Most DJ mastering advice on the internet was written for tracks, not mixes. A four-minute house single and a sixty-minute house set are mastered very differently, but the tools and guidance you can find online mostly assume you're working with the single.
That gap is the reason the DJ mix analysis exists. It reads any mix you give it as one continuous waveform - not as a sequence of individual songs - and tells you four things about it that are difficult to assess by ear, even on good monitors.
This post walks through what those four things are, what the numbers mean in plain English, and what to do with the report once you've got it. There's no install, no sign-up to run the analysis, and the report is yours to keep.
Why analyse a mix at all
Before we get to the metrics, it's worth saying why this matters.
When you upload a mix to SoundCloud, Mixcloud, YouTube or Spotify, the platform normalises it. That means it measures how loud your mix is and then automatically turns the whole thing down to fit its target - typically around -14 LUFS on streaming, lower on broadcast platforms, higher in a club PA.
If your mix is louder than the target, the platform turns it down. If it's quieter, the platform leaves it alone (and your mix sounds noticeably weaker against everything else in the listener's feed). And if your peaks are clipping, the platform turns the mix down and the clipping is still there, just quieter.
The analyser shows you where your mix sits relative to those targets, before you upload anywhere or commit to a master. It's a diagnostic. Useful on its own, useful again as the input into a mastering decision.
The four things the report reads
1. Integrated LUFS (loudness)
LUFS stands for Loudness Units relative to Full Scale. It's the standard the streaming platforms use to measure perceived loudness - meaning it's closer to how loud something actually sounds to a human ear, not just how big the waveform looks.
The report gives you a single integrated LUFS value for the whole mix. Useful reference points:
SoundCloud, Mixcloud, YouTube, Spotify: roughly -14 LUFS
Apple Music: -16 LUFS
Club/festival systems: typically much louder, -8 to -10 LUFS
BBC broadcast: -23 LUFS
If your mix is at -10 LUFS and you upload to SoundCloud, it'll be turned down by about 4 dB on the way through. If it's at -18 LUFS, you'll sound quieter than everything else on the platform.
2. True peak
True peak isn't the same as peak. Peak is the highest sample value in your audio file. True peak is the highest level the audio will reach when it's converted back into analogue - when it actually comes out of a speaker.
It's almost always higher than peak, sometimes by 1-2 dB, because of how digital-to-analogue conversion works (specifically, what happens between samples). A file that reads -0.3 dB on a normal peak meter can be hitting +0.8 dB true peak in the real world, which means it's clipping every time anyone plays it.
The report flags any true peak above -1 dB. That's the threshold streaming platforms generally use to mark a file as having distortion risk.
3. Dynamic range
Dynamic range is the difference between the quietest parts of your mix and the loudest. It's measured in LU (loudness units).
A modern club mix typically runs around 6-9 LU. Anything below 4 LU is heavily compressed - which can sound powerful but tends to feel fatiguing over a long set. Anything above 12 LU is dynamic in a way that's great for headphone listening but can feel weak on a club PA, because the quieter sections drop out of audibility against the room noise.
There's no single right answer here. The report just tells you what your dynamic range is, so you can decide if it matches the room your mix is going to.
4. Stereo width
Stereo width is about the relationship between your left and right channels - how "wide" your mix sounds. Too narrow and the mix feels small and centred. Too wide and you risk phase cancellation when the mix gets played back in mono (which still happens - most club systems sum to mono below 100 Hz, and a lot of Bluetooth speakers are mono).
The report shows you stereo width across the timeline, not just an average. That matters because the issue is usually localised - a single track in the mix with wide stereo effects can pull the whole set off-balance for those three or four minutes.
What the report does next
After it's read those four metrics, the analyser does one more thing: it projects what your mix would sound like through each of the four SetMaster Pro mastering profiles.
That projection isn't a real master - no audio is processed at the analysis stage. It's an informed estimate of where the LUFS, true peak and dynamic range would land if you ran the mix through Streaming/Radio, Club/Festival, Podcast/Radio Show, or Warm/Analogue.
The point is to let you choose the right destination before you commit. A mix that's already at -10 LUFS doesn't need much help to get to club loudness, but it'll get aggressively turned down on streaming. A mix at -18 LUFS is going to feel weak on a main-room PA but slot neatly onto SoundCloud.
What to do with the report
A few honest suggestions, depending on what you find:
If your true peak is above -1 dB: that's the one to fix first. Clipping isn't a master decision, it's a mix decision - usually a single track in the set with hot kick or limiter abuse. Identify it and re-render that section if you can.
If your LUFS is significantly off the target for where you upload: this is the most common thing the report catches. The fix is mastering, and the report tells you which profile gets you closest.
If your dynamic range looks fine but you still don't like how the mix sounds in headphones: dynamic range is rarely the problem in that case. Stereo width or low-end mono compatibility usually is.
If everything looks within sensible range: trust your ears and upload it. Not every mix needs work.
Try it
The analyser is at setmasterpro.com/dj-mix-analysis. It runs in your browser, takes about ninety seconds for a typical set, and the report is yours to download as a PDF.
If you run a mix through it and the report says something that doesn't match what you're hearing, we'd genuinely like to know. The analyser's only useful if it tells you the truth, and the way we keep it honest is by hearing when it isn't.