Aux Vs. Master Bus Comp / EQ for shows

[Dylan]

Do those of you mixing shows use plugs on your Master Bus outs...? Or do you generally have the stems compressed / eq'd on their Aux channels for your splits out to DA-88? When I do short form (commercials, radio spots...), I'm comfortable using master bus plugs, though I know when I'm doing splits of those spots, maybe by muting certain channels, the plugs are effecting those splits differently...hope that makes sense...

I've got a bunch of shows coming my way, and want to make sure our templates facilitate split track laybacks. I love the feel of some Master Bus compression, and hope I won't miss it too much...

Thoughts?

Thanks.

[tomlowd]

hi

i generally have the compression gradually throughout the template and have submaster aux faders for each of the elements (dial, sfx, music, vo whatever) with almost finalising compression on each element... i find it good to have an L-1 and a compressor (i love the channel g's) at each stage of the template sub bussing with threshold's that gradually move down to where i want the final mix to sit... this means that the master faders compressors and limiter is doing very little work and that it is very easy to split out elements and other delivery formats and be confident of their quality.... for instance in the current show i'm doing the dial goes through four aux buses before it reaches the master fader, each doing a little to shape the sound

hope that helps

cheers

tom