Master Plugins?

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Protocall

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Hey guys,

Everybody has different ways of Mixing and Mastering there music, just curious what do YOU use when you master your tracks? Please include what Genre of music you work under also. Thanks
 
Sony CD Architect

....but I am assuming you are talking about pre-"mastering". I keep it basic. Throw the stereo track onto TesslaPro Mk II and Ferric, both from VOS. Maybe throw on a high pass filter at anywhere between 40-50 hz. Normalize and dither.
 
That's a tough question because every song or album requires a different approach. Of course, the perfect mix requires no mastering other than possibly bringing it up to whatever RMS/loudness you desire.

Allow me to digress a little on the subject of loudness of commercial material before I get into what I personally do.

The company I work for organises the largest pro audio/lighting/AV expo on the African continent called Mediatech. Part of the expo is a demonstration called the 'Outdoor Live Sound Demos'. All the local distributors of major brands like Alcons, L-Acoustics, DAS, JBL, Nexo, Martin Audio, etc put up their line array systems and we have a shoot out. These are all really high quality systems that you would find in any major music concert for thousands of people. Well, to cut a long story short, I was responsible for putting together the sample material for the shootouts. Basically I took three songs of different genres, loudness normalised them and then faded them into a 1 minute clip. I chose ACDC's Back in Black, a Michael Buble song (which I have always considered to be masterfully produced), and a David Guetta dance track (Titanium, I think). You can only guess which recording sounded the best on all of the systems. Yup, ACDC. I was actually appalled at how smashed even Michael Buble was. I made another montage with Snow Patrol and it was entirely unlistenable at the levels we were shooting for outdoors. Terrible. They really know how to ruin otherwise good sounding recordings with heavy handed mastering for loudness these days and it really showed.

ANYhoo. Just thought I would share that. It's easy to think that the top guys know what they're doing but when you hear a master recording of modern material on eleven or twelve superbly set up line arrays, it's easy to hear which ones are good and which ones fall apart. Most modern music fell apart.

In terms of my approach, I tend to first mix for the sound and the crest factor I'm looking for. To me, this is important. If I reach a comfortable crest factor for the material, i.e. a properly managed dynamic range, I find myself not having to limit the hell out of it in the mastering phase to reach the RMS values I'm looking for. This sounds like tricky business because a lot of guys on here, including myself, may tell me not to worry about that and just mix til it sounds good. I agree with that and that's fine but IMO a lot of what makes modern rock music (the music I generally record) pop is creative use of saturation and effect-driven compression. If you tier your dynamics processing in the mixing phase (and possibly the recording phase) by implementing multiple steps of gentle saturation and compression, you'll find that crest factor starts to come down without the macro dynamics of the track suffering.

Once my mix is done I'll use Wavelab to master. I actually can't claim to properly master because my room and monitoring system isn't transparent enough despite having a very high quality signal path. This is why I send serious work to a dedicated ME that I've worked with for a while. However, generally if I'm forced to self-master I'll use a BAX EQ and the Waves L2. I don't mess around with anything too complicated because all I want is bring the mix up in volume and adjust the top and low ends. I generally leave the midrange alone because I like to get it correct in the mix before it is ready to be mastered.

YMMV. Everyone has their own process and what works for them so take my words with a grain of salt.

Cheers :)
 
Mo Facta said:
That's a tough question because every song or album requires a different approach. Of course, the perfect mix requires no mastering other than possibly bringing it up to whatever RMS/loudness you desire.

Allow me to digress a little on the subject of loudness of commercial material before I get into what I personally do.

The company I work for organises the largest pro audio/lighting/AV expo on the African continent called Mediatech. Part of the expo is a demonstration called the 'Outdoor Live Sound Demos'. All the local distributors of major brands like Alcons, L-Acoustics, DAS, JBL, Nexo, Martin Audio, etc put up their line array systems and we have a shoot out. These are all really high quality systems that you would find in any major music concert for thousands of people. Well, to cut a long story short, I was responsible for putting together the sample material for the shootouts. Basically I took three songs of different genres, loudness normalised them and then faded them into a 1 minute clip. I chose ACDC's Back in Black, a Michael Buble song (which I have always considered to be masterfully produced), and a David Guetta dance track (Titanium, I think). You can only guess which recording sounded the best on all of the systems. Yup, ACDC. I was actually appalled at how smashed even Michael Buble was. I made another montage with Snow Patrol and it was entirely unlistenable at the levels we were shooting for outdoors. Terrible. They really know how to ruin otherwise good sounding recordings with heavy handed mastering for loudness these days and it really showed.

ANYhoo. Just thought I would share that. It's easy to think that the top guys know what they're doing but when you hear a master recording of modern material on eleven or twelve superbly set up line arrays, it's easy to hear which ones are good and which ones fall apart. Most modern music fell apart.

In terms of my approach, I tend to first mix for the sound and the crest factor I'm looking for. To me, this is important. If I reach a comfortable crest factor for the material, i.e. a properly managed dynamic range, I find myself not having to limit the hell out of it in the mastering phase to reach the RMS values I'm looking for. This sounds like tricky business because a lot of guys on here, including myself, may tell me not to worry about that and just mix til it sounds good. I agree with that and that's fine but IMO a lot of what makes modern rock music (the music I generally record) pop is creative use of saturation and effect-driven compression. If you tier your dynamics processing in the mixing phase (and possibly the recording phase) by implementing multiple steps of gentle saturation and compression, you'll find that crest factor starts to come down without the macro dynamics of the track suffering.

Once my mix is done I'll use Wavelab to master. I actually can't claim to properly master because my room and monitoring system isn't transparent enough despite having a very high quality signal path. This is why I send serious work to a dedicated ME that I've worked with for a while. However, generally if I'm forced to self-master I'll use a BAX EQ and the Waves L2. I don't mess around with anything too complicated because all I want is bring the mix up in volume and adjust the top and low ends. I generally leave the midrange alone because I like to get it correct in the mix before it is ready to be mastered.

YMMV. Everyone has their own process and what works for them so take my words with a grain of salt.

Cheers :)
Click to expand...

This makes sense to me. My only question I am wondering about. With fader riding or clip envelope editing, could it not be possible to remove more compression by "reducing the peaks" and provide better dynamics and fuller sound? I ask this as there was a video where the guy was showing how he firsts reduced peaks manually.

It would seem, by doing this, your mix would stand up to just about any system thrown at it (given it sounded good to start with) as it would be less dependent on compression even after you threw it in for the final mix (I didn't say master).
 
DM60 said:
This makes sense to me. My only question I am wondering about. With fader riding or clip envelope editing, could it not be possible to remove more compression by "reducing the peaks" and provide better dynamics and fuller sound? I ask this as there was a video where the guy was showing how he firsts reduced peaks manually.

It would seem, by doing this, your mix would stand up to just about any system thrown at it (given it sounded good to start with) as it would be less dependent on compression even after you threw it in for the final mix (I didn't say master).
Click to expand...

Sure, you could do it that way. Bare in mind I'm talking about using compression as a gentle dynamic range management tool and as an extreme effect. Other styles of music besides rock will require different approaches. The only problem I've experienced with manually attenuating peaks is that impact is lost because of the tonal differences in, say, hitting a drum hard in a rim shot as opposed to a medium hit in the center. It's the same, or rather the inverse, of thinking you can even out wildly fluctuating kick drums with compression. It just can't be done because of the change in tone that comes with hitting a drum harder or softer. Better playing at the source is always the best remedy. Manual fader riding is obviously also a good tool and used in conjunction with what I'm suggesting makes for an interesting mix. Saying that, riding faders for me isn't a micro-dynamic tool. It's a broad-strokes tool for balancing. IMO, of course.

Cheers :)
 
DM60 said:
This makes sense to me. My only question I am wondering about. With fader riding or clip envelope editing, could it not be possible to remove more compression by "reducing the peaks" and provide better dynamics and fuller sound? I ask this as there was a video where the guy was showing how he firsts reduced peaks manually.
Click to expand...

Manual alteration is a powerful tool, but compression, because of its time based controls, can be more musical if you set the parameters with some awareness of the rhythmic effects.

Like Mo Facta says, a little here and a little there adds up to a lot of compression without it sounding like a lot of compression. Tap it a touch at tracking, do some manual edits, gently squash certain tracks at mixdown, maybe a little on a subgroup and then finish it with two or three stages of dynamics control (if called for) in mastering.
 
bouldersoundguy said:
Manual alteration is a powerful tool, but compression, because of its time based controls, can be more musical if you set the parameters with some awareness of the rhythmic effects.

Like Mo Facta says, a little here and a little there adds up to a lot of compression without it sounding like a lot of compression. Tap it a touch at tracking, do some manual edits, gently squash certain tracks at mixdown, maybe a little on a subgroup and then finish it with two or three stages of dynamics control (if called for) in mastering.
Click to expand...
Right, and to the point I am taking away from your comments, compression to add to the music, not just squish it for the "loud factor" which many of us newbies do, misuse compression.
 
I don't do any manual volume automation at the final stages unless it's very broad strokes like fadeouts or slightly raising whole verses.
I do a lot of manual volume automation during the mix though.
The main tracks I'd need to do that on are usually vocals and bass.

I got out of the habit of using compressors to control overall volume a good while ago, and while is seems so obvious, it was a revelation.
 
I'm using T-RackS 3 (from IK multimedia) either as standalone or sometimes as plugin in pro-tools.

The genre is Metal/hardrock.

If You're new to either T-RackS or Mastering expect to use (a lot of) time to trial and error, and if You don't have highend monitors make sure to use different hi-fi setups for reference to get that "neutral sound"
 
Hello, Protocall,
Regarding plugins, I still do the recording first on the Tascam 2488 Mark II but when it comes to mastering, obviously, there needs to be more done than is offered by the onboard mastering section of the 2488. That might be ok just for a demo, but if you want to trim, silence start and end, add multiband compression, eq, enhancer, limit & raise level, etc., you have to export it to a computer.

As for the mastering plugins, Reaplugs have got some good stuff including a very useable multiband compressor with solo function. Extremely useful. T-RackS too. Glaceverb by DA Sample is very versatile. Voxengo have excellent products. Yesterday, I found out about Tone Boosters. The fellow who's created them is a real qualified expert. TB Barricade is the best limiter/gain maximisation tool I’ve tried so far. It has a lookahead function which anticipates peaks to attenuate them before they arrive thus reducing distortion. It also has a true peak ISP function. The loudness meter is excellent to see how much you are reducing the dynamic range by and that you don’t overdo it. About -11 to -12 LUFS is a good target.

My genres are rock, pop, ballads and instrumental mood music.

I don't whether you're in the middle of a mastering project or have experience but whatever, take your time! Use good monitoring speakers and never fail to listen in headphones for audible artefacts produced by limiting, etc.
 
If this has been answered somewhere else, please just point me in that direction.

So, I get mastering (not really, but I understand it is different from mixing). When doing a master, let's say for a collection of songs. (They used to call them albums, now I am not sure what they call them, but I will use the term album to mean, a collection of songs I want to be together.) Does one put all of the mixed tracks into one project session and work from there? Get the mix and then export all of the tracks individually using the same master output?

Not sure if this question even makes sense, but trying to get all of the songs to sound like the belong together, have the same loudness, consistency across all songs. I am not a mastering engineer, but I would like it to sound even across all songs. If someone can point me in the right direction.
 
It's basically trying to bring out the potential of the individual mixes -- but while taking the project as a whole into consideration. Yes, you could theoretically line them all up in one project file, you could theoretically use the same master output, but you need full control over every individual mix.

Not sure if this question even makes sense, but trying to get all of the songs to sound like the belong together, have the same loudness, consistency across all songs. I am not a mastering engineer, but I would like it to sound even across all songs. If someone can point me in the right direction.
Click to expand...
You're already in -- at least some direction. If you're having issues, then welcome to why there are mastering engineers in the first place. I don't master my own mixes either (objectivity is arguably one of the most important tools - Hard to have any with your own mixes).
 
I put them all in one project and insert whatever I feel is necessary on each track. I have been doing the final limiting on the main bus but generally I've done some preconditioning of the dynamics at the track level. That way I can jump around and compare relative tone and perceived volume.
 
bouldersoundguy said:
I put them all in one project and insert whatever I feel is necessary on each track. I have been doing the final limiting on the main bus but generally I've done some preconditioning of the dynamics at the track level. That way I can jump around and compare relative tone and perceived volume.
Click to expand...

OK, that was what I was thinking. So, I am taking the bounced songs, and putting them on their own track. Then putting the X VST on the individual track. Then on the master, putting the master compressor and limiter on the master and then bounce the project in total.

Only thing I am trying to figure out, should I bounce as on file and then split or bounce as individual tracks.

Any recommendations are appreciated.
 
DM60 said:
OK, that was what I was thinking. So, I am taking the bounced songs, and putting them on their own track. Then putting the X VST on the individual track. Then on the master, putting the master compressor and limiter on the master and then bounce the project in total.

Only thing I am trying to figure out, should I bounce as on file and then split or bounce as individual tracks.

Any recommendations are appreciated.
Click to expand...

If it helps, here are my thoughts. Firstly, understand as of now I do all my mixing and 'mastering' through Reaper using very basic plugins and EQing. Also, below is what I have learned is working the best for me SO FAR. I am truly an amateur at mastering techniques.

I first record all my tracks a few dbs below 0. I render each track individually to a pre-'mastered' version. Then I open up a new project, and insert each pre-mastered song as an individual track. On each of those tracks is: EQ, Compressor, Master Limiter (in that order). I listen to each and make output adjustments to make each song sound like they are, level-wise, relatively consistent. I would rather have limiting on each song itself, instead of the overall master control, because I find my songs to need their own unique thresholds and such. Then I render each individual song out by "rendering as stems" (it does not render the Master, but whichever track I have highlighted).

Hope this helps
 
reverbdk said:
If it helps, here are my thoughts. Firstly, understand as of now I do all my mixing and 'mastering' through Reaper using very basic plugins and EQing. Also, below is what I have learned is working the best for me SO FAR. I am truly an amateur at mastering techniques.

I first record all my tracks a few dbs below 0. I render each track individually to a pre-'mastered' version. Then I open up a new project, and insert each pre-mastered song as an individual track. On each of those tracks is: EQ, Compressor, Master Limiter (in that order). I listen to each and make output adjustments to make each song sound like they are, level-wise, relatively consistent. I would rather have limiting on each song itself, instead of the overall master control, because I find my songs to need their own unique thresholds and such. Then I render each individual song out by "rendering as stems" (it does not render the Master, but whichever track I have highlighted).

Hope this helps
Click to expand...

SO I have been working with Reaper's CD creation rendering. Not too bad. I have been doing exactly what you have above, except the limiter on the master channel. Still working on trying to get, not a Master (I'm not kidding myself here), but a decent collection to listen to that is consistent. Since my songs are just for my creative outlet, I am not looking to take it to the next level. Which would be proper mastering.

I appreciate everyone's input.
 
Yeah reaper can really get the (basic) job done. Not sure if you're realizing this too, but it seems like the mastering step may also need a good bit of eq work. In reaper, a lot of my tracks tend to be mid freq heavy, so I also boost a bit of the high frequencies pre compression
 
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