“A bad master can easily ruin an otherwise great song,” says YouTuber, producer and content creator Benn Jordan. “And that’s because it’s a much overlooked creative process that’s always been a very necessary part of recorded music.”

He’s right – mastering is key in any music intended to be released publicly. Mastering engineers are responsible for enhancing the final sound quality of a track, optimising it for consistent playback across devices, and much more. But professional engineers don’t come cheap.

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“A good, experienced mastering engineer can be pretty expensive,” Jordan explains. “I’ve personally charged between $1,500 and $2,500 for albums I’ve mastered in the past.”

Naturally, when an essential part of the process like mastering costs a lot, other solutions – like AI mastering platforms and plugins – crop up to allow those with smaller budgets to participate. But are they really a substitute for a proper, experienced, human engineer? Benn Jordan takes a look in his latest video.

In an impressively vast experiment, Jordan handed a mixdown of his 2017 track Starlight to a selection of AI mastering plugins, online mastering platforms and professional mastering engineers, randomised the results, and asked 472 people to listen to and rate them all in a “giant double-blind study”.

The study originally consisted of 12 semi-finalists in total – both AI and human – which were then culled down to seven finalists as Jordan didn’t want to subject all 472 people to listening to the same song 12 times. Intriguingly, LANDR, one of the most popular online mastering services, didn’t produce a good enough master, and was disqualified.

The seven finalists placed, in descending order: Native Instruments Ozone 11 in 7th, then Kits.ai, Compound Audio’s Stereo Mastering, Ozone + Neutron, and open-source site Matchering 2.0 in 3rd.

As you might have guessed, both top spots went to human mastering engineers: Ed the Soundman in 2nd, and the winner, Max Hosinger, in 1st place.

See more from Benn Jordan via his official YouTube channel.

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