Quote:
Originally Posted by JFreak
IN THEORY...
The less plugins you instantiate, the cleaner your mix (or master) will sound. And because mastering is all about subtle changes, theoretical answer would be "less plugins better sound". Even if you master with analog gear, you "plug in" a sound of AD/DA conversion so you would want to have the best converter money can buy.
In real life though, there are no rules. Use whatever gets the job done. Tweak it until you get the results you need. Then stop.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JFreak
What I just told about "in theory" means every time you make a floating-point calculation you make a (very small) rounding error. When you make a rounding error after a rounding error after a rounding error, it begins to "smear" the sound. Only a little at first, but after a while, especially if you have gone to red, the smearing is so noticeable when you disable all plugins you wander what has been going on all the time and need to start over.
TDM was great in mastering, because fixed-point math is deterministic and (again in theory) every bounce is identical to the previous bounce. This is of course only true if your plugins do not modulate anything. But the fixed-point math does not add any extra rounding errors. Only downside is you need to pay attention to gain staging, which in case of mastering is a good thing because you need to stay out of the red.
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All great points and the reason I made this thread - so I could learn a bit more from another point of view.
So in essence you're saying a single suite like Ozone would be better than a carefully curated bunch of separate plugins right? And I do pay attention to gain staging like you wouldn't believe. No modulation going on.