Music Mastering: AudioMaster

This is a must have app for audio engineers and musicians who work remotely. I gave Audio Master 5 stars because it is very functional, stable and there are no ads. No nonsense, just a completely free and flexible audio mastering app. I use it mostly when working remotely; GarageBand iOS is awesome, but when you exports/bounce, even if you gave the master FX/EQ down to about -10dB, it still seems to apply normalization and it will be pretty loud. These days, I use the Garageband iOS FX/EQ master fader down to -10dB workaround trick, and then bring that .wav or .aiff into the Audio Master app. This allows me to regain control and adjust the volume of the .wav premaster. The app never makes you watch an ad to unlock features, and I’ve never seen an ad once. It doesn’t crash, even on my seriously outdated iPhone XR. I also love that it allows imports and exports of 24 bit audio, and there is a “Save to Files” and other share file options. A must have app for audio engineers/musicians who work remotely on iOS. 5/5!

Impressed so far, essentially all this app is is a high end EQ with the ability to raise the volume of already remastered songs. While that might not sound like much, this is something I’ve been pining for for a long time now. This app can make almost any song sound subtlety better if tweaked just right. I even managed to improve on a “Tool” song using this app, just to see if I could do it. I’ve written a lot of songs in my life. A lot of them are unfortunately recorded in very low quality. Looking forward to using this app to improve them to what ever extent I can. Where this app really seems to shine is in improving songs that I recorded on my phone using “Garage Band.” Can’t count the number of time’s Garbage band has lowered the volume of a song I’ve written through the automatic optimization feature, this app will give me the ability to raise that volume back up, as well as improve the quality of the song using the EQ. This app cost $13 a year, a little expensive, but worth it to me. (I will be updating this review shortly once I have gotten a little more experience using it). Update: they just released some new features, reverb/delay. Want to charge an additional $2 a month for them. Come on guys? I’m already paying $13 a year for this. Bit pricey when Garage Band effects are free. Update: apparently they offer another app for life “AudioMaster Pro” that does the exact same thing, but comes with complete package. Only costs a few dollars more than the one I’m purchasing yearly. Wish they’d made that clear. Would saved me $13. Great.

Now, on to screwing indie/zero access musicians... there is absolutely no information upfront about the fact that after you spend time mastering a piece of your hard work on this app they are going to force you to become a subscriber so that you can listen to it. I absolutely abhor people who do business this way. I can afford it but I refuse to pay for it just because of the way this was done. Imagine people who don’t have access to tools to make their music (somewhat approximate) a mastered sound. This app is by no means capable of comparing to what you would get from someone like freq mastering in Portland -for not that much more money. And it’s a way better investment in yourself and on your hard work. There should be a $.99 option to at least complete the one piece of work I spent my valuable time on. But like any other tech company, greed always prevails. What it says to me is you have absolute disregard for the users time, to you its value is zero. Your app designers are good but maybe fire that sales team? Stupid, manipulative and shortsighted.