Vinyl Mastering Online
High Quality, Transparent Mastering

What loudness should you target for Vinyl?

Vinyl mastering is fundamentally different from digital: there is no loudness target to chase, because the physical medium and the cutting engineer set the limits. Your job is to deliver a clean, dynamic pre-master that cuts well. Give the lathe engineer a dynamic master closer to your mix level (around -14 LUFS integrated, never a crushed digital master), because loud, dense masters force wide groove modulation, shorten the side, and reduce playback volume. Keep the low end tight and centred: bass energy below roughly 100-150 Hz should be summed toward mono, since loud stereo bass makes the cutting head modulate vertically and can cause the stylus to skip. Tame sibilance and harsh highs above about 10 kHz, because the stylus physically cannot track exaggerated high-frequency content and it distorts on playback, especially toward the inner grooves where velocity drops. Do not apply the RIAA curve yourself — that is applied at the cutting stage and reversed by the listener’s turntable preamp; your pre-master should be flat and full-range. This preset is a sane, safe starting point that keeps dynamics, controls the low end and eases sibilance; the cutting engineer always makes the final calls and may apply their own EQ, de-essing and variable pitch to fit the side.

When you export from Quantara targeting Vinyl, the engine measures your master's integrated loudness (ITU-R BS.1770 / EBU R128), normalises it toward the -12.0 LUFS reference, and holds inter-sample (true) peaks under -1 dBTP. It will not slam a quiet, dynamic track up to a loud number just to hit a target — and since the major streaming platforms normalise playback anyway, sitting near the reference is what actually matters. You stay in control: tweak the chain, A/B against the original, and export when it sounds right.

How to master your track for Vinyl

Genres to pair with Vinyl

Genre starting points to pair with the Vinyl target: Jazz, Rock, Electronic, Classical, Blues. Each genre has its own frequency balance and dynamics, so treat the preset as a starting point and fine-tune by ear.

Why master Vinyl with Quantara?

A mastering engineer brings trained ears to a release. Quantara gives you a fast, transparent mastering chain tuned for Vinyl: try it with a free account (1 export with a watermark), then unlimited on the Pro plan at €8.99/month. It is a strong, measurable starting point, not a replacement for a trained engineer's ears on a critical release.

Quantara Music masters with its own engine — no AI model. The Vinyl starting point is fully adjustable in real time, and every change shows on real LUFS, true-peak and gain-reduction meters, so you can verify what it does.

Quantara Music gives you full control: adjust every control in real time, hear the difference with A/B bypass, and export when you're satisfied. Mastering runs entirely in your browser: your files are not uploaded for mastering.

FAQ — Vinyl mastering