[Ardour-Users] Plugins for mastering: suggestions ?

Niko Efthymiou nefthy at nefthy.de
Tue Sep 8 08:12:16 PDT 2015


On 08.09.2015 16:09, Jörn Nettingsmeier wrote:
> On 09/08/2015 04:03 PM, mn0 wrote:

> I should mention an interesting approach used by a colleague of mine: he
> always uses a multiband compression tool with his favourite setup in the
> master bus (something like the Waves L3), and mixes "into" that. This
> could be a handy approach for quick results. You have the fatness of a
> multiband compressed sound, and you have immediate control over what
> each of your mixing decisions does in the sum compressor.

Mixing is about:

- take your recorded sources, process and combine them to make them 
sound good according to your taste and imagination.

Mastering about:

- make the mix translate as good as possible on a wide variety of 
devices, from your smartphone to a highend stereo (just try listening to 
one of your mixes on 10 device... the way to madness here lies).

- reduce dynamic range, so that the mix sounds louder preferably without 
loosing too much punch and dynamic feeling (which is quite often 
overdone IMHO, but people will complain and *dislike* it if its not 
somewhere along the usual lines of the genre)

- make a set of songs sound more consistent, like they are an album and 
not a compilation of randomly selected tracks.

- make crossfades, queue points, etc.

To me it makes sense to do that as a separate step, after your done with 
mixing, else you will always have to think about how the master bus 
compressor or whatever plays along with the parameter changes you make 
at a totaly different place. Things can sound totally crappy, if the 
parameters on the mastering plugins are wrong and those parameters 
depend on your input signal. There are some advocates of mixing into bus 
compression though.

Greets Niko


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