Nick Landis
Nick Landis is a mastering engineer, consultant, educator, pizza lover, musician, gamer, mountain biker, and husband based in Austin, TX.
User Blog Posts
Immersive Audio and Musical Intent
Immersive formats are often described with words like revealing or more detailed, and that perception-based language is fine, as long as we keep the hierarchy clear. Dolby Atmos and other immersive formats don’t elevate the music on their own. They’re still just a medium. What matters is how artists and mixers choose to use the space.
Atmos isn’t about doing more, it’s about revealing what’s already there. At Nick Landis Mastering, immersive work begins with intention, not excess.
Immersive mastering isn’t the right choice for every project. At Nick Landis Mastering, the question is always whether it serves the music — not whether it’s available.
Stereo and immersive formats aren’t a hierarchy. They’re different tools, designed for different listening experiences. One isn’t automatically more advanced, more professional, or more artistically valid than the other. The right format is the one that serves the song.
What Consistency Actually Means in Mastering
Consistency is one of those words that gets used a lot in mastering, and misunderstood just as often. For some people, consistency means everything should be the same level. For others, it means matching tone from song to song. Sometimes it’s taken to mean removing contrast altogether. That’s not what consistency is for.
In mastering, consistency isn’t about sameness. It’s about making sure the music translates, while still feeling like itself.
Why Mastering Is the Last Creative Step
By the time a record reaches mastering, most of the obvious creative decisions have already been made.
- The songs are written.
- The performances are captured.
- The mixes are approved.
From the outside, that can make mastering look purely technical, like a final polish, a checklist, a quality-control pass before release. But that view misses something essential.
Before I touch an EQ, compressor, limiter, or anything else, I listen.
That might sound obvious, but it’s worth saying out loud — because the first listen tells me more than any meter ever will. In the first 30 seconds, I’m not trying to fix anything. I’m trying to understand what the record is already doing, and what it’s trying to be.
Those first impressions set the foundation for every decision that follows.
For a long time, louder felt like the goal. If your track hit harder than the next one, it grabbed the listener's attention. That mindset made sense when playback systems were inconsistent and volume was a competitive advantage. That’s no longer the world we’re releasing music into.
Today, louder doesn’t mean what it used to. And in many cases, pushing level too far actually works against the music.
What Audio Mastering Can and Can’t Fix. Understanding that distinction is one of the biggest factors in whether a mastering session feels smooth and productive, or frustrating and disappointing. At its core, mastering is about translation, consistency, and intent.
July 11th, 2005 is a date I will always remember. I can hardly believe it was 20 years ago. It was my first day as a full-time mastering engineer. I tell the story often during public speaking engagements responding to the "How did you get your start?" question. It begins in December of 2004 during a mastering session with Kris Kimura for his Shue's Cafe record.
Once your Dolby Atmos mix is finalized and mastered, the next crucial step is selecting a distributor that supports immersive audio formats.
This blog post provides a comprehensive guide to repairing the power supply of the older gray DigiDesign/Focusrite Control 24 control surface for Pro Tools. We focus on the most common issue: power supply failure. This step-by-step guide will walk through the most common issue of capacitor failure and will list all the parts you need for replacement of these parts - hopefully restoring your Control 24 back to working condition. This guide is perfect for DIY enthusiasts looking to extend the life of their Control 24 without professional support or for the studio tech that needs the parts list.