cubase master

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does Cube Artist 11 have enough mastering stuff onboard to do a basic mastering job????
 
Yep - unless you are one of those who believe you need to throw plugins galore at mastering or it's not real. The reality of one box production is that your mastering is often done earlier in the channels. The notion that it's a separate process often vanishes when your 'mastering' section has access to the same tools and the channels. I often look at the mix and don't do anything to what already sounds fine. My Cubase output channel is often totally plugin free - not a single one.
 
one more thing... in the videos people use a mix buss and do their limiting and maximizing on that bus with the maximizer on the 8th slot.Post fader. Do you have to have a mix buss or can you just load up your master ing stuff on the stereo out. ?
 
Workflow and bussing is sort of an "as needed - slash - how you work - slash - what you need" thing. Generally speaking, you'd most likely want your limiter & dithering to be the last thing in the chain. Where the end of that chain is might be different for your workflow than it is for mine or someone else's.

[EDIT] Gonna throw a "for instance..." in there.

I run a hybrid setup -- Digital then analog then back to digital.

I'll have a lineup of tracks - Typically on a single track (I'm running Samplitude, so everything is object-based and I can get away with that). I've worked in Nuendo (which was basically Cubase on steroids if it's still even out there) at which point each individual mix would be on it's own track (so if there were 10 tunes to work on, there would be 10 stereo tracks with one object on each one). In any case - That's your "step one" - the object (mix) itself. Heads & tails, noise reduction if any, gross correctives (obvious EQ tweaks, sibilance, volume automation, etc.

That track (or "all those tracks") would be sent to a corrective buss where global correctives would be made - That can be a very broad scope. Frequency/amplitude-dependent spectral adjustment (think dynamic EQ or what not), global noise reduction, elliptical or global EQ adjustments ("mono-making" and what not), potential global dynamic adjustments (if there's an aux that's feeding a parallel compressor, it'd likely be near the end of this chain). As long as it can be automated, of course.

Post "corrective" buss would be the "shaping" buss - the "mix buss" compression, shaping EQ, any saturation type effects, etc. And "for example" if there was a parallel compressor send, it would return to this buss. If you're staying digital, you could send that output to the mix buss where your main limiter is. If you're using outboard, that buss would go out to your DA, through your analog chain and back in to a single stereo track that would contain the limiter post-fade *on that track* (otherwise, your whole signal would be going through the limiter, which could cause all sorts of confusion later).

It's late and hopefully I'm not whisky'd up enough for that to not make sense. But long story short, there are valid arguments to keep your final limiter on a buss (or a single, post-processed track) over having it on your main stereo buss. Maybe you need to compile "processed" tracks together with unprocessed tracks -- You've got 10 tunes, 5 of which aren't to be touched in the slightest, but need to be on the (DDP or whatever you're outputting). Those 5 tunes go on one track that is routed directly to the main buss. Some of the other tunes might only need minor shaping tweaks - Route those directly to the shaping buss. But those are going to go to that limiter, so those adjustments need to be kept in mind. Blah, blah, blah, there you go.
 
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