The Mastering Show · The Mastering Show Podcast

The Mastering Show #100 - Matt Boudreau from Working Class Audio interviews... me !

June 20, 2025·1 hr 17 min·6 clips

Mastering engineer Ian Shepherd reveals why modern plugins let you change things at the mastering stage that were impossible just a few years ago.

Mastering is simple, not easy. The cold open makes that split clear: any modern DAW already has plenty of power, even if newer plugins can now push depth, width, density, and fullness at the mastering stage. The trick is knowing when to stop. Leapwing tools like Stage One and Dyne One come up as useful ways to test a client-facing idea, not as proof that every problem belongs in mastering. Then the conversation wanders, in a good way, through CD burning, secure delivery, better error correction, and the strange little ritual that file export and upload slowly replaced. They pull it back to the career story: the different rooms and stages before working from home was part of the picture. The answer is steady rather than mythic. He spent fifteen years at SRT, trained there, moved up there, and became the head engineer after Nick Watson left for the Townhouse. Nick later working at Fluid Mastering gives the story some lineage without turning it into a lone-genius tale. The work was broader than mastering alone. There was recording, mixing, and a move into surround sound 5.1 for DVD when that lane opened. That mix explains the appeal. Music was the passion, but mastering fit because it joined creative judgement with technical problem-solving. The university bit is quietly funny: physics and music meant quantum mechanics beside Bach chorales, and he says he was terrible at both before finding his way into a recording studio. Cassette eight-tracks, friends' albums, and the live sound crew gave that curiosity somewhere useful to go. The episode is really about patient craft: tools, formats, mentors, and career accidents weighed with the same care as audio decisions.

As heard by us

A practical mastering conversation that values judgment over gear.

The episode treats mastering as a craft, and it keeps coming back to a plain idea: judgment matters more than the tool. It moves through SRT, working from home, and the modern plugin era without losing that thread.

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Why you'd press play

You want a calm masterclass in using modern mastering tools without squashing the life out of it.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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