Setmaster FAQ

My set sounded right when I recorded it. Why master it?

Because it sounded right in that room. A club system with a heavy low end makes the bass-heavy tracks feel too big, so you pull them down.

Then the set plays on headphones, in a car, on a laptop. The room stays behind, but your corrections travel with the file. Setmaster levels the drops for wherever the set plays next.

More on this: Should you master your DJ mix?

My gain staging slipped. Does Setmaster fix that?

The levels, yes. A trim set by ear or a channel fader left a little low leaves a drop at a level of its own. Setmaster evens it out like any other: one gain per drop, toward your loudest.

What it cannot undo is clipping. A peak cut off on the way into the recording stays cut off, and no gain brings it back.

Is this the right tool for a single track?

Probably not. It is built for the problem of dozens of already-mastered tracks sitting at different levels. One unfinished track still has a mix to finish, and that is a job for a mastering engineer.

What does Setmaster do to my set?

It finds the drops. A gain automation curve brings them to one level. Then it proposes a final loudness depending on your file. A quiet recording is lifted to -1 dBTP, a loud one keeps its own loudness. You can change it. With EQ, pan, artefact detection, crop and trim you have all tools to get your recording upload-ready.

What does it cost?

Free gets you the first 60 minutes of your set. Paid is full length.

Do I need an account?

No sign-up and no password. Your email address and your delivery link are how we know it is you when you come back for an edit, so keep both.

What can I upload?

WAV, MP3 or FLAC, up to 4 hours and 8 GB. The 4 hours is the real limit; the 8 GB is there to stop abuse. On the free tier a set longer than 60 minutes still uploads, but only its first 60 minutes are edited and rendered.

Why pay for this when I could do it in a DAW?

You could, and it would be correct. Cut at the section boundaries, measure the integrated loudness of each drop, draw the envelope: a few careful hours for a two-hour set. Setmaster does that job automatically and much faster. It shows you every number it picked. If you would rather do it by hand, nothing here argues against it.

The steps by hand: How to master a recorded DJ mix.

Is my set compressed or limited?

No compressor and no limiter. The levelling only changes volume. The one change to the sound is the clipper: it clips your music's tallest peaks when the level goes above 0 dBTP, and any click that goes over full scale.

Is machine learning involved, and do I have to accept what it decides?

Only to find the drops. The gain values are not machine learning: they come from measuring each section and simple arithmetic. Nothing is generated, replaced or resynthesised, and every boundary and every value is visible in the editor, where you can change it before you render. Your audio is never used to train models, and that is a term of the contract, not a policy we can quietly revise.

My master came back quieter than my mix. What went wrong?

Nothing. Before you render, the loudness step shows how loud your master will be. Setmaster proposes a master quieter than your recording only if the recording is already heavily clipping. You can still push it up to the loudness of your recording.

More on this: Why is my DJ mix so quiet?

What loudness do I get, and is it enough for SoundCloud?

You set it. Setmaster proposes a loudness for your file, and you can go quieter or louder. At -1 dBTP none of your music is cut, with headroom for encoding and streaming. Above -1 dBTP, SoundCloud's re-encode can push the peaks over full scale and clip them. Above 0 dBTP the clipper cuts the tallest peaks so the set comes up. You see where it clips and how much, and you can listen before you render.

Can I make it louder?

Yes. Go louder on the loudness step and Setmaster's clipper cuts the tallest peaks, so the rest of the set can come up further. Setmaster marks the point where it starts to get rough. You can go up to it or past it. Before you render you can compare the result with your recording at the same loudness. Up to 0 dBTP none of your music gets cut, so lossless playback (WAV, FLAC) stays clean. Streaming platforms re-encode your file to a lossy format, which can push peaks above -1 dBTP over full scale and clip them.

Why a clipper and not a limiter?

A limiter turns the whole passage down around every peak, and across a set you hear that as pumping. A clipper only touches the peaks themselves, a few samples at a time. Up to the point Setmaster marks, that is fewer than 100 samples in a million. Past that point it gets audible as a harder, rougher sound, and Setmaster tells you when you are there.

Why -1 dBTP?

It leaves headroom for encoding. A lossy encode can push peaks higher than they sat in the file, so a master right at full scale can clip after the encode. SoundCloud uses lossy formats and asks for true peak below -1 dBTP. Volume can be turned up or down later. Clipping from the encode stays in the file for good.

How long does it take?

Your set is analysed once it is uploaded and rendered once you finish editing, and the master arrives by email. The processing itself is about five minutes for a sixty minute set, roughly three to analyse and two to render, and longer when another set is ahead of yours, because one analysis runs at a time. The rest of the wait is yours: the editor is open for as long as you want it.

Can I use it on my phone?

You can download a finished master on a phone. The editor is not made for small screens.

Can I change something after the master is delivered?

Yes, for as long as the link is alive. You get the first master plus ten edits, with at least five minutes between renders. Each edit is a full re-render and it pushes the link's expiry back. Your original file stays on the server for 24 hours after your last visit. After that you upload it again.

What happens to my audio?

It is processed on a server in Germany and it does not leave it.

In the app itself: no tracking, no third-party analytics, no cookies, no third-party scripts. Deletion is on a schedule and we cannot undo it, so download your master and keep your original.

Complaints and refunds

Mail us at mastering@krateo.me. We would rather refund than argue. Your 14-day right of withdrawal ends when we start producing your master. The box at checkout says so. Polar is the seller, so a refund runs back through Polar. Your warranty rights are untouched.