Diy mastering

[KEVIN COLLINS]

I am curious about rms readings on mastering. What is a good average on hard rock material. And also on gain reduction on peaks for clean un squashed sound on waves l316 limiter. I'm using waves plugins and am tring to learn mastering to some degree. Any input from any one would be helpful thanks kevin

[albee1952]

Since you have L3, I will assume you have L2 as well? I prefer L2 as its simpler and sounds a tad cleaner to me. The most important trick with L2(and likely ANY mastering limiter) is to not work it too hard. IOW, if one instance of L2, with the output ceiling set to -.02 and the GR reading no more than 2-3db of reduction, doesn't give you enough level, then insert another L2 in front of the first one and repeat with similar settings. I have gone as far as 3 instances with a really wimpy 2mix. Of course, there will be almost zero headroom after this(.02db if you're lucky) so any other master plugins will have to come BEFORE the L2's. Use the last one in the chain to add dither and reduce to 16 bit(if your 2mix started at 24 bits)

Sorry I can't answer your metering questions. And as always, if the project will go to someone else to be mastered, I would not put anything on the master fader, and I would shoot for a bounce that peaks no higher than -6dbfs(so the mastering engineer has some headroom to do EQ as needed).