Mastering a cue is not the same job as mastering a record. A film or trailer mix has to hold its dynamic range, survive a dialogue stem sitting on top of it, and still translate on a laptop when the director watches the cut at home. The tools here are judged on that basis: how transparently they hold level, how they behave on a wide orchestral mixdown, and whether their metering tells you the truth about the deliverable spec you have been given.
Our review of the most effective mastering tools. We tested FabFilter, Sonnox, and more to find plugins that deliver competitive loudness perfectly.
A brutally honest breakdown of the 7 best limiter plugins for post-production and scoring stages, cutting through the marketing noise.
Mixing balances the individual stems (strings, brass, percussion, synths). Mastering is the final pass over the stereo mixdown, setting level, tone and translation across playback systems.
It depends on the deliverable. Streaming targets around -14 LUFS integrated. Broadcast in Europe is -23 LUFS to EBU R128, and US broadcast is -24 LKFS to ATSC A/85. Trailer houses usually specify their own spec, so ask before you master.
Peak around -6 dBFS on the master bus. That leaves the limiter something to work with and keeps intersample peaks from clipping on lossy encoding.
Usually a gentler one. Wide dynamic range is the point of an orchestral cue, so aggressive limiting flattens exactly what you spent the session capturing. Reach for slower, more transparent tools first.