New T-RackS Master EQ 432 NOW AVAILABLE (full GUI pic inside)

[sonicpowa]

What benefits does a 'Mastering' EQ have over any other EQ out there? What sets it apart?

Well the truth is: you will buy an EQ and the "mastering" part is actually you.

[MickGael]

This. 100 times this.

[MickGael]

Well the truth is: you will buy an EQ and the "mastering" part is actually you.

This. 100 times this.

[murnau]

no.

[Peter - IK Multimedia]

Putting "Mastering" in the plugin name merely gives an indication as to what a typical use of the original hardware would be. It is, as has been indicated earlier in the thread, a sought-after EQ for mastering. Obviously it can be used on anything you'd like to EQ (and you can get the demo now for a much longer period of 14 days to try it on all kinds of things at http://www.ikmultimedia.com/trcs or in Custom Shop/IK User Area to see) but this EQ is known for its use in mastering for the most part hence the name.

[Agreed]

In a conventional studio with expensive hardware, you typically don't have a ton of pultecs or fairchilds or LA2As or 1176LNs or <insert pricy hardware that it would be really peculiar to have a bunch of here, do not include channel strips except for Neve since they got on the ball and released them as just channel strips>. You can rent them for a pretty decent price if you're getting paid well enough to do so, but if you want the privilege of owning a Fairchild in good condition, you're going to pay anywhere between $25,000 and $50,000. Just one. Other classic pieces of gear with less esoteric needs can be a little more affordable, but that's in the context of taking it from 5 figures to 4.

The ability to pay low 3 figures for a very solid emulation of a given device and then put it on however many tracks you want to is pretty outstanding - call it whatever % true to the original you want, in the end you will either learn the tool or you won't and you will either find it useful or not, I have seen Gearslutz comparisons where very proud men were somewhat humbled when they guessed wrong on the "Which is the real hardware?" test.

In this case, to me, my read, and mine only is that it's called a "mastering EQ" because the device in question was primarily intended for mastering purposes. Extremely low THD and cross-talk figures, aiming for as close to analog perfection as possible given the technology of the time, hence the individual-resistor stepped potentiometers rather than the more conventional wiper-style ones with their more conventional 25%+/- or greater variability, hence pretty much everything about it.

But it's still an analog device, and a good one, one of the best parametric EQs in history for the job it does... It still has, for lack of a better term, a *sound*. It's not just another parametric EQ, and trying to null it out with straight-up, non-modeled, programmed for digital parametric EQs using the same settings as what you'd get on this model, not gonna null. In particular there's some high end coloration that's subtle but gives many tracks on one album a very nice character when taken as a whole, and oh yeah it's really handy to do the job of making the master in the first place too, though I guess that is an interestingly sidelined goal since so many of us use these conventionally unobtainium tools as inserts when mixing, now.

I mean, tell an engineer fifteen years ago that if you'd like you could put a remarkably accurate fairchild on every track if you just happened to want to and it would only cost the price of a week's worth of food and he'd scoff. Fun times!

[Paulnz]

It should be 120 credits/$149.99/€119.99 now (not 240, FYI) but yes it is a special introductory price.

Thanks Peter, I was at work so I couldn't look at the custom shop. I got the 240 from your screenshot

So does that mean when the introductory period is over it'll go up to 240 as per your screenshot?

I also couldn't see where it says when the offer finishes

[VitaminD]

In this case, to me, my read, and mine only is that it's called a "mastering EQ" because the device in question was primarily intended for mastering purposes. Extremely low THD and cross-talk figures, aiming for as close to analog perfection as possible given the technology of the time, hence the individual-resistor stepped potentiometers rather than the more conventional wiper-style ones with their more conventional 25%+/- or greater variability, hence pretty much everything about it.

But it's still an analog device, and a good one, one of the best parametric EQs in history for the job it does... It still has, for lack of a better term, a *sound*. It's not just another parametric EQ, and trying to null it out with straight-up, non-modeled, programmed for digital parametric EQs using the same settings as what you'd get on this model, not gonna null. In particular there's some high end coloration that's subtle but gives many tracks on one album a very nice character when taken as a whole, and oh yeah it's really handy to do the job of making the master in the first place too, though I guess that is an interestingly sidelined goal since so many of us use these conventionally unobtainium tools as inserts when mixing, now.

I mean, tell an engineer fifteen years ago that if you'd like you could put a remarkably accurate fairchild on every track if you just happened to want to and it would only cost the price of a week's worth of food and he'd scoff. Fun times!

Thank you for actually attempting to answer the question!

So mastering prefixing a device name doesn't really mean much in the digital realm.. it seems..

[pheeleep]

High latency is typically why I wouldn't use certain things on an insert or bus. How much latency does this introduce? I am going to try the demo but can't at the moment...

[4tune]

High latency is typically why I wouldn't use certain things on an insert or bus. How much latency does this introduce? I am going to try the demo but can't at the moment...

In renoise it reports:

451 Samples (10.23 ms)

[heffus]

Nice that those 2 day demos are gone, but does my computer still need to be connected to the internet in order to demo something?

[pheeleep]

451 samples is pretty high... but I have some "mastering" plugins that are over 1000, so everything is relative.

[sounddesigner]

Is 451 samples latency a measurement without oversampling enabled in T-Racks?

[Agreed]

Thank you for actually attempting to answer the question!

So mastering prefixing a device name doesn't really mean much in the digital realm.. it seems..

It does, and it doesn't; if the emulations are faithful to the original, you basically have a tool here that combines the most desirable aspects of the original device with flexibility that we know can only come from ITB mixing and, yes, mastering (it is so silly that people think mastering is never done with ITB tools, but that's perception I guess).

It's very much up to you as the person driving all this to make sure your gain staging is on target to get it all "right," if you are a T-Racks user in general their metering suite which is a freebie is great for mastering imo, though you need to be careful how you read the loudness/RMS stack as it can be a little tricky to get useful info from.

It's the "off-label" prescription usage where we get to put all these tools that cost so much in their real physical forms on a crazy number of tracks without any sort of arduous bake-to-disc process like you'd have to do with real hardware if you wanted to stick your fancy quad rack unit on multiple tracks in a mixing situation - this, for example, you find a Sontec MES 432 C or even a C9/D9 in good shape, minimum $8K, and I've seen them enter the five figure range and be bought quickly when they're in even close to pristine shape. Imagine trying to put that one super expensive tool on every track.

Now just load it up as a plugin insert and go to town, to the extent that your workstation will allow of course. It boggles the mind. It takes some getting used to, really - if you read through the product descriptions on the IK site, the devices conventionally used on the master bus are so indicated, but they also suggest trying it on tracks (in the real world that'd be a SERIOUS SOMETIMES FOOD, you'd go out of your way to avoid having to do that unless it made a ton of sense... Some of these tools, in their original incarnations, have become friggin' incredibly expensive, unobtanium things that literally can't be made anymore because of laws preventing their transformers and the tubes that powered them from being produced, to use the Fairchild as an example).

Adjusting to a paradigm where tools that have conventionally been reserved for mastering can be used in tracking, or in mixing, or in ITB mastering ... really different! I would never have believed that my budget would allow for me to have multiple 1176LNs on anything, even though it's frankly an amazingly good tracking comp in addition to its fantastic overall behavior for gluing drums together onto a single bus, but now I can do that, and in so doing I can get a huge percentage of that perceived behavior (hell, measured behavior) across multiple tracks for less than a hundred dollars taking into account the sale price I paid - it's not literally perfect, it doesn't know about impedance relationships before the box and as I said gain staging and all that is still on you to make sure you're getting the most out of the tool. But still, the sound is awfully close to hardware if you've ever tried that hardware on a rental or visited a studio with the real deal, and it's so weird and awesome that you can just throw it anywhere you like.

This is, I guess, a more general commentary on ITB workflow, but it relates here because while 120 credits may seem expensive, it's a heck of a lot better than $9000 for a ~decent quality 432 and it does have the character that 432s are expensive and not usually let go of by their owners for. In addition to its very precise EQing, it's got that subtle shimmer that it adds to the highs, not intrusive but great for spreading a certain character to help a bunch of tracks that were recorded with the same gear turn into an album with a cohesive sound.

That's what real world "mastering" stuff is for, these days. As a VERY simplified history that ignores several important formats, the term used to apply to the task of making sure that, throughout the whole album, the needle didn't pop out of the groove or bottom out in it when pressing vinyl since that's something that can happen if you don't watch your EQ and phase; then, fast forward through a few formats to CDs and it was to make sure that digital clipping wasn't occurring on the new CD format... Now, it's almost taken on a sort of "magical" connotation, where you send a mix off (that has, by some older standards, already had much of the job of mastering done to it, frankly) to a mastering house and the mastering engineer is supposed to have the golden ear to better-ize everything and make your stuff sound either consistently loud, or consistently nicer than before, or both.

There's still the really important task of mastering for broadcast, by the way - but that involves keeping up to date on standards and all that jazz, it's one of the things I think good mastering engineers can really do for you after a tracking/mixing engineer has taken a whack at an album, from the standpoint of "what am I paying that person for??"

[DaveGamble]

In this case, to me, my read, and mine only is that it's called a "mastering EQ" because the device in question was primarily intended for mastering purposes. Extremely low THD and cross-talk figures, aiming for as close to analog perfection as possible given the technology of the time, hence the individual-resistor stepped potentiometers rather than the more conventional wiper-style ones with their more conventional 25%+/- or greater variability, hence pretty much everything about it.

Just FYI, switches rather than pots is to allow precision recall. Military spec pots are plenty accurate, but the angle of the line on your recall sheet ain't.

Now, once upon a time, (here showing my age) describing a unit as a "mastering" processor literally meant that the pots got replaced with switches, and it was expecting line level, so you'd offer non-transformer input/output-stages.