Whats your favorite Mastering Plugin?

[Sales Dude McBoob]

My biggest question in mastering is when do you know if you're in the ballpark for overall volume level? In other words, is this CD going to sound as loud as regular commercial CDs? How are you supposed to tell?

it's too late for my last project, i sent it out to get manufactured yesterday. i just had to get that thing off of my hard drive before the men in white coats arrived to carry me away...

[SubFunk]

any mastering house is happy with -2db to -6db.

Yup. And as you've mentioned before, it's all ears. Most music makers approach their own mastering as some kind of mathematical thing. Then their ears go dead.

i couldn't have said it any better, thanks knotkranky.

[knotkranky]

My biggest question in mastering is when do you know if you're in the ballpark for overall volume level? In other words, is this CD going to sound as loud as regular commercial CDs? How are you supposed to tell?

it's too late for my last project, i sent it out to get manufactured yesterday. i just had to get that thing off of my hard drive before the men in white coats arrived to carry me away...

I a/b against my own stuff and a few top records I'm very familiar with that are in the same ballpark. Quickly switch back and forth. Just don't use recordings that have been crushed to death unless that's what you want. All great mix dudes a/b. I do this near the end of my mixes for tonal considerations then level stuff when I master them.

[knotkranky]

Yup. And as you've mentioned before, it's all ears. Most music makers approach their own mastering as some kind of mathematical thing. Then their ears go dead.

i couldn't have said it any better, thanks knotkranky.

cheers mate

[Sales Dude McBoob]

My biggest question in mastering is when do you know if you're in the ballpark for overall volume level? In other words, is this CD going to sound as loud as regular commercial CDs? How are you supposed to tell?

it's too late for my last project, i sent it out to get manufactured yesterday. i just had to get that thing off of my hard drive before the men in white coats arrived to carry me away...

I a/b against my own stuff and a few top records I'm very familiar with that are in the same ballpark. Quickly switch back and forth. Just don't use recordings that have been crushed to death unless that's what you want. All great mix dudes a/b. I do this near the end of my mixes for tonal considerations then level stuff when I master them.

Duh...

That makes ssense!

I'm going to have to plop down some $$ for a Central Station one of these days. This has been on my mind for years. I'll have to pull the trigger soon.

I want to buy the Central Station, and an amp and some passive "shitty" speakers. Too bad the days of the NS10 are gone. I really wish there was a go-to speaker like that on the market. Anyways. Enough hi-jacking from me!

[rasputin]

yeah, i guess it looks like I was being a dick but it's honest advice.


That said, I only get my stuff mastered when the label pays for it, otherwise its the TA ghetto mastering job FTW

Same here. I had a professional do it and it didn't sound any better than my own attempts. Possible reasons:

1. My hearing sucks.
2. The guy wasn't good at my style (his other jobs sounded very good.)
3. He did a good job but I didn't like it.
4. The mixes I gave him sucked.
5. I suck and my music sucks.
6. Some combination of [1-5]

He was a nice guy, almost too nice, and I couldn't bear to tell him that I didn't use any of his masters. I paid him anyway. Learning experience.
r.

[the girl next door]

Whats your favorite Mastering Plugin?

MD3 on the Powercore platform..Use it all the time together with the Sony Inflator....AMAZING

[ScholarlyGent]

thanks for all the feedback. I've been using waves for years and wanted to see what else people are liking... but honestly I have recently come to terms with the fact that I am a better composer than sound engineer (or at least I enjoy spending time composing much more than mastering). I certainly dont have the experience, ears, natural gifts, hardware ,etc that the mastering pros do. I think the best advice I've seen yet from this thread is to leave some headroom for the pros to work their magic.

[glu]

I listen with monitors,
listen with crappy car stereo
listen with good car stereo
listen with crappy portable ipod speakers
Listen on headphones (ear buds and then on sound isolation)
Listen on friend's home stereo
listen on laptop speakers
listen on computer speakers

Listen at high and low volumes


The problems with the mix will often reoccur with different sound systems.

[leedsquietman]

Ok, people who said L2 is not the problem are probably correct that a lot of people who don;t know what what they're doing abuse their cracked copy of it and hypercompress their mix to crap using it.

The reason why I prefer the likes of Voxengo Elephant better is that it has lots of different modes that allow transparency and coloured mixes to taste - it also costs 65 dollars US which is a third of the cost of the L2 as a single plug.

L2 has a specific sound that is suited to beat heavy music, but for more subtle songs in my opinion, it's not the best tool.

PSP vintage warmer is a great tool also and PSP Mastering Compressor is an awesome mastering compressor. Waves compressors are actually quite good too but again, they have a specific sound better suited to some applications than others. I think I'd be more forgiving of waves if there products were not so exorbitantly expensive...

[jamester]

Is this a thread about good mastering plugins, or good mastering approaches/techniques? Cuz both answers seem to be in abundance here, yet they are two different things.

To answer the initial question, I love PSP Master Comp.

[lesterdiamond]

vinyl distortion

[knotkranky]

I listen with monitors,
listen with crappy car stereo
listen with good car stereo
listen with crappy portable ipod speakers
Listen on headphones (ear buds and then on sound isolation)
Listen on friend's home stereo
listen on laptop speakers
listen on computer speakers

Listen at high and low volumes

Ok, that's the shit right there.


Anybody who thinks they can throw the greatest plugin on their mixes and beat any other mix that used something else is high.

It's the mix 100% The rest is "don't fuck it up"

[KU]

I also always start a mix by a/b. I create a track in Live and route it directly to the digital mixer of my soundcard. I throw on a bunch of great sounding records and A/B that with my rough mix and then start tweakin. very enlightening and saves loads of time.

I use URS 1975 Stereo Bus Compressor... it can sound good gentle or slammed (if thats what you are going for) but I usually go gentle and then run that into Roger Nichols Detailor or Wave Arts Master Plug.

I used to use T-Racks for everything though. From like 2000-2005 I just lived through T-Racks!! why? because it was the best thing I could afford and I knew how to use it. I knew what it was gonna do sonically before I even put it on.... and knowing your gear is a big big part o

[radib]

pre-mastering/song-mastering

EQ8 (preset: "DANCE MASTER", maybe slightly fine-tuned)
C4 (preset: MULTI ELECTRO MASTERING)
URS N12 EQ (individual fine tuning while listen well)
L1 (treshold around -3)

-> perfection


never did an album, so never did album mastering. guess i´d do it in a real good artists studio with d/a and analog hardware before finally re-a/d.