Release 3.9: peaks are no longer clipped mid-chain
Version 3.9 is out. It is about sound: four changes to the processing chain, each of which came out of a specific complaint and each measured before it was switched on.
• Honest dynamics. The chain used to hard-clip peaks between modules, so every kick lost its attack before reaching the final limiter. Peaks now travel intact and loudness is set by the limiter alone. Measured on the control file: crest 11.41 to 12.41 dB, with loudness and ceiling unchanged (−12.05 LUFS against a −12 target, −1.01 dBTP against a −1 ceiling). Your track did not get louder or quieter — what changed is HOW loudness is reached. Nothing to configure, and it applies to every preset.
• The unlimiter got more precise. Its threshold is now relative rather than absolute: derived from the material instead of being the same for a quiet recording and a brickwalled master. Tested on a corpus of six real tracks: dynamics improved on all six, zero regressions.
• Pauses after stem separation are quiet now. The bubbling is not clicks but a floating residue of other instruments: only 8 per cent of the residual energy matches the isolated-peak criterion, and the old cleanup never touched the other 92. The residual gate pushes deep pauses down 15 dB while phrase boundaries drop 0.2 dB and vocals 0.125 dB.
• Tone correction leaves dense material alone. On saturated tracks it made things worse — all four user ratings of that feature were one star. It now steps aside on such input and works as before where it helps.
• A door for AI agents. If you work through an assistant, Magic Master is now available to it directly: an MCP server at /mcp, OAuth 2.1 sign-in and trial tokens. The assistant sends a track for mastering and returns the quality passport as a card inside your chat. Nothing changes for using the website.
Full write-up with the numbers: https://magicmaster.pro/blog/magic-master-3-9-whats-new
We are watching bass dynamics separately: the change also affects what comes after it — the exciter and imager now receive a hot signal. If you hear a difference, better or worse, the rating under your mastering result reaches us and gets read.