Mastering · Psy-Trance
How to Master a Psy-Trance Track
Real numbers from measuring released tracks, not "turn the loudness knob up" advice.
Psy-trance mastering has a reputation for being loud and a little brutal, and that reputation is earned - but "loud" isn't a mastering strategy, it's a side effect of getting the actual decisions right. The three that matter most are loudness target, low-end mono discipline, and how hard the sidechain pumps. Get those three wrong and no amount of a limiter pushed into the red will make a track sound like it belongs on a real lineup.
1. Loudness: -7 to -9 LUFS integrated, not "as loud as possible"
Streaming platforms normalize loudness anyway, so chasing an extra decibel past what the genre actually needs just adds distortion for no perceptual gain. Psy-trance and full-on tracks that actually sound clean on a real festival system typically land in the -7 to -9 LUFS integrated range, with a true-peak ceiling around -1 dBTP to leave codec headroom for streaming transcodes. Go louder than that and you're usually clipping transients you can't get back, not making the track feel bigger.
2. Keep everything below ~150Hz genuinely mono
This is the single most common thing that makes a home master translate badly to a club system. Any stereo widening, chorus, or even a slightly decorrelated reverb tail sitting on the kick or bassline will cause phase cancellation the moment it's summed to mono on a real PA - and most club and festival systems still sum a meaningful amount of low end to mono by design. Check this directly: sum your mix to mono and listen specifically to whether the kick and bass lose energy. If they do, something below 150Hz isn't mono yet.
3. Sidechain depth: 3-5dB for psy-trance, not 10+
The "pumping" psy-trance sound is a genuinely deliberate production choice, but the amount matters more than most people tuning it by ear realize. Measuring across real released psy-trance and full-on tracks, the actual gain reduction on the bassline from the kick's sidechain typically sits in a 3-5dB range - audible and rhythmic, not a full amplitude collapse on every beat. Pushing past 8-10dB reads as amateur pumping rather than groove, even though it's tempting to exaggerate it while soloed.
4. Reference against a real track in the same subgenre, at matched loudness
The most reliable single technique here isn't a plugin setting at all - it's comparing your mix against a real, released reference track in the exact subgenre you're making, level-matched so you're not just responding to whichever one is louder. A/B against something that already works, and the gaps in your own low-end weight, stereo width, and top-end brightness become obvious in a way no amount of staring at a spectrum analyzer will show you.
Skip the manual A/B and let the reference-matching happen automatically
PhaseForge's free Studio mastering tool includes a trance-tuned preset built from measuring real released tracks the same way this article describes - drop in a mix and it targets the loudness and tonal balance directly, no account needed.
Try the free mastering tool →If you're building the track from scratch
A master can only balance what's already in the mix - it can't fix a bassline that was never tight in the first place, or a kick that doesn't have real sub weight underneath the punch. Trance Foundations ships leads, plucked basses and a rolling kick/bass demo groove built specifically around this genre's own frequency relationships, reference-matched the same way the mastering targets above were measured.