I suck at mastering what is the best Multiband Compressor ==> Ozone vs Fabfilter vs Bitwig Compressor+

[Uncle E]

If you guys want to send me some stems, I'd be happy to do a mix and master for you. I have a feeling that the good results I'm getting from Ozone are related to how I mix (lots of clipping, compression, and saturation), so I'd send you versions of the mixes both with and without it.

[lobanov]

What you're describing is really still the role of the mixing engineer. It is literally the mix engineer's job to make the drums appropriately punchy, to make the bass well balanced, and to give the vocals clarity. If he's relying on the mastering engineer to do any of that, then he didn't do his job.

I coudn't say that mastering isn't needed at all but mostly I agree. The goal of mastering is mostly technical. Final touches. Thechical stuff. If mixing was made the right way, for a mastering engineer there is almost nothing to do.

[El°HYM]

Mastering is worth it, for that experienced set of 'new' ears alone. Yet, I also agree with Jamcat about things which should be done in the Mix already, that cannot be 'fixed' in Mastering later on.

[WackyZoundz]

And besides, we have room/speaker correction software that largely mitigates all of that now. With ARC4, you can fix your room and your monitors, and then make them sound like NS-10s (if you want.)

First, no DSP can fix room issues. Only acoustic treatment can do that. Second, ARC and similar products are nothing more than overpriced toys. You'll see and hear the difference when you do a real speaker calibration in an anechoic chamber (which is where you need to do all calibrations). Remains the problem of the characteristic impulse response of the speaker which can't be changed. Or THD or signal-to-noise ratio. So no, it's not possible to make speaker A sound exactly like speaker B either.

[jamcat]

Overpriced?
Someone has never heard of an IK group buy.

[_leras]

[quote=jamcat post_id=8931185 time=1720213671 user_id=447286]

But at that point you’re just doing more of the same that was already done on the master buss. And it logically follows that your “master” could be remastered to sound even better, and then remastered again, ad infinitum.

Just get it right the first time. No need to play dress-up as a “mastering engineer” (even though it may be fun to pretend.)
[/quote]

Who said as infinitum? Only you...

Do your best mix, do your best separate mastering stage (by you or someone else).

The better the mix the less difference a master will make.

But say you do mix into a master buss, how do you know it was set optimally for your track if you set it up front? I can agree it's a useful thing to do as you'll mix with an idea of what the end result will be.

But - I don't believe it's that simple to mix and fine tune a master bus at the same time. There's just too much to keep track of.

I would recommend you try this exercise. Do a mix, he happy with it and bounce it down with the master buss FX and also with all the master fx off.

The next day come back to it and using some A/Bing, recreate your master bus chain one fx at time but being really specific for your track.

I'd be quite surprised if you couldn't get a better overall outcome.

But also there are many things that you can do on a 2 bus that you can't do in a mix.

[WackyZoundz]

Overpriced?
Someone has never heard of an IK group buy.

I wouldn't mind if it was free. It still makes things worse but at least nobody would earn a single cent with this crap.

[jamcat]

So you bought it?
Or is that an uninformed opinion?

[WackyZoundz]

I used all kinds of room correction DSP crap (including ARC) when I was a noob who had no clue about how things actually work. I spend a lot of money on snake oil like this. Then I studied acoustics and realized what I did wrong the whole time.

[jamcat]

Which mic does your ARC have?

[WackyZoundz]

After throwing all that snake oil away and adding proper acoustic treatment, things like mixing and mastering became a lot easier all of a sudden. For the first time I could actually hear what was coming out of my speakers. No wonder why I couldn't get the frequency balance and dynamics right, the room modes swallowed a lot of bass (giving me the impression that the levels where alright when the bass was actually way too loud in the mix/master) and the heavy room reverberation (first reflection points) made sound everything from low to high mids sound too loud (resulting in mid frequencies being too quiet in the mix/master).

So instead of buying a new fancy mixing/mastering tool I recommend to get the room acoustics right first. This is the bare minimum. No, it's not possible to make even an okay mix or master on headphones alone and it's not possible to mix/master on speakers in a room without proper acoustic treatment no matter how good your speakers are. The best speakers, the best multi-band compressor, the best audio interface sounds like garbage in an untreated room. Because the room sounds like garbage. And this is why professional mastering is so important: The well-treated room is part of the equipment the mastering engineer works with. Mastering is more important than ever in the era of bedroom producers working in bad sounding rooms.

[jamcat]

But which ARC measurement mic was it?

[WackyZoundz]

You need to come up with something better than a straw man. Especially considering how many things you wrote here which are completely wrong.

[pekbro]

In regard to multiband comps, dont forget Toneboosters and minimal audio, both of
their offerings can be had pretty cheap
and are quite good.

[ChanceB]

Toneboosters MBC is very nice,I still haven’t bought it yet because I have Ozone,but I used it on a couple songs on the Master in demo mode and I like it . Minimal’s Fuse comp is great but I wouldn’t put it on the Master.

I should add that maybe I suck at using multi band compressors and have figured out how to make it work on the Master,although I don’t think that’s what it’s for