Mastering

[johnnyz]

I am getting my mixes to sound pretty good ,but they good use a little more juice ,i bounce my mixes down as a 24 bit wave file and then i open a new project,what is a good plug-in to insert to kick it up a notch or would i be better going with hardware?Thanks in advance.jz

[Murt]

Originally Posted by johnnyz

what is a good plug-in to insert to kick it up a notch or would i be better going with hardware?Thanks in advance.jz

In an ideal world you would pass it on to a mastering engineer but you can't go far wrong with Izotope Ozone 4 as a plug in. A lot of DUC'ers swear by it.
I don't own it (YET) but it's on my list of 'must haves'. It has genre specific presets to add a 'mastering' sheen to your mixes. I suspect most of us are not mastering engineers, nor do we have a 'mastering' listening environment at our disposal but this is a good plug in to add a bit of self mastering for now.

[peppertree]

For something that's just going to live and die on Myspace, Ozone is fine.

If you're actually making a commercial product you intend to sell you really ought to use a professional.

Professionals might use any number of plugins...Sonnox, UAD Precision, PSP Xenon/Neon, Algorithmix, Voxengo Elephant, Flux...

But by the time you have bought enough of those to figure out what you are doing, not to mention improve your monitoring and listening skills, you will have paid enough for a top 10 mastering engineer to polish your entire life's output several times over.

[Oddbod]

Peppertree,

I have heard good things about UAD. Is it really that much better than Ozone 4? Is it worth the price difference?

O-B

[peppertree]

Originally Posted by Oddbod

Peppertree,

I have heard good things about UAD. Is it really that much better than Ozone 4? Is it worth the price difference?

Yes indeedy.

Ozone 4 is what I call "mastering in a pill." It's quite invasive to the sound, and it makes things sound sorta "impressive" in a cheap shopping mall sense. The UAD plugins are far more tasteful, they are things it takes a lot longer to tire of. Of course the stuff the very top me's use is even better still.

The o4 limiter got a lot of buzz when it came out, but this limiter actually has problems...it sounds very present and such, but regardless of how it's set, the transients are handled very unpleasantly to my ears when listening back in headphones. They do sound nice on most speakers, but the faster response of headphone drivers reveal the problems.

tanstaafl.