For years, I'd have everything in: I would be slapping this and that on, trying different equipment and plugins all the time. But that wasn't my problem. It wasn't the EQ, not the limiting. My problem was I couldn't hear what I was doing. Now, I don't have masses of equipment and plugins anymore. I don't need them, because I realised that the secret to great mastering was to have a room that I could hear what I was doing in. Now, what I do is spend a lot of time trying to get my room sounding better and tighter,...

When it comes to mastering, you need to be able to hear super highs and lows. And that's the main problem with using smaller speakers in a smaller room for mastering. Things will usually translate well across most speakers. But if you're mastering, you need to have full range speakers. Otherwise, you can't master because you can't hear what's going on in the low end and on at the top. Now, you might be thinking, "But you have really small speakers at the back of the room!" Those speakers are key audio speakers; they are full range speakers, even if...