The Song Planner
PlannedMaster

Mastering QC Loop

Scan your tracks for the problems that wreck a release — and change nothing until you say so.

Who it's for

Anyone who wants a safety check before publishing: catch clipping, phase issues, abrupt fades, and dead air.

Before a record goes out, a handful of small problems can quietly undermine it: a track that clips, channels that cancel out on mono speakers, an abrupt cut where a fade should breathe, dead air on the end, a tail artifact, or a jarring volume jump between two songs. This loop is a check-only pass that finds all of them and reports them in plain tables.

Crucially it changes nothing on its own — it flags what's risky and asks which issues are intentional, so you stay in control. It is the diagnostic half of mastering pulled out as its own loop, for people who want to inspect before they commit.

Marked planned: today the scan runs inside the full Album Mastering Loop. A check-only version is on the way.

Skills & actions it uses

The concrete, reusable skills this loop calls to actually do the work.

  • album-streaming-masterToday the diagnostic scan runs inside the full mastering pass; a check-only slice is planned.

The loop

  1. 1

    Re-measure loudness and peaks

    Confirm where each track actually sits before judging anything else.

  2. 2

    Scan for hard faults

    Detect clipping and inter-sample peaks, plus phase and mono-compatibility problems.

  3. 3

    Classify the edges

    Detect fade-in/out style, abrupt cuts, dead-air tails, and stray tail artifacts.

  4. 4

    Check the transitions

    Flag big volume jumps between consecutive tracks that would jar on an album listen.

  5. 5

    Report, don't fix

    Present plain tables with the risky tracks flagged, and ask which are intentional. No audio is altered.

Then run it again for the next song, chapter, or track.

You end with

  • A diagnostic report: loudness, clipping, phase/mono, fade classification, tail artifacts, and track-to-track jumps
  • A flagged list of tracks worth a manual listen — with nothing changed

How it connects

Requires

Each slot needs one loop — pick whichever fits. The recommended pick is starred.

Alternatives

A competing loop for the same job — different tool, taste, or depth. Pick whichever fits you.

Album Mastering Loop

Turn a folder of raw WAVs into a loudness-matched, diagnosed, cleanly-named album that streams right.

Loudness Master Loop(planned)

Normalize a track or album to a streaming-ready loudness — and touch nothing else.

Fade & Cleanup Loop(planned)

Apply clean fades and trim dead air or tail artifacts from the ends of your tracks.