[Ardour-Users] Plugins for mastering: suggestions ?

[Joe]

If you're mastering your own material here's two resources I've used: 
Mastering engineer Ian Shepherd's excellent website 
http://http://productionadvice.co.uk/  and Bob Katz's book "Mastering 
Audio - the art and the science".

My process for mastering in Ardour is to
1) export the finished mix out to a .wav file
2) create a new Ardour project and import my mix
3) import two or three reference tracks of high mix and mastering 
quality in the same genre
4) put a DR14 meter on the master bus to check RMS and dynamic ranges
5) put an EQ, compressor, and limiter (in that order) on my **mix's** track
6) enable 'Excl Solo' and 'Solo Mute' in Ardour's monitor section
7) mute the mix track and all reference tracks

Now I solo the mix and reference tracks to switch easily between them.

Keep adjusting the channel faders so the processed mix and the reference 
tracks have the same RMS levels (not peak) to avoid the louder is better 
issue.

For the EQ plug-in I'll use either the OverToneDSP PTC-2A ($), Harrison 
XT-ME ($), or Fons Adriaensen's parametric (free)
For the compressor either OverToneDSP FC70 ($), OverTone DYN500 ($), or 
Harrison XT-MC ($), there are high quality free ones too
For limiter I use Steve Harris' Lookahead limiter (free)

Good luck!