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My mate wants recommendations for mastering software
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| Richard Butler |
My mate Steve (will read this - not a member - yet), has had a long break from music production, but now having moved home and done some restoration, is getting back into prodcution.
What mastering software would you recommend?
He has been considering UAD, but the price tag is a down side.
Steve I urge you look at this one;
SLATE £149
Imagine mastering your mixes without causing the lifeless, squashed, and over compressed sound that has become so common in modern music. We have all been at the mercy of the "loudness wars" for over ten years now. Masters have become louder and louder, at the expense of the music becoming harsh and lacking punch and dynamics. One of the main causes of this epidemic is the use of the Peak Limiter to achieve increased levels in the mastering stage. Peak limiters attenuate transients and often reduce punch, stereo imaging, can greatly alter mix balances, and cause a fatiguing result to the ears.
Some of the top mastering engineers have found ways to combat this sonic degradation by using techniques other then Peak Limiting. One of the more popular techniques is the use of saturation in both the analog and digital domain. Another popular method is clipping the front end of expensive A/D converters.
However, both of these methods, while better then peak limiting, have their downfalls. Static saturation curves are not universal in their ability to sound good on all transients. Clipping greatly reduces low end punch and is very poor at retaining sub bass. Both static saturation and clipping have a small window of gain maximizing before audible distortion. Enter SLATE DIGITAL.
FG-X DYNAMICS RACKTwo years ago Steven Slate and expert algorithm engineer Fabrice Gabriel started working out the concept for a digital audio process that could increase the level of a mix without altering the punch and dynamic feel, or make the mix sound squashed and lifeless. They started by researching saturation curves and their effect on various types of transient material. After several months of study and hundreds of listening tests, they made some fascinating discoveries. What they found, was that in order to transparently add level to a mix, a dynamic and intelligent transient saturation system would have to be developed.
New ADVANCED ALGORITHMS were created to execute the extremely complex communication system that would be needed to properly perform the new dynamic operations. A new algorithm was formed, and the process was named "Intelligent Transient Preservation", or ITP.
http://www.slatedigital.com/fgx.php
May be cpu heavy though. |
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| Mad for Brad |
| I really do think your room, monitors and DA converters are much more important than your plugins. I think Ozone is probably good enough for most here. |
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| Ry Thomas |
| quote: | Originally posted by Mad for Brad
I really do think your room, monitors and DA converters are much more important than your plugins. I think Ozone is probably good enough for most here. |
^ what he said
you'll struggle to get a good master unless the above is sorted first |
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| Kenny Rogers |
| what does he need it for? after being out of the business for a while does he really have mastering jobs? should he focus on making music instead, and probably take up learning how to mix? just a thought. mastering-threads should be banned. |
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| cryophonik |
| Ozone is good, but I'd recommend taking a look at Sony Sound Forge 10 instead. It's a much more comprehensive package for working with WAVs and it includes the Izotope mastering bundle, which is essentially most of the modules from Ozone, but in individual plugin format. |
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| Richard Butler |
Steve - you know my view - that mastering per see is one for experienced experts, so in my view my main goal is to get the mix tip top.
Theoretically a perfect mix needs no mastering at all. |
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| tehlord |
Oh I see.
It's an 'I told you so' thread. |
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| Mad for Brad |
| theoretically, it isn't rape if your sleepwalking. |
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| Richard Butler |
| quote: | Originally posted by tehlord
Oh I see.
It's an 'I told you so' thread. |
Ha! - I have no idea really whats best.
Steve aks whether powercore or UAD would be better.
Tehlord - did'nt I read you bought UAD? |
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| Richard Butler |
| quote: | Originally posted by cryophonik
Ozone is good, but I'd recommend taking a look at Sony Sound Forge 10 instead. It's a much more comprehensive package for working with WAVs and it includes the Izotope mastering bundle, which is essentially most of the modules from Ozone, but in individual plugin format. |
Dave, another considered useful bit of input, cheers. |
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| Mad for Brad |
I used to have the mastering suite for powercore from the m5000 and a few things from the m6000. I always felt like the powercore was eventually gonna go out of business. Honestly you really don't need these hardware dsp cards. I think UAD is a rather poor choice as mastering should be rather transparent. There are tons of affordable plugins and you don't really need that much.
I mean your chain will most likely involve less than 5 plugins. |
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| tehlord |
| quote: | Originally posted by Richard Butler
Ha! - I have no idea really whats best.
Steve aks whether powercore or UAD would be better.
Tehlord - did'nt I read you bought UAD? |
I had a powercore and a UAD card. I'd say the UAD plugins are superior unless you spend silly money on the powercore stuff.
On the other hand there's a reason why SSL/Protools are dumping the DSP hardware now. I don't think it'll be long before UAD and TC go the same route. Speaking of home users of course, not the high end film scorers ;)
To be honest you can get very good mastering done for £25 a track. You'd have to spend £5-10k to get anywhere near the same level of sound assuming you already knew what you were doing. |
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