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LANDR Select— User Guide
Welcome to LANDR Select,
the premium LANDR member’s club.
—
It all starts right here. This pro-level LANDR User’s Guide will help you get the very best results possible from your LANDR masters.
In this guide, you’ll find pro-tips on using LANDR, mixing your recordings, headroom (a major key to success for mixing), file formats,
and more - all directly from our top-tier mastering engineers.
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What is LANDR, and What Does it Do? —
LANDR has changed the mastering process with drag-and-drop simplicity, giving results that rival professional studio work in minutes. This opens up a world of
possibilities for producers: LANDR your demos before sharing them, drop in full length DJ mixes or live recordings, make a track on the road and have it mastered
in time for your gig the same night. LANDR lets you integrate mastering seamlessly into your creative process.
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LANDR is smart and getting smarter. Our system is built around an adaptive engine that ‘listens’ and reacts to music, using micro-genre detection to make subtle frame-by-frame adjustments using tools like multi-band compression, EQ, stereo enhancement,
limiting and aural excitation based on the unique properties of the song.
Basically, the more we throw at LANDR, the better it gets.
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How to Mix for LANDR —
There are a few factors to consider before uploading your track to LANDR.
Here’s a few tips for getting the best possible results.
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Format
To get the most out of LANDR, it’s best to upload your track in a loss-less, uncompressed format - like a WAV or AIFF format. MP3s are com-pressed and don’t contain your song’s full information, so they are not recommended for uploading.
Bit Depth / Sample Rate
When exporting/bouncing your final mix (also known as a premaster) it’s important to set the bit depth / sample rate of the file as high as pos-sible – 24bit/96kHz or higher is recommended. The lowest we recom-mend is 16bit/44.1kHz. Keep in mind the upload limit per track on the website is 1GB. Also be sure not to add any dithering – LANDR will do that for you.
Leave the master fader to us
Please don’t add any plug-ins or processing on the master fader of your digital recording device; we know it’s tempting - trust us - we won’t lead you astray.
Headroom
This is really, really important. If you don’t leave headroom, your mas-tered track will sound distorted and fuzzy – and not in a cool way. We recommend -6dBFS. To do this, you’ll need to lower all of your faders so your master output peaks at -6dBFS.
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Since headroom is so important, here are a few tricks for creating it —
Use Your Eyes AND Ears
Keep an eye on your master fader. The “0” is the clipping point. Ideally, at the end of your production, you should have around 6dBFs between zero and the highest peak of your song. If at the end of your mixdown, your master meter looks like this (above), you know you‘ve achieved a decent headroom.
Work With Your Channel Faders, Not Your Master Fader
Use your channel faders to avoid hitting zero in your master channel. When you exclusively lower the master fader, it may create some headroom but it’s likely that your DAW will still bounce a smashed (distorted) file. This is a very common problem.
Work in 24 Bit
Many engineers are using 24 bit as a their default these days. The reason is not necessarily that 24 sounds better, but rather, it gives more space (hello headroom!) to work within.
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Don’t Jump Into Automation Too Early
Automating volume and effects changes can seem really enticing, probably because it is a very visual process. But it’s also a common amateur mistake. Automating too early in the mix process will eat up headroom. Start off by making a rough mix with no automation, flesh out your track as much as possible and then use automation as a tool to make a more dynamic mix in the end stages.
Work Backwards From the Loudest Sections
Most DAW’s run linearly from left to right. Chances are that you are starting from the beginning of a track, right? Try looping the loudest section and mix it first. Then move to the medium intensity sections and finally the lowest.
*Try referencing classical or jazz and pay particular attention to the vol-ume swells. Try to replicate these changes in your own mixes.
Pick an Element in Your Mix and Highlight it
Do you want the vocal and synth to drive the song? Decide ahead of time which parts of your arrangement are going to be on top volume wise and start there. After that work in other tracks underneath. Sound is physics - there is only so much space in a mix to work with.
It may take a few tries to make headroom a part of your workflow, but I guarantee you, your mixes will become far more dynamic with a far bet-ter feel and make for HUGE sounding masters. Get started with a new track, do it now! There’s no better time to start working on headroom.
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Customizing Your Masters —
LANDR has three intensity options: low, medium and high. Choose High Intensity for maximum loudness.
If you want to remain as true to your dynamics as possible, stick with the low intensity. And if you want to strike a nice
balance between the two, use medium.
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To preview all of your intensity options, click on the Change Intensity button during the preview stage. That said - LANDR will
analyze your track and set a default intensity based on the characteristics of your track.
To re-master a previously uploaded track to a new intensity, click on the track in your track library, then click the + Remaster button
at the top right. You’ll be able to compare the mastered and original previews for each intensity option.
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File Formats
LANDR offers mastering in the following file formats:
Lo-MP3
Quick. Dirty. Compressed. Low res MP3s at 192kbps are awesome for sharing ‘cause of the file size.
Hi-MP3
Small files that sound great. 320kbps MP3s mean your files are lightweight but sound great. Can you hear the difference a little com-pression makes?
WAV
The Gold standard. WAVs are uncompressed. Uncompressed means lossless. Lossless means sounds amazing. Technically, we are talking 16bit 44.1khz.
HD-WAV
When you need the best. If you want to make it in the biz… You gotta go high res. Great for broadcast, MFIT, film and archival purposes. 24bit 96khz.
The difference between low-res and high-res MP3s is the bit rate at which they’re sampled. Our low-res MP3 masters are sampled at 192 kilobits per second, and our high-res MP3 masters are sampled at 320 kilobits per second. If there are more kilobits per second, there is more audio information, making the master higher quality.
Uncompressed WAV format is a totally dif-ferent file format than an MP3, because it is lossless.
Lossless audio formats keep all of the original source audio information, so they are of a much higher resolution and quality.
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This guide equips you with all the info you need to get truly amazing results from LANDR.
Ready to get started?
Need some more help? We’re here for you.
We've got an awesome team of audio engineers who are readily available to give LANDR Select members feedback and insight. If you're not 100% satisfied with your master, just write to us at
[email protected] with the name of the track and the date you mastered it.
Please include some details on what exactly you need help with and we'll do everything we can to get you a master that you're excited about.
START MASTERING
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