what's the best software to use for mastering???

[Jroye82]

Mastering is a strange mystical thing.


I have a waves gold bundle. The good ol L1 will get you started there.

I've recently aquired Izotope Ozone "mastering" software. Its fun. Not easy to jump right into - but I've been having some luck with it recently.

Check out the Demo you can download. I believe it will work for 10 days. The presets that come with are cool. A little too compressed for my tastes tho.
You can also find about a billion other presets available for download on the web. Made by users. Most are crap...but you never know.

I used to use Soundforge like others here. Not so much anymore tho. Im all mac now. I wish sony would release a mac version of soundforge.

[brandondrury]

Mastering is a strange mystical thing.

I'm changing my view on that one. Mastering is a super simple concept. Get all the songs to work together on an album....done.

It's hard to actually execute this, but this is the idea. I think that mixing is a much more "mystical" thing. This is why some albums don't even get mastered.

Brandon

[bradlee]

Brandon - Interesting ideas on mastering. I own Ozone 3 and have been using it to glorious and not so glorious results. But, I find a free and old version I have of Cool Edit Pro to be just as effective in places and certainly easier to use. I do acoustic guitar, piano, and vocal stuff...sometimes I think the Ozone options are overkill for what I'm trying to do. I think you are on to something when you stress the importance of the mix - and I really like your theory on getting things sounding optimum going in. Which leads me to....

What are the 'bass traps' you are referring to and where can I get them? Thx ~ B

[Murmur]

Hey Guys,

I have been trying to get the concept of what "Mastering" actually achieves for quite some time now, even after a degree in audio engineering at uni. This i think was due to the fact that I had found that i could mix a song that sounded as loud, clear and thick as other people at uni could do after they had "mastered" their tracks and couldn't understand what is was that they were missing in their mix. Were they just being lazy in the mixing and thought that the "magic" of mastering would fix their shitty mix?

But, a few months ago, i was put onto the Sonnox Oxford set of plug-ins, which amazed me with its intuitive style of visual ques and straight forward controls. The difference to my mixes seemed ever so slight but just enough to make a smile appear on my face each time i heard the songs again.

The program works natively with just about any program that supports vst... i would recommend it to anyone wanting a little bit of gleem in their mixes, but please dont expect a badly mixed/badly recorded song to sound like gold just by using these tools. Try to MIX them well to begin with.

Cheers,

MurMur

[dmore]

wavelab five for me works for the best

[brandondrury]

What are the 'bass traps' you are referring to and where can I get them?

Bass traps are devices that suck the low end reverb out of the room. I cover this in detail in my upcoming book so I won't go nuts here. However, the basic concept goes like this: The low end reflections bouncing around the walls (that you may not even hear) is causing cancellations and boosts at various frequencies. Bass traps absorb this and help improve the accuracy of your studio monitoring system in the low end.

I built mine myself. Looking back I probably would have been better off just buying the Realtraps from Ethan Whiner.

Brandon

[acoustic]

I was told by an engineer that has 3 studios that less is the masters secret

acoustic

[brandondrury]

I was told by an engineer that has 3 studios that less is the masters secret

What?

Brandon

[acoustic]

now this is what he sead the less effects in a mix the better off you will be in the long run
he works in nashville auston tx and LA.

thanks brandon acoustic

[brandondrury]

the less effects in a mix the better off you will be in the long run

Well I can guarantee you that, because if this was true all pro dudes would use 0 effects. We know that isn't the case!

With that said, there is some real truth to the less processing you do, the less problems you cause. If you get the source right to begin with you won't need anything extra done. I'm big on this with just about everything, but especially electric guitar. If I need to use EQ on electric guitars, it means I screwed up.

Brandon