Free mastering plugins. Which are the best?

[trip]

definitely stardust and the buzzroom plugs
furthermore the kjaerus limiter/ eq, and the voxengo stuff.

[fritzman]

But well, for some persons (not really knowing what they do) it is obviously like that: Passing that entire shit thru a whole brunch of "analog stylish" and hells expensive external mastering equipment in hope it gets finally that magic "warmth" anyhow ...

.

Exactly THAT is mastering!

The only problem I have with that is that all this analog stuff doesn't fit into my computer so that I use these poor VSTplugins instead.


Have fun, FRitz

[simmy]

aams

[androidlove]

i just try to make my tracks and mix sound good with occasional eq and phase offset. i then run it through c3 to smooth out the lumps. is this wrong?

[fritzman]

i just try to make my tracks and mix sound good with occasional eq and phase offset. i then run it through c3 to smooth out the lumps. is this wrong?

Hi,

That's cool. Can I hear it?


Best wishes, FRitz

[androidlove]

That's cool. Can I hear it?

http://audioshots.com/auditorium/viewtopic.php?t=2232

[franx]

Thanks for all the tips.
So far I'm quite happy with this combination.

posihfopit -> TLs Saturated Driver -> TLs TLs Pocket Limiter -> Voxengo Stereo enhancer -> TLs Maximizer.

Any opinions?

Thanks
Frank

[Lunch Money]

Sounds like a LOT of signal modification! I hope you're not losing any life and clarity in your mix. The driver to the limiter to the maximizer seems like overkill, but if in the end it sounds good that's OK!

I'd be surprised if you weren't over-processing the signal, though. BUT, I don't work in the industry, don't own any pro gear, and have never successfully made a mix that sounded like an actual "pro" mix, so I'm nobody whose opinion should matter.

[ouroboros]

I agree with the 'Money and speak from the same place:
the most helpful thing for me thus far has been to get the sound as close as I can to perfect using eq before I start using mastering fx. (Although I do use a limiter set to 0db a lot)

[Frippertronix]

Thanks for all the tips.
So far I'm quite happy with this combination.

posihfopit -> TLs Saturated Driver -> TLs TLs Pocket Limiter -> Voxengo Stereo enhancer -> TLs Maximizer.

Any opinions?

Thanks
Frank

Why three compressors?

[franx]

I used the warming setting of the saturated driver which gives it a nice full, warm sound (I also like the tube limiter). I may be wrong but I use the Pocket limiter as the compressor to control the dynamics. May be that's a little overkill, but I'm still experimenting .

But thanks for all the feedback.
Frank

[flugel45]

I usually do EQing first, then applying multiband dynamics, exciting and multiband saturation and stereo imaging and finally multiband limiting (maximizing)

I used to use a chain similar to that, but found that the initial EQing was often lost in the subsequent compression. A chain of Multiband compression->EQ->Limit has worked well.

I use:
SlimSlowSlider LPGEQ->T-SLEDGE multiband->TLS Maximiser [see here for username/password]

Seems to work for me. All depends what your after. T-SLEDGE has some excellent presets to use as a starting point depending on what you want.



DSP

Duncan,

You seem to be contradicting yourself here.

(You show your current chain with EQ first, or did I misread it...?).

By the way, thanks for the links - though the one for TLSmaximiser doesn't seem to be working (Not a problem for me, as I found that I already had the plug , but others might want to look for it).

JD