Whenever I finish a track in Famitracker or Furnace, I export it as WAV, open it in Audacity, normalize the volume, and that’s it. That’s been my “mastering” so far.

But I’m wondering if there’s more I could do to make my songs sound better before releasing them. Do you use EQ, compression, limiters, or other tricks? What does “mastering” mean to you?

I’d love to hear your workflows and tips, and see what else I could do to polish my releases.

I master ominously

This really depends on what you want your final song to sound like, mastering is as much an artform as it is a method.

If you find that just a raw render and normalization is what works for you, then just keep doing that, there's no reason to overcomplicate this aspect. This is preferred for BotB anyway and is what I do for this site.

If you want to colour your sound slightly more, then you can add some EQ as well and boost frequencies that you like and cut out what you don't like.

If you want to make it sound like those YouTube uploads with stereo and reverb and whatnot, or like those old 80s Konami cassette OSTs, you can also add a bit of reverb and chorus.

As for what I do: It might not necessarily be what you want, and my methods do vary per song - something like lakeside had me cut out the specific N163 hiss frequency, but doing the same for a 2A03 only song would sound weird.

My chain is mostly tiny amount of reverb (1.5-5% wet with pretty short settings) for something that you can feel but not notice, some compression to even out very quiet and very loud sections, and even this is at a pretty low mix level, EQ to boost/cut parts I like or not like, and then limiting to ensure it's loud enough.

How you achieve this, and what tools you use as well, are a great way to stir up an entire conversations about tools and whatnot that I am just not interested in doing personally. I use what works, and you should use what works for you.

For things that are not chiptune, I typically only use a limiter. The best "master" is having a good mix going into your master bus that you only need to use a limiter on for a desired loudness level.

for strict chiptune; no master!

I'll usually max the song's level to -0.3db and if there's like a lone peak or two that's way higher than the rest I'll let them get chopped. when making the tune I'll want to keep the kick and the bass out of each others' way if there's like full on bass. for lone dpcmless 2a03 this is easy enough bc the one triangle can do kick and bass but only one at a time. for sgen I'll often duck the bass out the way at the instrument stage by having a more gradual attack on the bass adsr for when the kicks land

for anything full daw I'll export the mixed song and master in FL Studio. soundgoodizer works for me and it's fast and easy. but first I EQ; I roll back any of the really low lows below 25hz. a next step I started doing, but in really small amounts, is the spreader. I leave everything 300hz and below as-is; for me this area's already more or less in mono. anything higher I open up just a little; iirc last time it was like 10%? just until the spreadered version sounds natural and the raw mix sounds like it's obviously missing something. my final step is two really light runs thru soundgoodizer; first at B, final at A. the first B pass gives me mids. like how all the 80s Slayer albums have the midrange that make the mix come alive? that's what I listen for! usually around 10% to 17% does it for me. maybe not even that much. the final pass thru A completes the mix. it doesn't take much. sometimes only 6%. the hi hats come out, the bass comes alive, and the mix just sets right. everything's just bigger and more present

mixing makes the internals fit the song. mastering makes the song fit the universe! in chiptune the module is the song. so I do no change at all on the master except raw volume boosts and cuts. those can be really important for a full album. some of the sine only or one channel tunes have no real drum peaks so the song has to be cut like 15db to fit what song came before and what song comes after

and yes the stages blend together some. some mix issues can clean up upstream at the arrangement stage. some mastering issues can be worked out in the mix

My mastering ends with wav export and conversion to mp3))

Normalize, light compression, limiter, normalize again, boom.

But also what MelonadeM said. You can go deep into the eqing, multiband compressor etc. But I feel like my biggest mistake is normally getting lost in details. What makes a track sound legit is arrangement > mix > master.