Renting for Mastering

[COCO]

Going to do a mastering job and need your opinion. Fast rock band, has somewhat prominent kick drum, which sounds good, but afraid of pumping compressor. Want to rent Massive Passive EQ and a compressor: which might be Manley Variable MU or Chandler TG1. (Also have Q10/C4/L1 in plug in chain if needed.) The Fairchild is probably out of budget. Given the prominent kick drum, which limiter would work best? Any comment on comparative sound characteristics? Have used the Fairchild, but never the Manley or Chandler, that I can recall.
Thanks,
Vin

[12thandVine]

Hi Coco ...

The challenge in answering your question is that the mastering process is always subjective and it can be very hard to know in advance what tools you'll need if you're not really sure what they are going to do ... or are capable of doing ... to the sound. It is, of course, difficult to overstate the importance of really knowing your gear, monitoring and room in advance of an attended session.

To your question specifically: the Manley is found in a lot of mastering rooms for a reason. On the other hand, a stellar mix might not benefit from color and the transparency of something like a Weiss may do it more justice. I haven't used a Chandler so can't comment.

Everyone has different approaches but some take a progressive, incremental approach to compression throughout the chain to achieve good results with the sort of material you're referring to. In other words, light compression ratios in a couple of different boxes in the chain. All this implies you may end up needing more than one compressor to get the balance of color and levels you'll be looking for.

It's hard to look past the ubiquitous L2 box (or plug if one's not available) for a limiter.

Sorry I can't be more specific. All the best for the project.

Kind regards
Paul Blakey
12th & Vine Post