NUGEN Audio - MasterCheck 2

MasterCheck 2 is NUGEN Audio's cross-platform mastering checker: a plugin that lets you hear what Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube and the rest will do to your track before you release it. It's built for mastering engineers, and just as useful for producers and mixers who want to know whether a loud master is costing them punch once the platforms turn it down.

It doesn't process your audio at all. It measures, emulates and compares, so the decisions about limiting and loudness are made with your ears and the right numbers in front of you.

Hear the platform, not just the meter

Streaming services normalise loudness, so a master that's been pushed hard simply gets turned down to sit alongside everything else, and all that's left of the extra level is the squashing. MasterCheck 2 lets you audition that directly. Pick a platform preset and it plays your master back at the level the service will, so you can compare it fairly against a more dynamic version. Codec mode goes a step further and lets you hear what lossy encoding does to the track, so encoding artefacts and inter-sample overs can be dealt with before release rather than discovered afterwards.

The numbers that matter

Alongside Integrated loudness and True Peak, MasterCheck shows PLR (peak to loudness ratio) and PSR (peak to short-term loudness ratio). These two are the useful ones: they tell you how much dynamic range has survived the limiter, which says far more about how a master will feel on a playlist than the headline LUFS figure does.

What's new in version 2

MasterCheck 2 was rebuilt from the ground up. It now handles stereo, surround and immersive formats up to 7.1.4, enough to take a Dolby Atmos bed, adds presets for more streaming services, and has a resizable interface with portrait and landscape views so it fits whatever screen layout you work with.

Where it fits

MasterCheck lives at the very end of the master bus, after your limiter. It's worth having on the mix bus too: if a mix is already too hot or over-compressed, there's nowhere for the mastering stage to go. It also makes a very good demonstration tool for the client who still believes louder is better. If you release music to streaming platforms, this is the quickest way to stop guessing.

Features

• Audition loudness normalisation for Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, YouTube, SoundCloud, Bandcamp, Qobuz, Pandora and more
• Codec mode to hear and pre-empt encoding artefacts
• Integrated loudness, True Peak, PLR and PSR measurement
• Offset to match function for referencing playback levels
• Stereo, surround and immersive support up to 7.1.4, including Dolby Atmos beds
• Resizable interface with portrait and landscape views
• Metering and auditioning only: your audio is never altered

System requirements

• Mac: macOS 11 or later (64-bit)
• Windows: Windows 8 or later (64-bit)
• AAX, VST3 and AU (Mac only), plus AudioSuite

SOUND7 is an authorised NUGEN Audio reseller.
Digital delivery: licence activation code sent by email.