Ableton Forum

Hi guys,

first of all I want to say thank you, seems to be a great community here!

I'd like to know what your routine during mastering is, if you use plug ins etc.
Personally I eliminate annoying freq. with eq, put a multiband, and often a glue comp. or distortion/saturator on the master (ofc all that varies of the track but most of the times...)
Is it better to use plug-ins like ozone for mastering ? Or can a track also sound decent with abletons stuff only?
Tell me what you think

My routine is using my master strip rack. It contains u-he's Satin, EQ8, Glue compressor and Limiter. Satin is set to the default "studio" preset with some tweaking, EQ8 only cuts the very low frequencies around 30 - 50hz with a gentle slope, the compressor is almost always off, and the limiter (Live's default) usually at around +1db. So basically, I don't alter anything much and try to make the track work by mixing the other channels in harmony via EQing and instrument selection. I often fail.

Satin adds an extremely subtle bit of warmth in this setup, i don't like to compress the master channel anymore but the Glue is still there for testing, and the Limiter just to catch the peaks.

I am no mastering engineer, and I think you should always have your proper tracks mastered by someone else. You should try and get as good a mix as you can before mastering, which should only finetune the final sonic stage.

If you have your track finalised and you're ready to have it mastered, send it to a professional. I recommend Tarekith because that's the only pro mastering I've had on my own stuff and he's a very knowledgeable and friendly dude. His written guides on his site are super helpful.

About the "ableton stuff only" question - I think definitely, it can sound perfectly fine. You just need the right skills and experience. Now I'm hearing Napoleon Dynamite's bowstaff skills voice.

You can definitely get good results with Ableton's devices, so I'd recommend learning those a bit more before you go out and spend more money on something like Ozone. Plus, if you do ever upgrade to other plug ins, you'll know WHY they are better, instead of just relying on what other people say.

Oh, and this might help too:

http://innerportalstudio.com/articles/Mastering.pdf

Yes, Ableton's are fine. I sometimes join competitions where I have to use free plugins or DAW-included plugins, and in that case my mastering chain is entirely Ableton's plugins. EQ (general, but very minimal changes) -> Glue -> EQ (minor mid/side adjustments) -> Limiter. I may throw in a MB compressor after the Glue, but I've found that unless the mods are minor, (noticing a pattern here? Everything should be mostly fixed prior to the master bus) MB compression (or rather my use of MB compression) can just screw up the sound. When I'm not confined to Ableton, I almost always use other plugins that I prefer, but Ableton's do the trick just fine.

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