Kits vs. Emastered: The Best Track Mastering AI
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Published on
March 1, 2024
What is AI Mastering?
Track mastering is the crucial final step of music production. Quality mastering turns good songs into great songs. Without mastering, many songs end up feeling flat, boring, or just “off.” By carefully adjusting the equalization, compression, limit, and level, mastering can make or break your music.
Track mastering is a difficult skill to learn, requiring a sensitive ear and lots of patience. Professional mastering engineers can easily cost hundreds, even thousands of dollars per track.
AI Tools with Online Mastering Services
Fortunately, there are several platforms available today which use artificial intelligence for automated mastering of your track. These tools analyze and equalize your tracks, then use advanced models built on millions of hours of music to add that final “cherry on top” to your sound. All in mere seconds, and for far, far less money than traditional mastering services.
Two of the most popular AI mastering tools are Kits and Emastered.
Kits is a complete suite of AI music production tools in your web browser. In addition to AI mastering, Kits offers:
Voice Training, to clone existing voices
Voice Conversion, with 50+ customizable royalty-free voices
Vocal Remover, which cleanly extracts lead vocals from mixed music
and more…
Emastered is built exclusively for track mastering and works entirely in your web browser. It does not offer any additional tools beyond mastering.
Let’s compare Kits and Emastered to see which track mastering AI is best for your workflow.
Presets
Mastering is often used to impart a certain vibe to a song. Since AI mastering tools do the hard work for you, presets allow you to steer how you want your music to sound.
Kits offers six premade mastering style presets:
Light & Bright
Bass Heavy
Punch & Air
Lush
Tape Glue
Analog Warmth
Since the process takes just seconds, you can experiment to see which one works best.
Emastered does not offer any stock presets. However, you can save settings you like as presets to use again later.
Winner: Kits
Reference Tracks
One of the coolest ways to use AI mastering is through reference tracks. Simply upload a song you love, and the model will analyze the mastering settings and apply the same style to your track.
Both Kits and Emastered support reference mastering. On both, you can upload your reference track as an audio file alongside your own song.
Customization
While Emastered lacks stock presets, it does offer more customization options to guide the AI. Before starting the process, you can set the following using sliders:
Mastering Intensity
Compressor Intensity
Equalization Intensity
Stereo Width
Volume
3-Band EQ
Kits does not offer these same controls. But you can still control the final result using presets and reference tracks.
Winner: Emastered
Price
While AI mastering tools are far cheaper than hiring a mastering engineer, price is still an important consideration.
Kits includes AI mastering in its free plan. Voice Training, Voice Conversion, and many other features are also available for free. For those needing download time and saved voices, plans start at just $9.99 per month.
Emastered only offers previews without a paid plan. The monthly plan costs $49.99 per month, with a yearly plan available for $156 upfront.
Winner: Kits
Exploring Audio Mastering Plugins: Landr, Bandlab, and Cloudbounce
It’s difficult to find a free edition of an AI mastering tools with robust post-production settings and boasts compatibility with any device. Most AI mastering services will either not provide a free version or require downloading into local devices.
Landr, Bandlab, and Cloudbounce are prime examples of desktop AI-powered mastering plugins that may serve as another solution for audio engineers looking for other desktop integrations of AI mastering options.
Conclusion: The Best AI Mastering Tools
While AI mastering plugins exist, AI mastering tools like Kits and Emastered use cutting-edge models to make your music sound better all without additional storage on your local device. In mere seconds, you can apply professional post-production effects to your music, with advanced equalization, compression, limiting, mixing, and more. You can even use mastering from your favorite music with reference tracks. All this is possible, far faster and cheaper than ever before, using the power of artificial intelligence.
So which is better, Kits or Emastered? It depends on who you are as a musician, producer, or creator.
For those needing deep control over the mastering process, Emastered offers more precise controls. But for less advanced users, these options can be overwhelming.
Plus, Kits offers many other AI tools for musicians. With Voice Conversion, Voice Training, Vocal Remover, and AI Mastering, it’s a complete platform to streamline your production process with AI.