Is It The Best AI Mastering?
Verdict
Fantastic audio mastering, that's criminally cheap and incredibly quick. Although not as good as having a human pair of ears, if you paid an engineer the same amount as you paid Cloudbounce, you'd likely get a worse result.
Ratings
- Sound Quality - 4.5 / 5
- Mastering Options - 5 / 5
- Ease of Use - 5 / 5
- Customer Support - 4 / 5
- Value for Money - 5 / 5
If you want your music to sound the best, be in line with streaming services, and loudness recommendations, and compete with other music out there, you need to be mastering it before your release it.
In this Cloudbounce review, we're going to go over everything you'll want to know before deciding on parting with your hard-earned music bucks, whether it's worth the money and how it compares to real, human engineers.
Something quick to note before comparing AI to human engineers:
There are some great low-priced human mixing and mastering services out there, but often they're nowhere near as quick as cloud mastering, and won't produce as good results for the same price you spend.
If you're willing to pay the premium cost and have extra money, of course, you're going to get a better result than with AI. But if you're paying a mastering engineer less than $10? You're likely better off with AI.
That's not to say AI is better!
Real, trained mastering engineers with experience in the industry will ALWAYS be the better choice if you have the money.
What Is Cloudbounce?
Cloudbounce is an online, AI mastering service that you can use to enhance your music, make it louder, and satisfy streaming loudness rules.
It's an Abbey Road Red alumni company that was founded in 2015, that's backed by some of the biggest companies in audio. Some of those names include:
- Focusrite
- ROLI
- CDBaby
Cloudbounce works by taking your track and using a mastering engine to analyze and apply the right amount of audio processing, and effects to make your music loud, powerful and clear.
Using its precise machine listening technology, Cloudbounce can apply compression, multiband, EQ, limiting and stereo imaging to your tracks. And, provided you've got a great mix, you're going to get some awesome results.
It also has a number of different mastering presets for you to choose from, so you can vary how much it's pushed, compressed, or altered.
Is Cloudbounce Better Than A Mastering Engineer?
If you're on a tight schedule (and budget), it's worth using CloudBounce for mastering. It's not anywhere near as good as the human mastering engineer counterpart, but it'll do the job, and is much cheaper.
Cloud mastering will save you a tonne of money and time.
How Does Cloudbounce Mastering Sound?
While we can talk about how great CloudBounce sounds for the price, we actually put it to the test against our own mastering and the other AI mastering services available.
You can also instantly preview mastering on the CloudBounce web app before purchasing, so we highly recommend you do that and listen objectively before purchasing.
For the same price, you'd spend on a mastering engineer, Cloudbounce does a better job, much more quickly.
If you're on a budget, Cloudbounce online mastering will save you money and time, and it's definitely something you should consider if you're not willing to spend more than $50/tack on a mastering service.
If you do want to spend money on quality mastering, check out our best mixing and mastering services guide.
However, Cloudbounce does have its drawbacks.
It heavily compresses and limits your music to make it sound loud. To the ears, loud usually sounds better, but it's not always the case.
In music, we want to retain as much dynamic range as possible, while keeping the energy.
Although Cloudbounce does make your tracks loud and makes them fit for streaming service duty, it virtually makes them an audio sausage of sound.
It's a cookie-cutter solution to something that is far, far more intricate than AI has the capability to understand just yet. And, even when AI does get good, will it be able to produce the same creative flair a mastering engineer would?
None of us know.
What we do know is, right now, for the price, Cloudbounce is an exceptionally good, online mastering service that's going to get you professional-sounding music, quickly and cheaply.
It's the best-sounding, affordable mastering we've heard anywhere.
If you don't have the budget to pay a mastering engineer upwards of $50, then Cloudbounce is a great shout.
Features of Cloudbounce Online Mastering
In this section, we'll go over all the mastering, user interface & other features of Cloudbounce.
User Interface
The user interface inside Cloudbounce is extremely clean, and easy to use. There's not much else to click on apart from the big “drop file” button in the middle.
It's as simple as dragging and dropping your audio in, choosing a preset from the range of mastering options, and then running the master.
There is also a menu option to the left, where you can access your track downloads, account information & settings, subscription info, and awesome free downloads section, and a place to migrate your current account/subscription to a different account.
It's a pretty self-explanatory area that doesn't need much writing about.
Free Downloads
Alongside the online mastering service Cloudbounce provides, they also offer some pretty cool free downloads.
It's definitely worth signing up for a free Cloudbounce account because you can get some really awesome free PDF, video, & template resources for learning mixing and mastering.
Mastering Options
The mastering service is really what you want to know about with Cloudbounce. Like we mentioned above, it has a really simple interface – you just drag and drop and click master, and then you're done!
But Cloudbounce does offer some customisation, and a number of different audio mastering presets to choose from.
This gives you some control over the AI mastering process, and you can choose from:
- Default
- Hip Hop/R&B
- Drum & Bass/Bass Music
- EDM
- Electro House
- Deep House
- Tech House
- Techno
- Trance
- Rock/Pop
- Metal/Punk
- Ambient
- World Music
- Classical
- Jazz/Blues
It's an absolute blessing that Cloudbounce has included so many different audio mastering presets, because, there is no one size fits for mastering.
Imagine if you were trying to master classical music through a default preset, it just wouldn't provide the best results.
Of course not every classical song is going to need the same treatment, but this is where the mastering engine and listening engine come in.
Due to clever AI, Cloudbounce can make varying decisions based on the preset chosen, and it's pretty good at doing so.
When cloud mastering services first came out, they weren't good at all. But a lot has happened over the 6 years Cloudbounce has been in operation, and technology has got considerably better – with it, the quality of the masters has as well.
It's the best-sounding, affordable audio mastering we've heard anywhere.
Read the full review over at Whipped Cream Sounds.com