What are some good Mastering Plugins?

Hey guys.

I'm just getting into the mastering process and I was wondering what sort of plugins or equipment you guys use to master with. I'm talking more in terms of the types of compressors, eq, limiters etc rather than a set mastering plugin like Ozone. Hope that makes sense

Just after an idea to you know, bounce off more ideas :)

many people like fabfilters

if you think it needs mastering, the mix isnt done, general rule of thumb.

you should check out this guy guides: http://tarekith.com/helpandsounds/

really neat.

also read the izotopes ones

T-Racks Pro

As Skibby said, fix whatever you can in the mixing. Assuming you've already done that though, some suggestions :

I'm a beta tester for Tokyo Dawn Labs, and sincerely think they have some of the very, very best sounding plugins, with great ergonomics, ridiculously affordable prices and great overall philosophy : SlickEQ GE and Feedback Compressor 2 (which is likely to get an update soon)

You can also grab Limiter6, which is a stunning compressor/limiter combo, by one of the 2 guys at Tokyo Dawn Labs.

Do yourself a favor and check Klanghelm's as well. SDRR is the finest saturator (and then some), and DC8C 2 is a marvelous dynamic swiss knife.

If you're looking for a "mastered to tape" sound, U-He's Satin is the best tape emu you'll find. Insanely good plugin, equally great company !

Finally, if you're on a mac, you should have a look at Airwindows plugins. Unique take on audio plugins.

These are all very affordable plugins, so don't let the price fool you : these are "professional" tools. Most of the times, these are one-man companies, relying on the quality of their work instead of expensive marketing to sell products. When buying Waves, Fabfilter, IK, Slates, UAD... you also pay for their fancy ads, vids, etc...

My 2 cents, hope it helps !

Awesome guys, thanks for the responses. I've just started a mastering short course so yeah was interested to see what people are using out there.

I'll definitely be keeping that rule of thumb in mind before I go overboard haha

Cheers!

what's more important is to have properly acoustically treated room, good converters and great speakers and above all knowledge (keep with the course) and all of this cost lots of money. so doesn't matter what processors you have at that point, they're all good enough and any of todays well known plugs will do the job and if you don't have the above said things nothing in the software nor hardware world can help you.

of course, you can start with what ever you got atm

load a song in a similar genre that you consider flawless, put that in your project, mute that track, and occasionally solo it to check your mix for obvious shortcomings.

and when you feel your mix is perfect, don't worry about mastering. your DAW by the way, comes stock with the same capability to destroy your mix as T rax or Ozone.

Most important is a good set of ears. Rest is all subjective, expensive monitors aren't as important as a variety of outputs to A/B with, and ears that are seasoned with them. Skibby's advice is excellent. Don't take the plugins so seriously but here are my 2c:

For limiters it's a close run between Fabfilter Pro-L and Voxengo Elephant. Elephant has a great sound and surgical capabilities, but it isn't as transparent, you can always tell an Elephant master.. not necessarily a bad thing, it makes shit like L2 sound like shareware. Pro-L can do just about anything so I moved over to it a while ago.

Buss Compressor: Brainworx Vertigo VSC-2 cause it just sounds TOPS.

Compressor: Not the most surgical compressors around, but Nomad Factory BlueTube FA-770 and CP2S-3 because oh my god that warmth. Don't care much for multiband and surgical ones, at that point you're better off going back to the mix.

EQ: Voxengo Harmoni-EQ, Fabfilter Pro-Q, Plugin Alliance PassEQ because they they're well suited for different situations and don't destroy the mix.

Tape sat: PSP Vintagewarmer and Virsyn VTape.

Tube sat: Nomad Factory's BlueTube Trackbox and Valvedriver. Stunning sound quality at 1-2% settings.

Hard clip, trimmer: GClip. Great GUI with live input of the waveform so you see exactly how much you're cutting in the source audio. IT'S FREE!!!

Declipping, denoise, repair etc: Izotope RX3. There's some unholy voodoo magic in this thing, be careful you don't raise the dead with it.

Mix the track to the best of your abilities and if it's a great track then pay a professional to master it.

L2 on the master track you're done ;D

Most of the advice here seems to be aimed at 'mastering' electronic music as nobody has mentioned noise reduction, or removing 50 or 60Hz mains hum from recordings etc which is a huge part of becomming a 'mastering engineer'. Also lots of people seem to be really quick to dismiss multiband stuff, when the reality is that most of the time this is what many good engineers will be using.

A proper way of metering is also important.

Mastering 'should' fix mix issues that aren't always easy to return to and correct - telling someone to go back into a studio and book another session to tame some harsh top end etc isn't going to get you repeat work from that person when it can be and should be fixed by the mastering.

Too easy to call yourself a mastering engineer these days imo - raising the RMS of an itb recording isn't the only job that is untaken in mastering.

Just MHO

  On 10/23/2014 at 11:37 AM, Grain Bastard said:

Also lots of people seem to be really quick to dismiss multiband stuff, when the reality is that most of the time this is what many good engineers will be using.

What are they using it for? What's the goal of multi-band?

  Quote

A proper way of metering is also important.

I agree, just as important as learning to read the meters on everything from the master recording to the plugins with VU meters, as you're going to be following old golden rules most of the time. The problem is that master record metering is a volatile business, even Katz K-standards aren't very well suited for the soundcloud age.

Orban Loudness Meter is a great versatile standalone program for this.

  Quote

Mastering 'should' fix mix issues that aren't always easy to return to and correct

No, it shouldn't. It can, but in an ideal situation, you want good quality source audio from the start to ensure a quality recording at the end of the day, and while there are surgical tools to deal with tough situations, you need ears with years upon years of experience to help those situations in an optimal way, and it shouldn't even be on the list of a person just getting into mastering. People saying anything else are selling snake oil and can at best deliver acceptable solutions to problematic situations.

  On 10/24/2014 at 12:44 AM, chim said:

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/aug02/articles/multiband.asp

https://www.izotope.com/en/community/blog/tips-tutorials/2014/06/multiband-compression-basics-izotope-mastering-tips/

http://productionadvice.co.uk/mwmbc/

http://music.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-use-multi-band-compression-in-mixing-and-mastering--audio-1904

http://www.masteringtuition.com/index.php/dynamics-processing-index/multi-band-compression

http://productionadvice.co.uk/multiband-compression-for-mastering/

Yeahhhno.

If you want to spot fix, you can activate a single, narrow band, but then you've pretty much got a de-esser or dynamic EQ. Even if we're just talking problem solving, a vast majority of the time, some EQ and broadband compression, perhaps serial compression, is going to do the job. Why? Because it's transients that need compression, not frequencies.

Don't introduce crossover coloration and artifacts from incorrectly summing the splitted bands. Having 3-5 bands with crossover points all over the place is going to leave you with more trouble spots than you had to begin with, and is one of the most careless ways to introduce imbalances in the mix. You're likely to spend an awful lot of time fixing, fixing, fixing, until you end up with a result that isn't even a negligle improvement over the off position.

When you master, it's better to paint in broad strokes. Otherwise you are only improving a mix for your own monitors, your own ears. Might not sound that fantastic on the next dude's setup. Sure, never say never to a dB here and there of the multi-band, but that's not the way people use it.

It is marketed as a secret weapon, and it sure looks powerful to the budding engineer, but that's precisely the problem. Why use a multi-headed powerdrill to fix a tooth cavity? Leave that shit in the off position and spend your time elsewhere.

I love Fruity Parametric EQ 2. And Flux got some neat plugs, some free.