Can you share your method for achieving a cohesive sound across an entire album during the mastering stage?

To achieve a cohesive sound across an album during mastering, I rely primarily on using a reference track as the foundation. This helps establish a consistent tonal balance and loudness level that guides the entire album. Alongside this, I use iZotope's Tonal Balance Control to ensure all tracks align spectrally with the reference, creating a unified sonic experience.

For loudness consistency, I turn to the Youlean Loudness Meter to monitor LUFS and dynamic range. This prevents any abrupt volume differences between tracks, ensuring a smooth listening experience. The combination of a solid reference track and these tools allows me to balance individuality with cohesion, making the album sound polished and professional.

When mastering an album, the lufs, compression, and eq values must be similar to each other. Because album songs are like pieces of a puzzle that complement each other. For this, you can use monitoring tools such as span. Later, listening to the eq values of the previous song with match eq and applying them to the new song would be a good choice. Finally, analyzing the integrated, short, and momentary lufs values and applying them to the new song with a good limiter will be enough to give the album feel. In some cases, you may detect a bassline, vocals, or drums that have different decibels than the previous song. For these, there are separate stems db editors suitable for use in the last stage. Don't forget to turn on the true peak option in the limiter, keep the peak level around -1db, and turn on oversampling as much as your computer's power can

In a EP or album mastering session, I usually set up all the tracks in the same project, so that I can constantly reference and listen to them. In particular, I love to listen to the transitions between the songs to make sure that the levels are balanced, and they work in relation to each other. I don’t think it’s necessary to have all the songs hit the exact same level on the meter. For example, if an album has an intimate acoustic ballad, it doesn’t have to be as loud as big heavy rock song. It’s really all about building a flow that works and feel very natural to the songs.

I tend to use a lot of references to albums and song productions that are in the same direction as the project I'm working on. It's very important because it helps my ears to have a direction with respect to the song plans. I also make the master of each individual song but then in the set of songs, I go back to modify some EQ, dynamics and saturation issues to have a cohesive album and that when playing the songs all have the same level. A tool I like to use a lot for reference is the ADPTR Metric A/B plugin, I highly recommend it!

Creating cohesion across an album involves consistency in EQ, dynamics, and perceived loudness. I start by referencing tracks within the album, noting differences and similarities in tonal balance and loudness. I’ll apply subtle EQ adjustments to make sure the tracks sit well together in frequency range, and I often use a light touch of multiband compression to control any stray dynamics. Matching the perceived loudness across tracks is essential, as it prevents listeners from adjusting the volume track-by-track. Finally, I always compare the album to a reference to ensure it aligns with the intended style.

Hello everyone, it's Hill a mixing and mastering engineer based in Barcelona.

Achieving a cohesive sound across an album in mastering involves both a technical and artistic approach to make sure all tracks feel unified while letting each one retain its unique character. Here’s how I go about it:

1. Setting a Sonic Reference: I usually start by listening to the entire album to understand its intended mood and character. Often, I’ll identify one or two “anchor” tracks that best capture the overall vibe, which can guide my approach for consistency across the album.

2. Matching Tonal Balance: I pay close attention to the tonal balance of each track, using EQ to ensure there’s a similar warmth, brightness, or body throughout. This helps different songs sit together naturally when played in sequence without jarring changes in tone.

3. Managing Dynamics and Loudness: I work on matching the dynamic range across tracks, ensuring they have a similar loudness without over-compressing. By doing this, the energy flows naturally from one track to the next, giving the album a smoother listening experience.

4. Stereo Imaging Consistency: I focus on achieving a uniform stereo image, so that the width and depth feel consistent across the album. This helps keep the immersive quality intact, enhancing the sense of space and atmosphere.

5. Careful Use of Limiting: Each track’s limiting is carefully adjusted to avoid drastic differences in loudness. I aim for a level that’s powerful yet controlled, so tracks don’t sound unevenly loud while maintaining a natural dynamic flow.

6. Listening in Sequence: Lastly, I always listen to the mastered album in sequence, often multiple times and on different playback systems, to make sure the tracks work together as a whole. If I spot any tonal or dynamic imbalances, I’ll make minor tweaks to ensure smooth transitions between songs.

I hope this helps, best regards. 

The main thing depends on the intentions of the album and... of course the intentions of the artist or the band, that will depend on what is being conveyed between each song and in each album. One of the wonderful things about Studio One is that I can work on the mastering of each project in a single session and I can give it a general balance without having to modify the mastering configuration of each session.

I am still from the old school, I have a book with several notes that include the intentions and details of the songs that must be taken into account since we usually work remotely and I try to be very receptive to what the client wants and more the fact of maximizing what he wants with my experience and knowledge.

I do all the regular things you always do but my last step is to take the quietest part of each song, cut about 6 seconds of it, take the loudest part of each song, cut about 6-10 seconds of that, then drop them all together, it sounds like a skipping CD, its not really something fun to listen to, but you'll notice right away if - for example - the drums are too quiet on one track, or one track feels louder overall. Looking at the LUFs of each track and comparing them is also good, but overall you need to trust your ears. I hate when there's an album where one song is really polished and great and the rest of it is not cohesive, this was especially common in 90s and 2000s albums where there was a 'hit single' planned for one of the songs.