Major quality update: loudness, sound, presets and fair limits

We ran an independent audit of the service, going through it as an ordinary user would: what you pay for, what you see in the app, and what actually comes out. Here is an honest list of what we found and fixed.

• Mastering no longer crushes loud sources. When a track arrived already loud — exported with a limiter on the master bus, or generated by Suno/Udio — the compressor engaged far deeper than intended: the midrange collapsed, the sound turned dull and distant, the top end got harsh and the stereo image drifted. The cause was ordering: level was matched to the target after compression. Now it happens before. On a brickwalled mix the midrange shift dropped from 3.3 dB to 0.8 dB. Quiet and normal-level tracks are unchanged — staging only attenuates.

• Presets now hit the loudness they promise. Picking EDM at −9 LUFS used to return −11.5, and Metal missed by more than 3 dB, because an overly long limiter release held gain at the track's minimum. The worst deviation is now 1.06 LU instead of 3.46, and 11 of 15 tested presets land within 0.11 LU. Industry distortion tests (SMPTE RP120, aliasing, multitone) confirm the extra loudness came with no added grit.

• One preset, one loudness. The app and the engine advertised different targets for the same genres: the Hip-Hop card promised −13 LUFS while the same preset via the public API delivered −10. The value is now identical everywhere — app, API and AI assistant.

• All 23 presets are selectable in the app. Trap, Pop, Rock, Metal, R&B, Country, Afrobeats, K-Pop and Jazz worked in the engine and the API, but there was no way to pick them in the interface.

• The AI assistant stopped repeating itself. It was two versions behind: it knew 17 presets out of 23 and silently replaced newer ones — Voice, Audiobook, Warm, Bright, Bass and AI Unlimiter — with the default, and carried outdated prices. It now knows the full set, the Russian platforms (VK Music, Yandex Music, Zvuk), current pricing, and picks a preset from your track's actual metrics.

• Fair limits for paying customers. Buying tokens did not technically change the account status, so paying customers were treated as free in many places: no uploads above 100 MB, standard queue instead of priority, API key creation refused, 5 AI requests a day instead of 50, and the limits page reporting zero masterings available with a full wallet. Access is now determined by actual payment.

• Tokens no longer disappear for nothing. A token was deducted before the file was validated, so a "file too large" rejection consumed it without any mastering, and there was no refund at all on the web when processing failed. Deduction now happens after validation and a failed master refunds the token automatically. The Telegram bot refund is fixed too — it used to look at account type rather than what was actually charged.

• We closed the leaks in the other direction. Reference Mastering, upscaling and vocal isolation were open to everyone including guests despite being part of the paid set; stem mastering had no rate limit and auto-mastering deducted no token.

A special thank you to everyone who writes detailed feedback after a master. One report describing a boxy sound with stereo drifting from ear to ear gave us the exact lead that started all of this. If a result disappoints you, hit thumbs down and tell us what is wrong — we read every message.

Full technical breakdown: magicmaster.pro/blog/why-my-track-sounds-dull-after-mastering