The Mastering Show · The Mastering Show Podcast

The Mastering Show #98 - Stem mastering, Dynamics and Dolby Atmos at Abbey Road (with Oli Morgan)

March 31, 2025·1 hr 19 min·5 clips

Oli Morgan tells Abbey Road students that knowing which engineer takes sugar is more career-determining than technical knowledge in year one.

The opening is deliberately modest. The host starts with the idea that mastering is simple, not easy, then immediately makes it messier: modern DAWs and plugins can now touch things that used to feel out of reach at the mastering stage. Leapwing Audio gets a careful look. Stage One comes up around depth and stereo width. Dynone gets praise for adding fullness and density without just crushing the master flat. The warning comes early. A mastering engineer may be able to intervene with these tools, but that does not make every move a good idea. Sometimes a mix tweak is cleaner, and everyone knows it. Stem mastering lives right in that awkward space. The conversation asks whether stems help the project or tempt the engineer into rebuilding someone else's work. The guest makes the practical case. If the relationship is already there, and the person can name the compressor, attack, release, and ratio, stems can carry the mix forward instead of second guessing it. The host keeps the brakes on. This is not the right way to handle every project, but having the option can matter. Analog hardware gets the same no-myth treatment. Some pieces may be genuinely unique, but plenty of sounds can be approached closely with the right tool and enough judgement. Abbey Road raises the ceiling because its resources make the best case version obvious: rare equipment, shared tooling, and a better shot at careful reconstruction. Atmos is the next complication. When mixing and mastering in Atmos can use the same tools, the boundary between final polish and mix decision gets even blurrier. The episode keeps coming back to control. More stems, stronger plugins, and immersive formats all expand what can happen after the mix. They also make restraint more important. This one is for patient engineers. It cares less about rules than about knowing when a deeper mastering pass is actually helping.

As heard by us

Practical mastering talk that keeps tools in view without losing judgment.

The piece treats mastering as simple in principle and hard in practice, with modern DAWs giving enough control to reach strong results. It uses Leapwing Audio tools such as Stage One and Dynone as concrete examples of how a mix can gain shape and fullness, while also keeping the…

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Why you'd press play

Hear how mastering gets practical once the session turns to plugins, client tweaks, stems, and even Atmos.

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