Reference material is one of your most important anchors to reality - especially when you work in different studios, rooms and speakers. A reference track is a measuring tape: a known, high-quality record you can compare against to calibrate your ears and your meters.
Engineers used to walk into a studio with a CD of records they knew well, and play them before and during a session to tune their ears to the room. The principle has not changed.
Consumer expectation
A reference track represents what listeners expect from a genre. If you want your music to sit alongside a certain kind of record, a reference gives you a target - for loudness, tone, low end, width and vocal level.
References are not for copying. They are for calibration and inspiration.
In production
Use references to map song structure: mark the sections and count the bars of a track in your genre. You will quickly learn the typical shape of that style.
In mixing
References answer questions like: is my snare too loud compared with what counts as loud in this genre? Is my vocal sitting as far forward as a commercial vocal does? References can also calibrate visual meters - spectrum analysers and VU meters.
In mastering
In mastering, references are essential. They tell you how loud, bright, wide and dense a master should be compared with current releases, and they help you judge the approximate crest factor of the genre.
Quality matters
A reference should be the highest quality you can get.
- WAV or AIFF - best. Lossless, full quality.
- FLAC and ALAC - lossless compression; fine for references.
- AAC and MP3 - lossy. Higher bitrates are much better than low ones, but lossy formats discard information and can add artefacts. Avoid them as references where you can.
- Streaming and video sites - apply loudness normalisation and lossy encoding. Fine for a quick comparison, not for detailed mastering decisions.
You cannot convert a lossy file into a lossless one - converting an MP3 to WAV does not restore what was lost.
Matching level
Always match the loudness of the reference to your mix or master before comparing. Louder sounds better, and an unmatched reference will mislead you. Many reference plug-ins do this automatically.
Building a reference library
- 10-20 tracks per genre that you consider among the best-sounding records you know.
- Separate folders for each genre you work in.
- Store them in the cloud and on your phone, so you can play them on any system and in any studio.
- Learn them intimately. A reference only works if you know exactly how it should sound.
Your end goal should be to make records that become someone else's reference.
Do this now
- Build a reference folder for your main genre with at least ten lossless tracks.
- Load one into your mixing session, match its level, and compare your mix's vocal level and low end.
- Map the structure of one reference, marking every section.
Adapted, with thanks, from the lesson notes of J.M. Brooklyn Audio Mastering.