D.I.Y.

LANDR Establishes A “Gold Standard” For Free Automated Music Mastering

LANDR — logo 1CIf you know you need mastering but your needs exceed your skill level or your wallet, you might have found a new friend at LANDR. LANDR is an online mastering service that automates the mastering process for quick results. There is a free option and the service is designed to get you onboard and testing it out right away. The goal, as they explain, is not to replace engineers but to establish a "gold standard" baseline for free mastering.

LANDR officially launches today featuring "intelligent music mastering technology" or automated, online drag and drop music mastering with a lot of research behind it. LANDR was created by MixGenius whose team includes a great deal of music, tech and business expertise.

The basic MP3 service is free with monthly subscription plans for higher quality options:

Hobbyist: Free
Unlimited 192kbps MP3
A/B comparison
MP3s are always free

Amateur: $9/month
4 uncompressed masters
Unlimited 192kbps MP3
Control of mastering settings

Pro: $19/month
UNLIMITED* uncompressed masters
Unlimited 192kbps MP3
Control of mastering settings
*for personal use only

So basically you can check it out for yourself and make your own before and after conclusions.

LANDR is the creation of MixGenius who describe themselves as:

"An intelligent audio technology company based in Montreal, Canada. The founding technology is based on Ph.D. research in signal processing and has been developed and refined over 7 years at a number of world-leading universities. "

"Created with the goal of freeing musicians from the costs and technical expertise required to achieve professional-sounding music production, LANDR is the first commercial release from MixGenius."

Interestingly enough, they answer the question, "Are you going [to] replace sound and mastering engineers?, on their About page:

"Certainly not, the world will always need engineers but we hope that our service will make mastering engineering better, that maybe we’ll set a sort of gold standard for the industry. I mean, if free mastering sounds this good, imagine what expensive will sound like?"

If you check LANDR out please let us know the results in the comments.

Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (@fluxresearch) posts music crowdfunding news @CrowdfundingM. To suggest topics about music tech, DIY music biz or music marketing for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.

admin on 05/12/2014 in D.I.Y. | Permalink | Comments (8)
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8 Comments

  1. I gave it a try but the end results were always awful compared the original mix. Just reading their website makes me realize they have no idea what “mastering” is. They think that means add a bunch of processing to music. My mixes were pretty good to begin with and they came back with all sorts of unnecessary nastiness. Yuck.

  2. LANDR is a sonic disaster, everything gets ruined but sounds loud, bright and aggressive

  4. I gave it a try, did 3 songs on it, first two sounded quite a lot different, in a semi good way. It was good but not how i would’ve liked it, it made them sound like they were quite more high end and harsh. The first track however was killed. It didn’t have the same feel to the track as it did have before. i think it really depends on how well you mater or setup your song yourself before using LANDR.

  5. As a mastering engineer myself and referencing LANDR’s work with some of my own on the same tracks, what it does, is essentially makes your track louder. It enhances the high frequencies, makes a few cuts in the irrelevant frequencies, also sometimes either killing/over cooking the midrange making it harsh on ears, then limiting it to get it slightly (or sometimes extremely) louder, thus totally killing the sonics of your music. If you’re serious about your music and have pride in your productions then do yourself a favor and get a REAL mastering engineer to do the job. You can get decent mastering done now for as little as £10 per track. This service is nothing but fancy words and poor results.

  6. I tried it and all it did was make my track sound slightly louder, something which can be done more effectively with my Roxio audio editor (that at least preserves the dynamics) I think I’ll just continue to master my own tracks.
    wyld wyvern

  7. Maybe they need to send the app to school, and then have the app work in a professional mastering house for a while and really get it’s ears trained, then they should give it some hands and arms so it can turn real knobs that relate to relate to real changes that someone wants in the mastering of a particular song…Oh! A real mastering engineer!!!

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