V1.2 OUT NOW
NOT A PLUGIN.
AN ENGINEER.
A plugin that masters each track individually
and your final master automatically.
A plugin that masters each track individually
and your final master automatically.
From install to a release-ready master — no manual required.
Drop Monkey on your master bus (or open the Standalone app), pick your track type and style, and press ANALYZE while the loudest part of your song plays. It measures your actual audio for about 20 s at 44.1 kHz.
When the analysis ends the whole chain sets itself — there is no APPLY to press. Was your mix already right? Monkey says so instead of processing it (THE HONEST NO); press WHY? for the reasons.
Choose where it goes in PLATFORM, play the track once and read the seal in PROOF: it says COMPLIANT, in green, when it meets that destination. Then bounce from your DAW, or press REC.
Every note in the final output passed through the same 7-phase chain: it measures your audio, sets each stage from that measurement, and holds the result to the target you picked.
Pick your track type and style: 8 × 12 in STANDARD, the full 16 × 24 in PRO. PRO also reads both off the spectral fingerprint and sets them for you (about 20 s of audio at 44.1 kHz).
Real-time FFT with five bands over 20 Hz – 20 kHz: SUB and AIR are shelving biquads (80 Hz and 10 kHz); LOW, MID and HIGH come from a 3-way split at 200 Hz and 8 kHz. Drag any band on the live spectrum — each one is a gain move of up to ±12 dB.
Four modes (Glue, Punch, Transparent, Distorted) auto-selected by style. Multiband dynamics kick in on Master Final for density without pumping.
One persistent gain keeps the chain's working level inside its target window (−27 to −9 dBFS RMS), correcting by at most ±6 dB and moving no faster than 3 dB per second — so the stages after it always see the level they were tuned for, and you never hear it move.
Master-bus analysis with Mid/Side compression. Separate any mix into Vocals, Drums, Bass and Other in real time for surgical per-stem treatment.
Audition your master on 21 simulated devices — phone, tablet, Bluetooth, earbuds, Earbuds Premium, TV, HiFi, studio headphones — to guarantee translation before you export.
Oversampled 4× soft clipper + true-peak limiter locked to your platform's loudness target — Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, Tidal, SoundCloud, Beatport, Amazon Music or Deezer. One click.
The difference is what it does that no other plugin does.
One of the few plugins that processes each track individually and optimizes the final master. LANDR and Ozone focus on the master bus.
Every master costs something. Monkey prints the bill: loudness gained in LU, how much of each hit's transient survived the chain (median loss over the onsets it actually measured, with the count), seconds spent in saturation and how many hard-limit events fired. Below 8 onsets it shows the PLR estimate and labels it «PLR est.» — an estimate is never dressed up as a measurement. In STANDARD too.
One button swaps your monitoring for wet minus dry, latency-matched: what you hear is exactly, and only, what the chain did to your audio. A limiter's delta IS its job, so some difference is normal — the point is that you get to judge it instead of trusting us. Monitoring only: never exported, never measured. In STANDARD too.
If ANALYZE finds your source already meets the target you picked, Monkey says so and keeps only a safety ceiling instead of processing for the sake of processing. Press WHY? to read the reasons it measured. Changing track type, style, mode or preset re-arms the verdict, so what you are shown is never a stale answer to an older question. In STANDARD too.
Pick Bass, Pad or Toms and the sidechain switches itself on with the right threshold, ratio, attack, release and amount already dialled in. You still make the routing from the Kick in your DAW — that takes about five seconds, and it is the one thing a plugin cannot do for you.
On vocals, automatically activates a dynamic notch at 6-9 kHz. The biggest vocal problem, solved automatically.
Independent compression for centre and sides. The tool that makes the biggest difference in a professional master. (PRO)
Real-time Gain Reduction and True Peak LED. You see exactly what the compressor is doing.
Real-time FFT spectrum with five bands over 20 Hz – 20 kHz — SUB and AIR are shelving biquads (80 Hz and 10 kHz), LOW / MID / HIGH come from a 3-way split at 200 Hz and 8 kHz. Drag any of them straight on the live spectrum, up to ±12 dB each.
Preview on 21 devices: phone speaker, Earbuds Premium, Bluetooth, TV, HiFi and 4 headphone classes — open-back, closed-back, unsealed earbuds, flat studio. Know how your master translates before releasing.
Split any mix into Vocals, Drums, Bass and Other in real-time. Solo elements or send them to dedicated tracks for surgical processing. (PRO)
The REPORT button in the PROOF panel exports a PNG card with the full BS.1770-4 measurement — integrated LUFS, true peak in dBTP, PLR, LRA, stereo correlation — plus target, ceiling and verdict for all 8 platforms. Date-stamped and ready to send with your delivery. In STANDARD too.
IMAGING (v1.2): BASS MONO keeps the low end mono-compatible (24 dB/oct side high-pass) while WIDTH MID / WIDTH HIGH widen mids and highs separately. The module never touches your mono sum — and the PROOF meters (BS.1770-4) show it live. (PRO)
One screen, 3 steps and done: pick your platform, hit ANALYZE, watch the verdict — then REC. A 5-step guided tour walks you through on first launch. Switch back to FULL anytime from the header.
Every mastering plugin tells you what it improved. These three tell you what it cost, let you hear the change on its own, and admit when your mix did not need us at all. They come as a set, and all three are in STANDARD.
Integrated LUFS, true peak in dBTP (4× oversampled), PLR, LRA and stereo correlation — measured to ITU-R BS.1770-4 / EBU R128 and checked against the exact K-weighted target of each platform. One READY verdict per platform before you export. The meter passes the official EBU test vectors.
Monkey Engineer is our free Extension for Ableton Live 12 — an Extension lives inside Live itself, it is not a plugin you put on a track. It sets the plugin up for you, checks your set and measures headroom before you master. Not released yet: it needs Live 12.4.5 or later with Extensions enabled.
An honest comparison. None does what MONKEY MASTERING does at this price.
| Product | Auto-mastering | Key extras | Licence | PRICE |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MONKEY MASTERING PRO | ✓ Per track + final master | Honesty Stack: DAMAGE RECEIPT + Δ NULL + THE HONEST NO · BS.1770 compliance panel · stem separator · virtual speaker ×21 · reference match · EXTRAS | One-time · offline forever · no iLok | 9,90€ / 18,90€ |
| iZotope Ozone® 12 Standard | ✓ Master Assistant | Full mastering module suite · stem EQ only in Advanced (485€) | One-time | 216€ |
| Cradle The God Particle® | ✗ One-knob fixed chain | Jaycen Joshua chain · auto input level | One-time · online re-auth every ~6 weeks | ≈110€ |
| sonible smart:limit® | ✗ Smart limiter only | Loudness grade + genre targets · quality check | One-time | 129€ |
| Musik Hack Master Plan® | ✗ Manual macro controls | Clipper + tape + limiter in one | One-time | ≈95–175€ |
| Waves® Online Mastering | ✓ Cloud service | Upload & master online · no plugin in your DAW | Subscription / credits | Subscription |
List prices verified Jul 2026 — official vendor prices, sales excluded.
One-time payment. Yours forever.
During the trial you get the full set of Pro features for 14 days. So that a trial export never ends up published by mistake, files recorded during the trial carry a periodic level mark (a short dip roughly every 30 seconds). What you hear, the meters and the PROOF verdict are exactly those of a licensed version — only the written file is marked, and the plugin tells you before every take.
Updates: Standard receives conformity updates — fixes, security (Spanish Law 11/2023 · EU Directive 2019/770). New features are released for Pro. Terms of Sale §11.
I had never sidechain-compressed a bass without knowing what I was doing. With Monkey I had it in 10 seconds and it sounded exactly like I needed.
I tried it on a techno track and the difference in the master was immediate. The Mid/Side gave it an amplitude that normally takes me an hour.
The auto de-esser on vocals is the best implementation I have seen. Just select Lead Vocal and done.
A three-minute single mastered in under 10 seconds, start to finish. I used to spend half an hour per track fiddling with Ozone modules.
I run it on a 2018 MacBook Pro (16 GB). Under 5 % CPU with eight Monkey instances open at once. Other mastering plugins choke my laptop.
Latest builds, docs and direct support from the developer.
v1.2 builds for macOS (universal, Apple Silicon + Intel) and Windows (x64). Public downloads coming soon.
The download includes the free 14-day TRIAL, with the complete set of Pro features. After those 14 days the plugin stops processing audio until you activate a paid licence — nothing is lost, and every setting comes back the moment you do.
User manual and quick-start guide as stand-alone HTML you can keep offline.
Verified requirements — know exactly what you need before you buy.
macOS 11+ — universal (Apple Silicon + Intel)
Windows 10+ — 64-bit (x64)
VST3 (Mac/Win) · AU (Mac) · Standalone app
No AAX: Pro Tools is not supported.
Ableton Live 10.1+ (Live 9 or earlier: not supported — VST2 only)
Logic Pro 10.5+ / GarageBand (AU)
Cubase 10+ · Studio One 4.5+ · REAPER 6+
FL Studio 20.8+ · Bitwig Studio 3+
Monkey Engineer (Extension for Ableton Live 12) — free, COMING SOON: will require Live 12.4.5 or later with Extensions enabled.
MP3, WAV and FLAC export on both macOS and Windows.
Every minute adjusting compressors is a minute not composing. MONKEY MASTERING does it for you.