Audio Ordeal

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This open-source mastering tool is free…and it actually works great!

3 min read

There are many online tools that can automatically master your track, but today I am going to show you a really cool free mastering tool called Matchering 2.0.

Available on GitHub here, Matchering 2.0 is a “novel containerised web application and Python library for audio matching and mastering”. It can be compared to premium tools such as LANDR and eMastered.

Simply put, it will take your mix and make it sound more like a song of your choosing (with regard to the master mix).

What version to choose?

It consists of two parts: Matchering Core and Matchering Web.

Matchering Core: A separate module for automated reference mastering based entirely on open technologies (Python, Numpy), which can be inserted into any program by any developer for free!

Matchering Web: A client for using Matchering Core inside the browser. It turns out that this is a self-hosted LANDR / eMastered alternative!

How does Matchering 2.0 work?

It works by comparing your track (target track) with a reference track (one you have selected that sounds amazing). It will then work on matching the target track’s RMS, frequency response, peak amplitude, and stereo.

It does this with various stages, including normalisation, Mid/Side (M/S) processing, and splitting track and finding section RMS values. Here it takes every section above the RMS value to differentiate drops and breaks from builds. It then matches them to a normalised value.

SEE ALSO: Ableton Utility’s Hidden Mid-Side processing mode

After that, an equalisation stage takes FFT values and detects frequency responses to match them on each, the Mid and Side tracks separately. Providing a “very precise matching of the stereo width as a bonus”.

It then reanalyses the RMS and adds a brickwall limiter, and re-normalises the audio.

One interesting point about it’s process is that at the splitting stage, it splits the song into 15s intervals. It does this because 15s is the length of time for 8 bars (normally changes occur after 8 bars in EDM) at 128bpm.

The developers note that the software could be “slightly” improved by analysing BPM and setting the timing of splits to the BPM instead, however say that 15s intervals actually work and the results are “already good”.

This video shows it in action, and despite deliberate attempts to make it harder, the tool still managed to do a good job of matching the un-mastered track with the reference.

How did Matchering come to life?

I spoke to Sergey Grishakov, a mastering engineer and developer of Matchering 2.0.

When working on mastering songs, he noticed that his “actions are repeated from order to order”, leading him to wonder if he could automate his routine.

That led to the original Matchering arising in 2017. It received some coverage from music sites, but back then it was a paid service.

Sergey explained what happened to the original project: “Our main competitors were LANDR and eMastered. But due to some circumstances (e.g. the lack of investors), we could not compete with them, and the project was closed.”

The project was far from dead though, and received a breath of life when the code was moved onto GitHub. Sergey said it was the right decision, and the project was revived by contributors to the code.

The project was fully reincarnated this year (2020) with Matchering 2.0.

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