Does any one else Master their own songs from Suno?
I have been working on a new album for almost 3 years. I used to self-produce using Logic for instrumentation, and my vocals. I don't play any instruments well enough to use them on my songs. They are mostly 80s/90s British retro influenced. So I thought, fuck it, lets see what Suno can do with them.
I have tried to get it to cover my songs for a while, but it could never get them right. It would change random melodies, vocal delivery, and they no longer felt like mine.
That all changed with V6. Cranking the audio influence on the cover to 85 actually made it listen. They now sound like me, with my lyrics, my voice, my melodies, just better produced.
However, the mix and overall feel is very muddy.
So I downloaded the stems as WAVs, mixed and mastered myself. I then used sngbird to analyze the difference. This is what it had to say:
Stem mastering was completely worthwhile. The stem-mastered WAV version is a dramatic upgrade over the downloaded MP3 across tonal balance, vocal articulation, stereo width, and transient punch.
The original MP3 had the same severe low-end congestion that dragged down the early bounces of Lower and Dark: nearly 64% of its acoustic energy was trapped below 250 Hz, starving the midrange vocal core down to just 12.2% and squeezing the stereo width into a narrow, center-heavy spread.
Mastering from stems allowed you to rebuild the track's frequency distribution, open the stereo stage, and bring the song into seamless alignment with your album baselines.
Objective QC and Acoustic Comparison
| Metric | Original Download (AF - Everybody Falls.mp3) |
Stem-Mastered Version (Everybody Falls.wav) |
Album Target Baseline | What Changed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Peak Level | -3.8 dBFS | -1.0 dBFS | -1.0 dBTP | Mastered up to full commercial headroom with True Peak protection. |
| Digital Clipping | 0 regions | 0 regions | 0 regions | Both files are clean of clipping. |
| Integrated Loudness | -14.6 LUFS | -10.3 LUFS | -12.0 to -9.5 LUFS | +4.3 dB gain in perceived weight; locked to album level. |
| Dynamic Crest Factor | 14.7 dB | 13.7 dB | 13.0 to 14.5 dB | 1 dB tighter; punchy, controlled rock impact without flatlining. |
| Stereo Phase Correlation | +0.780 | +0.585 | +0.50 to +0.85 | Fully mono-compatible while allowing the sides to expand. |
| Stereo Width Ratio | 0.352 | 0.512 | 0.45 to 0.65 | Substantial stereo widening (+0.160); expansive guitars and synths. |
| Sub Energy (20–80 Hz) | 19.9% | 7.8% | 8% to 15% | Sub-rumble cut by 12.1%; dynamic headroom reclaimed. |
| Low Energy (80–250 Hz) | 43.6% | 30.1% | 20% to 28% (Rock: ~30%) | Low-mid mud cut by 13.5%; bass guitar definition restored. |
| Low-Mid (250–800 Hz) | 15.7% | 24.3% | 16% to 24% | Restored natural warmth and guitar body (+8.6%). |
| Mid Energy (800–2500 Hz) | 12.2% | 23.5% | 18% to 24% | Midrange presence nearly doubled (+11.3%); vocal clarity restored. |
| High-Mid (2.5–6 kHz) | 6.3% | 10.0% | 8% to 14% | Snare snap and guitar bite brought forward (+3.7%). |
| High Energy (6–16 kHz) | 2.1% | 4.3% | 3.5% to 6.5% | Top-end air doubled (+2.2%); cymbals and breath opened up. |
Was the Process Worthwhile?
Stem mastering transformed an unbalanced, muffled source file into an album-ready record:
- You Fixed a Broken Spectral Tilt: In the downloaded MP3, sub-bass (19.9%) and low frequencies (43.6%) swallowed 63.5% of the entire song's headroom. Because the low end was hogging the master bus, the core vocal midrange (800 Hz to 2.5 kHz) was starved at 12.2%, and high frequencies sat at a muffled 2.1%. In your stem master, total energy below 250 Hz dropped to 37.9%, which allowed vocal presence to nearly double to 23.5% and top-octave air to climb to 4.3%.
- You Reclaimed the Stereo Stage: The MP3 had a width ratio of only 0.352. Instruments were clustered tightly near the center channel, leaving little separation between rhythm guitars, synth pads, and lead vocals. On the WAV master, the width expanded to 0.512 while keeping phase correlation safe at +0.585. This creates the immersive, wide soundstage heard on Dark and Home.
- You Brought the Track into the Album Sequence: The MP3 sat at a quiet, un-mastered -14.6 LUFS with peaks wandering at -3.8 dBFS. In an album playback sequence, it would have sounded 4 dB quieter and significantly darker than your other tracks. The WAV master lands right at -10.3 LUFS with a locked -1.0 dBFS ceiling, sitting naturally between Inside (-10.2 LUFS) and The Illusion (-10.4 LUFS).
Does the WAV Version Have Better Sound Quality and Dynamics?
Sound Quality
The WAV version has noticeably superior sound quality. Beyond the frequency rebalancing, uncompressed 24-bit/48kHz stems avoid the encoding compromises inherent to lossy MP3 compression. MP3 encoding uses psychoacoustic algorithms that discard low-level high-frequency information and smear subtle transient micro-dynamics, which often causes high cymbals and reverb decays to sound "swishy" or phasey. The uncompressed WAV master preserves clean high-end transients and natural room decay tails.
Dynamics
While the MP3 shows a slightly higher raw crest factor (14.7 dB vs. 13.7 dB), that number is deceptive. The MP3 was simply lower in volume (-14.6 LUFS) with massive sub-bass peaks dominating the dynamic meter, which gave the impression of dynamic range while the actual transients remained soft.
The stem-mastered WAV delivers better perceived dynamic punch. Because the sub-30 Hz mud was trimmed away, the limiter reacts to intentional musical hits rather than loose low-frequency rumble. Kick attacks and snare cracks hit with sharp, clear definition, preserving a healthy 13.7 dB crest factor at full commercial loudness.