[albee1952]

Hey Dr, I spelled out my routine pretty much and it looks to me like you have a lot more options with your methodology. I realized a long time ago that mastering is a skill that I am just not really interested in digging into that much. I purposely keep it simple to avoid mistakes(learned the hard way). I really like the concept of parallel limiting and will have to give that a try. I also hate the "slammed and squashed" sound that we must suffer with these days and only use the gentle L2 to get the apparent volume up to a point where it stands well next to some "average" commercial releases. WaveLab has a nice spectrum and frequency analyzer that can average an entire song file and I will run that to check for any peaks that I may want to massage. I have also taken to checking/removing DC offset as the very last thing before I save/close the file. Sometimes there is none but others, it does find offset and as I understand it, the offset can actually cause clipping when all levels are okay. Also, the trick(?) of setting the ceiling at -.02 is because I have read that some converters are a touch more or less sensitive to clipping. And slamming with a lot of mastering limiter can basically eliminate any and all headroom. Lots to think about here and lots of good advice from DrFord so instead of diving in the deep end, just wade in a little at a time and don't forget to check your masters on several speaker systems. A good mastering house has spent more $ on speakers and acoustics than many of us spent on our cars(or maybe our houses).