Good Mastering Plugin

  • I've been using TB Barricade for a while with great results.


    I was able to grab Brainworx from Plugin Alliance this month and it's truly brilliant. Highly recommended.


    You can grab it for $129 using the code BXL4129 until the end of August. ;)

  • I am writing this as a warning to those considering so-called "professional mastering services." I've been getting my tracks "professionally" mastered for many years, and just recently, thinking I still wasn't good enough, I submitted my latest release to a well-known, expensive mastering studio (which I shall not name here). I'd done my own master as well, but since I don't trust myself, I wanted to wait for the "professionals."


    When I got their master, I discovered the exact same thing that had happened to me with hundreds of other masters, from different engineers/studios around the world:


    - The sound is a minimum of 2-3 units quieter than all comparable commercial tracks. (Sometimes more than 2-3 units quieter.) They never master loud enough.
    - They boost the Bass and Hi-Freq, making the Mids disappear, so the track sounds like a thin wire. There's no body to the track, since the Mids are gone.


    These two things have been happening for like a decade, with all kinds of engineers. Maybe they don't like the "loudness wars" or disagree with them. If you watch their ads, you'll see these old men with intelligent faces saying how they "understand the music business" and "volume is important" but all this BS isn't worth a damn, I don't think they've recently listened to any modern music, whose RMS is much louder than even a few years ago. And for some reason they boost the bass too much, bass isn't all that important in today's world. Most modern tracks don't accentuate the subs.


    Just for fun I listened to their master back-to-back with my own master (which I thought was bad) and mine was a hundred times better! I just applied a T-Racks VintageEQ preset for brightness, and T-Racks OptoComp ("Natural Sweetening") +15 for volume. No pumping, distortion, or artefacts. Loud and ready for prime time, it sits great in the mix with all the other commercial releases.


    The paradox of life is that, while musicians say "you should never trust your own ears, and give the track to others for mastering," it appears that you should definitely trust your own ears, and AVOID sending your tracks to all these "professionals" with degrees who don't actually know what the hell they're doing. If you do - prepare to come back to them, complaining about lack of loudness, and watch them increase the volume by 0.01 dB and it's still nowhere near loud enough.

  • Izotope Ozone is horrible. I specifically mentioned in my post: Do not suggest Ozone.


    Not once in ~5 years have I had a good result from Izotope Ozone despite trying all presets and all versions of this product. Ozone drains all the depth from your mix and sometimes makes it extra-bright and distorts, and I'm not even a pro engineer, but I know bad sound when I hear it. :thumbdown:


    use only a clean/default preset AND take time and start using the knobs and ears.... but first take time to learn and understand the meaning of this process... its the third and final ... dont be irritated by the mass of presets...ignore;)


  • use only a clean/default preset AND take time and start using the knobs and ears.... but first take time to learn and understand the meaning of this process... its the third and final ... dont be irritated by the mass of presets...ignore;)


    the eq only is WOW.... really good

  • I still have no understanding of the fundamentals of volume, compression, and EQ... I've bought some books, but they're all crap & too slow.


    No offence but if you don't understand the fundamentals of volume, compression, and eq, you're still a novice... You might be very creative as a musician, even talented at producing artists but in ten years as an engineer you'd understand these things quite well.


    Ozone is good, especially at mid and beginner level. I suggest reading their papers on how to use it. Try even just taming down the settings of the presets.


    Try getting better monitors and room treatment. Then learn your tools better. You wont get the mega pro results with these tools but you're not going to get better results than ozone from any other mid priced VST. If you can't get ozone to work, you wont get the others to work either.


    My favorite master limiter is by kj something or other audio. it's free with 1 knob.