About Us

About — Mastering The Mix
Independent since 2016
Better mixing and mastering decisions —
without perfect ears, expensive studios, or years of trial and error.

Our plugins show you what's really happening in your mix and guide you toward the same decisions pro engineers make. So you get professional results, faster.

Milestones

The story so far —
starting with where we are now.

A reverse timeline of the products and ideas that built the company.

April 2026

STEREOVAULT

Stereo has always been one of the easiest ways to make a mix feel bigger — and one of the easiest ways to break it. STEREOVAULT helps producers find the width that actually helps the mix, then shape it with clean, level-matched tools.

Smart analysisLevel matchedMono-aware
Featured in Pluginerds — 7 Best Stereo Imaging Plugins ↗
April 2026

REFERENCE 3

Referencing stopped being a passive A/B check. REFERENCE 3 turned it into an active decision-making system — telling producers what to adjust across tone, width, dynamics, loudness, and balance to get closer to the records they love.

Smart Reference TracksMix InstructorMatch %
Featured in Pluginerds — 7 Best Reference Plugins for Mixing ↗
August 2025

FASTER MASTER

Co-created with David Guetta and Nicky Romero. Ten strong mastering starting points tailored to the track, with reference matching and level-matched controls for EQ, transients, compression, width, and limiting.

Co-created10 starting points
July 2025

EQ Academy

The mission extended beyond plugins. A free, gamified ear-training tool to help producers train the skill underneath every mix decision: hearing frequency changes accurately.

Free100 levels
2023

FUSER

One of the most frustrating mix problems gets a smarter answer. Instead of carving big static holes, FUSER reduces masking dynamically, keeping the mix musical while resolving the clash.

2022

LIMITER

Loudness decisions become more transparent — true peak control, level-matched feedback, and musical controls for energy and punch.

November 2021

RESO

Harsh resonances creep into every mix, making sounds brittle and fatiguing. RESO finds those problem frequencies and dynamically tames them — surgical when it needs to be, transparent when it doesn't.

Dynamic suppressionPer-frequency
2021

EXPOSE 2 · REFERENCE 2

The era we expanded from broad mix feedback into precise quality control and deeper referencing — catching peaks, phase, dynamics, and tonal issues before release, and tightening the way producers compared mixes to the records they love.

2020

MIXROOM

Target-based EQ thinking moves into the mids and highs — clarity, presence, warmth, and brightness, with more confidence.

2019

BASSROOM

Clear visual targets for bass balance — for the part of a mix that decides whether it translates outside the studio.

2018

ANIMATE

A four-mode movement plugin that brings sounds to life with precision — and starts to define a sound for the company beyond pure analysis.

2016 — where it began

LEVELS

The original metering plugin. Loudness, peak, stereo, dynamics, and low end — all in one place. The tool that turned a mastering engineer's frustration into a company.

The origin story

It started with one forum post and "50% of nothing."

In 2016, Tom Frampton was working as a mastering engineer and kept seeing the same problem. Producers were finishing tracks they were proud of, only to discover technical issues at the final stage. Peaks too hot. Loudness off. Stereo problems hiding in plain sight. The music was good — the feedback arrived too late.

Tom had an idea for a simple free tool that would surface those problems before release. He wasn't a software developer, so he posted on the JUCE forum with a strange offer: did anyone want to help build it and own 50% of nothing?

One person replied. His name was Nash. They met for coffee, clicked immediately, and started building.

What began as a small tool for Tom's mastering clients quickly became something more. The product was too useful, too different, and too exciting to stay as a side project. Producers started using it. They told their friends. The idea grew into Mastering The Mix.

The people

Built by people who live inside the same problems.

T

Tom Frampton

Founder · Product · Mastering

Mastering engineer turned product designer. Drives the mission to help producers make better decisions, and the educational work that surrounds the plugins.

N

Nash

Co-founder · Engineering

The developer who answered the forum post. Built the foundation that every Mastering The Mix plugin still rests on, and continues to shape the technical direction.

JW

James Wenlock

Lead Developer · STEREOVAULT

Based in Washington State. Led the development of STEREOVAULT — the engine behind smart stereo analysis and level-matched width shaping.

BV

Ben Vining

Lead Developer · EQ Academy · Carbon Q

The mind behind EQ Academy and Carbon Q. Builds tools that make ear training and EQ decisions feel sharper, faster, and more musical.

+

The wider team

Design · Support · Education

Designers, developers, support, educators, testers, and the artists and producers who use the plugins every day and tell us what to fix next.

The belief

We don't build plugins to replace your taste.
We build plugins to sharpen it.

Better music comes from better decisions.
Tools should teach you while you use them.
Loudness should not trick your ears.
Analysis should lead to action.
Producers should feel more confident at the end of a session than they did at the start.

Your music already has the idea.
Our job is to help you finish it.

Eleven plugins. One free ear-training app. A whole lot of producers making clearer decisions.

Explore the plugins Start with REFERENCE 3 Try EQ Academy
© Mastering The Mix · Independent since 2016