please post you favourite reference songs for mastering purposes. they should obviously have a great tonal balance and also cover the full frequency spectrum (including sub) so they ll be usebal also for sub/bass heavy genres. acoustic genres are welcome too but should have a sub or very low bass (such as eg. reggae). please always include youtube links to the songs you ll post so readers of this post can directly check your suggested songs in order to evaluate if they might be useful for them.

mine are:

The Weeknd - Blinding Lights

Twenty One Pilots - Stressed Out

(this one has no sub though so it isnt allowed here lol but i use it for its great top end and then use the previous one for low end referencing)

 

James Blake - Retrograde
low end check ...

 

Darude - Sandstorm

 

Madison Mars - Ready Or Not
Norman Doray & Bottai - Bring Back The Groove

 

There's a limit to your sub

 

For Pop anything by Serban Ghanea (The Weeknd - Blinding Lights, Miley Cyrus - Midnight Sky, Ariana Grande, Bruno Mars etc..)
For Dubstep/EDM anything by Zomboy/ Skrillex or Rob Swire (Knife Party/Pendulum).
For Rock anything by Andy Wallace (Too much good stuff to even mention names), CLA or Joe Barresi (Tool, Slipknot, etc..)
But i think it really depends on the song.. Because its only fair to compare stuff if its really close to the genre/vibe or even in the same key.

 

the reference, if any, are technical specs. and where not, it is pretty material dependent.

plus it is of course dependent on the target, streaming and vinyl have quite special needs.

and if you are wise you dont do it yourself for your own music, even if you are able to. ;)

 

heehee.

mastering: twerk, back in the days using an vt-747?

 

I like the OP's post and I do think the goals in this thread are good... but...

I went through that process a long time ago when I really did believe that some mysterious process
of matching sound quality could be demystified and then help me make better mixes.

So, I collected a list of my favourite tracks, mostly rock and pop at that time, and I started to seriously pay attention
to which sound engineering aspects were responsible for making the tracks sound so good.

The problem that I ran into was simple and immediate...
Some of the best sounding tracks had quite poor sound engineering features!
In fact, some of the really great tracks were really dreadful from a sound engineering perspective,
but from an enjoy listening to the music perspective they were still really great.
The sound engineer in my head really didn't like that result - a frustrating lesson - but it's not something that I could ignore.

Today, I do still strive to get the sound engineering right, I do still believe in that.
But getting the music ingredients right overwhelmingly eclipses that concern.

For me, the musical ingredients have got to be magical (not perfect - just magical)
and the sound engineering, in comparison, just has to be good enough.

Ages ago, I recorded a choir using just four microphones.
From a sound engineering perspective, I really didn't do that choir any favours but that recording can still blow my head off.

Try it, go as far back in history as you like.
At some point you'll find some truly awesome, and hugely popular tracks, where the sound engineering is really awful.
And I'm prepared to bet that probably applies to any genre.

 

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/18CgixGE5qxqL9ZQb3c7nh

 

I have no talent so I'm hoping I can just throw my trash music through iZotope and match the EQ to actual good music.