Master Bus - EQ = Linear Phase or Zero Phase?

[Caine123]

hi guys, i use my beloved PRO-Q3 also on my Master Bus and i wonder if you would recommend there linear phase or zero phase? if one or the other why?

thx

[Benedict]

I say, Who cares.

Most amazing records made were made with tools internet pedants wouldn't piss on these days, all based on some silly technicalities that they think matter but don't... because of all those records from Elvis to Spice Girls that just used what was there and are fabbo nonetheless.

Here I talk about how the phase-shiftiness IS exactly part of why EQ sounds so amazing:

[Synthman2000]

"Most amazing records made were made with tools internet pedants wouldn't piss on these days"

I understand what you allude to, most amazing records were made by a team of professional sound engineers often in different studios each doing a specific job, recording engineer, mixing engineer, tape operator, tech/maintenance engineer, mastering engineer. Each would have done this for many years in a studio that would cost about $5,000,000.00 and a $1,500.00 + a day to rent.

Let's not forget the talent either. Song writers, arrangers, performers, artists and session musicians.

It was what happened before it got to vinyl that caused a big part of that sound.

Now you have people on Youtube who are all of the former with how many years professional experience ? Sweet F.A. With all the cool new plug in videos there cannot be much audio work being completed by them, but they have plenty to say, much of it rubbish.

[legendCNCD]

Yeap Do not be afraid of phase shift

[Synthman2000]

I hasten to add record producers who were often musicians in their own right.

[Caine123]

many thanks to all the replies!
i think this is pretty good not to always care about all the "MODERN" techniques and stuff but go more by ear. i shouldnt check everything too much, but also should understand the controls . im gonna leave the setting which is not so CPU hungry as well cause with my tests i didnt hear anything different with these settings.

[Scoops]

It depends....

Are you mixing or mastering?

I typically don't put an EQ on the master bus for mixing. If you have to do that, fix the mix. And then like others have said, go with your ear

[jamcat]

Yeah, why are you EQing globally on your master buss?

Get the EQ right on your channels.

The only reason you should be doing any kind of global EQ is if you’re mastering for vinyl or tape, because you need to compensate for how music takes to those mediums.

[Caine123]

thx alot guys, yeah i moved on from the topic. i dont use linear phase etc. so far, cause i think like true peak etc. a lot of stuff is modern made marketing and i dont care much anymore so much cause if a mix sucks it sucks i guess.

i read a lot and watched A LOT of mastering videos, and you NEARLY always find that people cut the lows on the master, raise sometimes very minimal some highs and thats it. also there are a ton or maybe all EQ plugins have also MASTER Presets.
i tend to go more to the route yo uguys recommend, trying everything in the mix. BUT i think a master EQ isnt bad at all, cause if you got 20-30 elements and play them together and check the master EQ you have the whole picture. sure you can then raise the highs maybe 0.5 db or 1db on 10 elements, but if it doesnt destroy why not on the master EQ?
with compression i do the same now or always did, subtle compression, mostly not more than 2db max on master bus. and limiter 2-3 db etc.

[BazJacuzzi]

Can you even hear 0.5 db of EQ? Even if you categorically can, can you hear the difference between 0.5 db of linear vs minimum phase EQ?

[bmanic]

Yeah, why are you EQing globally on your master buss?

Get the EQ right on your channels.

The only reason you should be doing any kind of global EQ is if you’re mastering for vinyl or tape, because you need to compensate for how music takes to those mediums.

The above nonsense is the same kind of nonsense as "always put a High-pass filter on every track" or "never EQ more than +3dB". These dumb myths need to go away. Please stop spreading them.


First of all, there are good reasons for EQing your masterbus/mixbus. One of them is the simple fact that it's extremely effective and very quick to do. You can immediately reduce or boost frequency ranges much more effectively than trying to find multiple different tracks to get the same results. There's even a complete mixing philosophy done around this called top down mixing and it works just fine.

A more technical reason for why using an EQ on the main audio bus during mixing or mastering is completely okay and even encouraged: Phase relationships will be different between instruments if you EQ them in a group or separately. Thus the results will be different unless you copy paste the exact same EQ positions and gains and then divide the gain amount with the exact correct number of tracks you did the copy pasting to. Point is, it behaves and sounds different. This gets even further complicated and exaggerated when using any kind of EQ that also has non-linearities in it (any analogue modeled stuff).

In conclusion: If you want to remove some mud on the master, you can freely do so. You can of course also go through all of your tracks and try to figure out which combination of them create the mud and then put an EQ on every single one of them.. but be aware that it will not yield the same results as that one single EQ band on the master, unless all EQs and everything else is exactly identical and then divided the gain values correctly. So yeah, do spend 10 to 60 minutes tinkering with multiple tracks or do what is necessary in a few seconds on the master.


Having said that, there are also good reasons for NOT doing the EQing on the master and these need to be discussed as well. The EQ will always cause some amount of ringing/delay to a signal (and phase change if it isn't linear-phase). If you do extensive corrective work on the mixbus you end up adding this smearing to absolutely everything in your mix. Whereas if you find the worst culprits on single tracks and need to do a lot of EQing with sharp filters there, then the damage is minimized to those single tracks.

But in general, it's perfectly fine to do some basic EQing on your master track. When you start seeing more than 10 nodes of EQ and tons of sharp and deep cuts or boosts, that's when it may be a good idea to remove the EQ and go into the individual tracks to figure out what needs to be done there. Even then, having done the EQing on the master and deleting the EQ, will be beneficial as it can give a new perspective on what needs to be done.

[bmanic]

i read a lot and watched A LOT of mastering videos, and you NEARLY always find that people cut the lows on the master, raise sometimes very minimal some highs and thats it.

One reason why you see this specifically in Youtube videos is because people tend to choose tracks where it's easy to do "sweetening". This yields an easy to digest video with results for the everyday viewer that they can easily hear and appreciate. I wouldn't be surprised if some of those Youtube influencers pre-prepared the tracks by dulling them and making them sound a bit worse, and then just corrected the dulling. Wouldn't be the first time various influencers force the outcome with manipulation.

In the real world, at least in my experience, more often than not mixes tend to be too bright and too boomy (overall frequency response very scooped). This means you usually end up doing the exact opposite to it, reduce the energy of the highs to minimize harshness and trying to reduce or transparently control the lows while maintaining the illusion of there being a lot of it (if that's what the client wants).

The only "rule" you should follow is If it sounds good, it is good.. and that rule should start out as a vague rule when a beginner and become more of a steadfast rule the more experience you get. This is why the truly great artisans of our craft can do what ever they want and usually end up with great results because they know exactly when and what to do to a mix. It's also why they seem to get more done with less. I know, it's counter intuitive but that's just how it is. The better you get, the less you end up doing, yet the end results have a bigger impact.

[roman.i]

I would say it doesn't matter if you can't hear the difference.
Usually mastering pros will use the linear phase with oversampling, because it's the most transparent setting.
They do correction moves according to what they hear.
It requires some high end gear, room, and golden ears to do these changes.
When you doing your mixing, you may add some vibe eq on master, but leave the correction work to mastering.

[jamcat]

Yeah, why are you EQing globally on your master buss?

Get the EQ right on your channels.

The only reason you should be doing any kind of global EQ is if you’re mastering for vinyl or tape, because you need to compensate for how music takes to those mediums.

The above nonsense is the same kind of nonsense as "always put a High-pass filter on every track" or "never EQ more than +3dB". These dumb myths need to go away. Please stop spreading them.


First of all, there are good reasons for EQing your masterbus/mixbus. One of them is the simple fact that it's extremely effective and very quick to do. You can immediately reduce or boost frequency ranges much more effectively than trying to find multiple different tracks to get the same results. There's even a complete mixing philosophy done around this called top down mixing and it works just fine.

No one here said anything about "always put a High-pass filter on every track" or "never EQ more than +3dB." Address what we're actually talking about instead of attacking straw men.

Top down mixing is a bad approach. There is no such thing as free lunch or one-size-fits-all EQing. You end up having to EQ at the channel anyways, much of it to compensate for your global EQ.

If something needs to be fixed, fix it at the source.

[jamcat]

I would say it doesn't matter if you can't hear the difference.
Usually mastering pros will use the linear phase with oversampling, because it's the most transparent setting.

Linear phase borks transients.

Min phase (correct):




Lin phase (borked):

They do correction moves according to what they hear.
It requires some high end gear, room, and golden ears to do these changes.
When you doing your mixing, you may add some vibe eq on master, but leave the correction work to mastering.

A mastering engineer's job is to prepare masters on each medium for duplication. They shouldn't be "correcting" anything unless they're compensating for the idiosyncrasies of the target media. Their job is to get it sounding the same on vinyl and tape as it sounded when it came to them. That's actually pretty hard and takes a lot of experience. That's where the myth of "golden ears" came from. Mastering engineers who are working with digital delivery shouldn't be "fixing" anything other than LUFS.