What do use for Mastering?
- KVRAF
- 10331 posts since 7 Sep, 2006 from Roseville, CA
I’m strongly considering moving from Wavelab to Acoustica with their current sale. Wavelab has always been unstable for me and I only use about 2% of its capabilities anyway. Acoustica looks like a lean and straightforward app. Need to demo it this week.Tj Shredder wrote: ↑Thu Nov 25, 2021 4:04 pm My goto mastering tool is Acon Digitals Acoustica. Mostly only needed for some fine tuning... I've gone through Sounddesigner, Peak, Sonic Solutions and ended up happily with Acoustica now...
Same, for label releases, but I do my own mastering for my other crap work
Logic Pro | PolyBrute | MatrixBrute | MiniFreak | Prophet 6 | Trigon 6 | OB-6 | Rev2 | Pro 3 | SE-1X | Polar TI2 | Blofeld | RYTMmk2 | Digitone | Syntakt | Digitakt | Integra-7 | TR-8S | MPC One | TD-3 MO
- KVRist
- 415 posts since 3 Jun, 2017
Always depends on my project and daily mood. Usually it's Acon Acoustica plus 3rd party plugins. No rule as to which plugins, sometimes TC Electronic, sometimes Ozone, sometimes Sonnox, sometimes FabFilter, sometimes Softube. Will likely be getting the Nugen mastering bundle, looks like an absolute steal at the current price, so they might also become part of the 'occasionally used' pile soon. From time to time I'll fire up TC Electronic's Finalizer app, just so I can justify having paid for it in some past offer. I find Bute Loudness Normalizer a pretty useful tool, although a one-trick pony. In general, I think it doesn't matter too much what your tools are, these days most serious audio hosts and plugins have a sufficient level of internal processing quality. Just use what you have available and know, or get something that feels right to you and use that. A lot can be argued about the sense of oversampling, uncramped filters, linear phase, etc. but you'll have a hard time finding an audience that will actually be able to listen to your mp3 or vinyl and tell you if that's a FIR or IIR filter boosting the presence on the vocals. Way more important than what you have is how well you know it, and what you can actually do with it. Unfortunately.
Do it, do it. If you don't have Wavelab Pro, and you're not using it's 'pro' features all the time, you won't miss much in Acoustica. It's fast, lean, potent and stable. RX's and especially SpectraLayers' spectral editing functionality shits circles around Acoustica's, but for gerenal editing, sequencing and polishing it is perfectly adequate and sufficient. If you go for the big version, you'll get the Mastering and Restoration plugin suites as well, which cover just about any processing effect you need, you can also load and use them in other DAWs and editors as regular plugins. Nope, not affiliated, just very happy.cryophonik wrote: ↑Thu Nov 25, 2021 5:14 pm I’m strongly considering moving from Wavelab to Acoustica with their current sale.
Confucamus.
- KVRist
- 413 posts since 1 Jan, 2021
AudioThing|Cableguys|Image-Line|Klanghelm|Tokyo Dawn Records|Tritik|Valhalla DSP
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Dmitry Sches|Surge Synth Team|u-he
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- addled muppet weed
- 106085 posts since 26 Jan, 2003 from through the looking glass
- KVRAF
- 2851 posts since 8 Jun, 2018
Primoridal Music: sadà\exposadà - Indusrial & Expanding Your Mind Hurts: Sound Brut
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Hermetech Mastering Hermetech Mastering https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=7418
- KVRAF
- 1619 posts since 30 May, 2003 from Milan, Italy
http://hermetechmastering.com/equipment.html
It's not really about the tools, but what you do with them, TBH.
It's not really about the tools, but what you do with them, TBH.
- Banned
- 4491 posts since 8 Jul, 2008 from UK
Hermetech Mastering wrote: ↑Sat Nov 27, 2021 10:46 am http://hermetechmastering.com/equipment.html
It's not really about the tools, but what you do with them, TBH.
Don't trust those with words of weakness, they are the most aggressive
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- KVRAF
- 1580 posts since 28 Jul, 2006
I don't think too hard about it, but I usually use Unisum for compression, waves abbey roads mastering for a little EQ and stereo widening, possibly a saturator like Kelvin but my mixes are usually saturated enough, possibly a parametric EQ like TDR Slick EQ M, usually Limitless for limiting.
I might try out widening with Kelvin now that it's updated with more options and M/S.
I might try out widening with Kelvin now that it's updated with more options and M/S.
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- KVRAF
- 4712 posts since 26 Nov, 2015 from Way Downunder
- KVRAF
- 7390 posts since 9 Jan, 2003 from Saint Louis MO
Seriously, if you can get at least a couple of your tracks mastered by a professional who is willing to give you advice to improve your mixes / fix problems before they're recorded, and also tell you what they did (rather than treating it as some kind of trade secret), that can really give your own skills and ears a boost. (It's also a good sign that the engineer knows what they're doing and isn't just running it through an automatic plugin or something, I guess... )
My own default mastering chain now is:
CraveEQ: with a low cut filter enabled by default, but I usually wind up making some tweaks.
DDMF MagicDeathEye: to me this is a gentle, "harmless" compressor and I have it set to especially tame settings, ready to be slightly tweaked.
TEOTE: also set to really neutral settings by default, with Boost Threshold high. It should not have to do very much during mastering -- if it does, I treat it as kind of a warning sign to try some EQ cuts.
SideminderZL: with 100% neutral settings, but I will often try widening the mids and/or highs. Sometimes I do still catch stereo phase correlation issues at this point.
Elephant: I've gotten used to using this as my main limiter. I will run the entire thing through another instance of this if I feel like the first round wasn't enough.
My own default mastering chain now is:
CraveEQ: with a low cut filter enabled by default, but I usually wind up making some tweaks.
DDMF MagicDeathEye: to me this is a gentle, "harmless" compressor and I have it set to especially tame settings, ready to be slightly tweaked.
TEOTE: also set to really neutral settings by default, with Boost Threshold high. It should not have to do very much during mastering -- if it does, I treat it as kind of a warning sign to try some EQ cuts.
SideminderZL: with 100% neutral settings, but I will often try widening the mids and/or highs. Sometimes I do still catch stereo phase correlation issues at this point.
Elephant: I've gotten used to using this as my main limiter. I will run the entire thing through another instance of this if I feel like the first round wasn't enough.
- KVRAF
- 5959 posts since 8 Jul, 2009
"What do use for Mastering?"
My ears.
My ears.
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Free music with your support on Patreon | Youtube: Music of Plexus Videos (music videos) | Youtube: Plexus Productions (audio related) Stop whining. Make music.
Free music with your support on Patreon | Youtube: Music of Plexus Videos (music videos) | Youtube: Plexus Productions (audio related) Stop whining. Make music.
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- KVRAF
- 3089 posts since 4 May, 2012
I was going to write that but I thought I'd let you be that guy.
Thought about this. Probably the only consistent thing would be a high pass filter. Otherwise it's the same as processing any audio: Assess the issues and solve them with the appropriate tools.