Mixing & Mastering

Guide: Mastering Music In Soundtrap Using Presets

Jul 12, 2025

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Tero Potila

Music mastering turns your raw recordings into polished, professional tracks that sound great on any sound system. This vital last step in music production balances frequencies, controls dynamics, and makes sure your music translates from studio monitors to car speakers to streaming platforms.

Mastering can definitely make or break a release. You might have a killer mix, but if you skip proper mastering, your track just won’t have the punch or clarity to compete with commercial releases.

The process calls for technical precision and a bit of artistic judgment to really bring out your music’s impact.

Understanding your mastering options helps you make smarter choices for your final sound.

What Is Mastering In Music?

Mastering is the final stage of audio production, where you polish your mixed track and get it ready for distribution. This technical step boosts your music’s sound quality and helps it work well on different playback systems and formats.

Mastering vs. Mixing Explained

Mixing combines all your individual tracks into a cohesive stereo mix. Here, you balance levels, tweak EQ, add compression, and throw in effects to each instrument on its own.

Mastering takes that finished mix and treats it as a single stereo file—you’re working with the whole picture, not individual pieces anymore.

The mix you finish becomes the source for mastering. You can’t pull apart vocals from drums at this point, unlike in mixing.

The Goal of Mastering

Mastering aims to create a balanced, professional-sounding master that’s ready for release. Your track needs to sound solid everywhere: streaming, car speakers, headphones, clubs—you name it.

A good mastering engineer listens for tonal balance across the spectrum. They’ll make sure your low end still works on tiny speakers but keep harsh frequencies from taking over.

Primary objectives include:

• Getting commercial loudness levels
• Keeping volume consistent across album tracks
• Optimizing dynamic range
• Fixing frequency imbalances
• Prepping files for distribution

Essential Steps in the Mastering Process

Soundtrap mastering happens all automatically for you in the background, so that you don’t have to worry about these steps. However, it’s still a good idea to start learning about mastering if you eventually use another Digital Audio Workstation and want to get more into the audio mastering process.

The process follows a systematic approach with specialized tools. Each step needs careful listening and small tweaks.

This is how a professional mastering engineer typically would approach a track they’re mastering:

• EQ and frequency shaping help you fix tonal imbalances. Maybe you want to add a bit of high-end sparkle or tighten up the lows, without messing with individual instruments.
• Compression and dynamics control pull the mix together. Multi-band compression lets you target certain frequency ranges and keep the natural feel intact.
• Stereo enhancement can widen your soundstage, adding spatial depth. This is also a good time to check that things still sound right in mono.
• Limiting is where you hit your target loudness and avoid distortion. The limiter’s your last stop before making a distribution-ready master.

There are also additional technical steps: applying any sample rate conversion, adding metadata, and choosing your file formatting. These are important to get your music ready for different platforms.

Also, always, always use reference tracks! Pick some of your favorite songs in the style you’re working in, where you specifically like the way their masters sound.

I recommend buying a high-resolution WAV file for each reference track so you can compare your track to a high-quality master.

Mastering Music in Soundtrap

Soundtrap is unique in the world of DAWs; it’s completely online, with no need to install software or drivers in order to get going on it.

Once you have a well-balanced mix together where you’ve dialed in your volume levels, panning, EQ, compression, and spatial effects, you’re ready to try out the new Soundtrap Mastering Presets.

Soundtrap’s New Mastering Presets

Now that your mix is ready for mastering, let’s check out the new mastering presets.

The Soundtrap mastering presets work 100% in the background. Instead of having to make every detailed decision about EQ, compression, any stereo enhancements, and limiting, Soundtrap gives you a wide range of presets to choose from that automatically make all those decisions for you.

The presets can give you some great results, with a final product mastered to industry standards. They can help take your production process to the next level.

Will the presets deliver the same quality as a mastering engineer with years of experience and a professional studio? Most likely not. Nothing replaces experience and getting some pro-level ears on your final master.

But, they can get you surprisingly close and help as a final step to dial in a great master for you.

I created a short demo track in Soundtrap using a vocal loop and some instruments for this article, so you can hear the difference before and after mastering.

Here’s the original, unmastered track:

Which Preset Should I Use?

Not sure which one is the best fit for your track? You can preview each preset by selecting it in the Mastering Presets popup and clicking the play button. It also lets you switch between the Original and Mastered versions right there, so you can immediately compare the difference.

Don’t be afraid to try them all out; it won’t affect your project or the final output in any way.

Mastering is all about very subtle, small adjustments. So the differences you’ll hear between different mastering presets are also very small and often have more to do with width, depth, clarity, or punch rather than noticeable loudness.

Now, let’s check out the differences in the sound when I used two different presets on the demo track:

 

You can also choose to export your mix without mastering; click on the checkbox next to Mastering in the Export pop-up, and your track will be exported without any mastering. This is an excellent option if you want to send the final mix to a mastering engineer instead.

Choosing the File Format

Soundtrap gives you three options for the audio file format: WAV, OGG, and MP3.

The WAV files are exported at 16-bit bit depth and 44.1kHz sample rate; this is the format you should choose for the most professional results. It uses no compression, meaning the resulting file will have the highest sound quality.

The OGG format uses some compression but still maintains a very high quality.

No doubt you’re already familiar with MP3s. It’s an excellent format for sharing your music online. It does use some more compression, and you lose some of the quality; however, we’re all already accustomed to listening to music in this format, and on most listening systems, you won’t hear a huge difference.

I exported all the examples in this article using the MP3 export option.

Preparing Your Mix for Mastering

Before you can export a final master, you need to make sure you’ve finished your mixing process.

Every single track should sit well in the stereo image, and you should have space carved out for it using EQ.

​Here’s a quick checklist for a well-balanced mix in case you need to make any adjustments:

1. Volume Levels

Start by proper gain staging and doing a volume level mix. Balance every track with each other so that they’re all as audible as possible.

2. Stereo Positioning

Adjust their position in the stereo image using panning.

Be sure to use the full stereo width, and pick carefully which elements get to use the full width. Others should be more limited in the panning positioning so that not every mix element is the biggest element in the mix.

3. Carve Out Space

Next, carve out space for the lead instruments or vocals using EQ. This might involve low-cuts and other EQ cuts on different audio tracks so that they all fit in naturally within the overall sound.

Here’s my big rule when I’m at this stage of mixing: Resist the urge to solo tracks! It doesn’t matter what an instrument or vocal sounds like when soloed. 

4. Apply Compression Where Needed

Compression is not needed for every single element in the mix. Trust your creative process and your ears! For example, drums can often use compression. Just remember to be very conservative, unless you’re looking for a specific sound that requires heavy-handed compression.

Apply compression on individual tracks and busses as needed. Don’t forget! Less is more.

5. Spatial Effects

It’s also essential to take full advantage of the stereo depth of your mix. Spatial effects like delay, echo, and reverb are excellent for final touches here.

Conclusion

In the end, mastering remains a crucial step that turns your carefully mixed piece of music into a well-mastered track that can stand confidently next to the biggest releases on platforms like Spotify or Apple Music.

Soundtrap’s presets offer an excellent starting point, especially for independent artists seeking affordable prices and an easy workflow in a web browser.

Whether you’re using Soundtrap’s mastering presets, choose AI mastering, dive deeper in another DAW and master tracks yourself, or work with a traditional mastering studio with a pro mastering engineer, the goal is always the same: to make the sound of your music shine.

Remember, each track deserves the best version of itself, so take the necessary steps to create a final master copy that truly represents your artistic vision.

About the author

Tero Potila is a professional music composer and producer. His career combining knowledge and experience from music, TV, film, ad, and game industries gives him a unique perspective that he shares through posts on teropotila.com.