sounds
• Do you really need to mono the bass on vinyl ? And what about phase ?

Links and more episodes here:

www.themasteringshow.com/episode-107

Mentioned in this episode:

Mastering

Click HERE to work with Ian

Tools

For Ian's mastering plugins, click HERE

Leapwing

Find out more about Leapwing's plugins

I see it every day: “The Loudness Wars are over - loud won. Get over it”

And it’s easy to see why. The average mainstream release hits -8 LUFS integrated or more; club releases regularly hit -6 or even -4 LUFS and are peaking well above zero; every other post you see on social media is about a new limiter or clipping strategy…

As the creator of Dynamic Range Day and Loudness Penalty, I should probably just give up and get my hat, right ?

Maybe….

But maybe not.

In this episode I dig into the evidence in 2026, and try to decide whether dynamics really are dead or not, looking at:

1. The LUFS of the biggest recent releases
2. Why no-one hears it
3. Are mixes built too loud to be dynamic ?
4. Why music fans don’t care (which could be good news) - and who does
5. What do we do about it ?
6. Reasons to be optimistic about dynamics in 2026

Links and more episodes here:

www.themasteringshow.com/episode-106

Mentioned in this episode:

Mastering

Click HERE to work with Ian

Leapwing

Find out more about Leapwing's plugins

Learn to master !

Click HERE to see Ian's courses and mastering resources

It was the Grammys this week - you can't have missed it !

And somewhere along the way I saw an article by Ian Vargo assessing the loudness and dynamics of the nominees for Best Song.

In this episode I talk about what he discovered, and what my reaction is – and along the way, I talk about:

1. The highest (and lowest !) LUFS measurements of the Best Song nominees
2. How I feel about that
3. What these songs sound like with more dynamics
4. What difference does it make ?
5. Is loudness really "part of the aesthetic" ?
6. And what really does make a difference ?

Links and more episodes here:

www.themasteringshow.com/episode-105

Mentioned in this episode:

Mastering

Click HERE to work with Ian

Leapwing

Find out more about Leapwing's plugins

Tools

For Ian's mastering plugins, click HERE