MASTERING WITH WAVES PLUG-INS

What I'm using right now is:

Sonnox (Sony Oxford) EQ to compensate some freq. (if needed)
C4 to squash the low end (from 60hz down) and tame some out of control vocals
Sonnox Inflator (don't over do it)
L2
T-Racks soft clipper.

I'm still not happy with the damage done to the snare and kick, but after experimenting with a lot of plugs, that's what worked the best until now (in PT).
 
If you need to use a Multiband Comp on the master fader of your own mix, than that means that your mix isn't good enough.
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That is done by sooooo many people in the metal industry. Do you think Andy´s mixes aren´t good enough (he uses a finalizer-which is indeed a multiband compressor...)?!??
Multiband compression RUUUULEZZZZZZZZZZ!!!! :rock:
 
Don't listen to me. I'm a noob.

I just use the GClip before the Limiter to get it loud so I don't have to set the L2 any lower than around -2db otherwise my snare and kick seem to go up shit creek.
 
I didn't say anything about Andy's mixes MetalSound.


I think it's a bad idea for anyone whose is a beginner to use multiband comps though. And really what's the point, why not just put a compressor on the track that needs compressed if your the one mixing it. Ask a lot of mastering engineers who have been doing this a while, when they have to use a multiband comp, that means that the mix should have been better in the first.
 
At this stage, if he needs a multiband on the whole mess there's something wrong. Sneap could have half his faders attacked by pandas and he'd still pull something out of his ass to make it sound good, this is not the same scenario.

Right now, you're most likely going to just be facing a problem of one or two things being out of control, and it's much better to find them and tame them than to slap a compressor on everything. What we're talking about is basically like supervising small children - sure, you could squish them all together with saran wrap and duct tape, but that would be highly uncomfortable for the children, highly suspicious for anyone walking by, and highly likely to keep you from getting hired again. If, however, you put a little more work into it (keep Tommy and Mickey from fighting, get those rocks awaythey'renottobethrownstopthat, make Jack stop trying to kiss the girls, explain to Special Sally that not every day can be her birthday and that's why she isn't getting presents, keep that funny-looking old guy away from the playground, et cetera) you can have the situation under control without completely killing playtime.

By the way, Caps Lock kills transients. Use it with caution.

Jeff
 
JBroll said:
At this stage, if he needs a multiband on the whole mess there's something wrong. Sneap could have half his faders attacked by pandas and he'd still pull something out of his ass to make it sound good, this is not the same scenario.

Right now, you're most likely going to just be facing a problem of one or two things being out of control, and it's much better to find them and tame them than to slap a compressor on everything. What we're talking about is basically like supervising small children - sure, you could squish them all together with saran wrap and duct tape, but that would be highly uncomfortable for the children, highly suspicious for anyone walking by, and highly likely to keep you from getting hired again. If, however, you put a little more work into it (keep Tommy and Mickey from fighting, get those rocks awaythey'renottobethrownstopthat, make Jack stop trying to kiss the girls, explain to Special Sally that not every day can be her birthday and that's why she isn't getting presents, keep that funny-looking old guy away from the playground, et cetera) you can have the situation under control without completely killing playtime.

By the way, Caps Lock kills transients. Use it with caution.

Jeff
Click to expand...

Seriously man, you should do a JBroll version of the mixing engineers handbook where you interview mixers like tue madsen, andy, colin, andy wallace etc. (more metal oriented) and use all your awesome analogies. Call it the Metal Mixing Engineers Handbook for Dummies ...
 
The_Shred said:
How come you use a L2 and a Gclip together?
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Because Gclip´s a clipper and L2´s a limiter. Boosting the overall volume with Gglip preserves the original relations of different frequencies better than just slamming the L2. BUT you don´t want to go overboard with Gclip because it causes distortion, you shave of some peaks with L2, just a 0,5db or a bit more.

By the way... Voxengo Elephant´s clipper function doesn´t sound like a 100% clipper to me, it sounds if there´s clipping and limiting combined. Not sure though. What do you think?
 
JBroll said:
Right now, you're most likely going to just be facing a problem of one or two things being out of control, and it's much better to find them and tame them than to slap a compressor on everything. What we're talking about is basically like supervising small children - sure, you could squish them all together with saran wrap and duct tape, but that would be highly uncomfortable for the children, highly suspicious for anyone walking by, and highly likely to keep you from getting hired again. If, however, you put a little more work into it (keep Tommy and Mickey from fighting, get those rocks awaythey'renottobethrownstopthat, make Jack stop trying to kiss the girls, explain to Special Sally that not every day can be her birthday and that's why she isn't getting presents, keep that funny-looking old guy away from the playground, et cetera) you can have the situation under control without completely killing playtime.
Click to expand...

That was easily the best analogy on this issue I've ever heard. Laughed my ass off :)
 
Ask a lot of mastering engineers who have been doing this a while, when they have to use a multiband comp, that means that the mix should have been better in the first.
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This would mean that if you use an eq and a compressor seperately on the masterbus that your mixes are bad either. :erk: The job of mastering is not only to make it loud.

All I wanted to say is that the finalizer is a such a standard in the recording industry that there must be something useful in it. :rolleyes:

People eat shit. A million flies can´t be wrong! :heh:
 
me no-likey mastering w/ waves

i'm personally trying to throw together an analog mastering chain on the cheap, but we'll see how that one turns out
 
Metalsound, you're missing the entire point. The poster obviously isn't good at mastering yet. If you're not good at mastering then you probably want to fix your mix not try and use a complicated multiband comp over your ENTIRE mix. Even if you are good at mastering, why not fix the mix in the first place? Go talk to some other ME's you respect about this, I think you'll get the point rather quickly.


So an eq + a comp = a multiband comp? I wonder why they even thought to make a multiband comp then. And really "the job of mastering is not only to make it loud" - come on man, no need to be condescending here, I know it's the internet but come on.


And for Finalizer...do you think more people who are doing mastering use this or are there are more people who don't? Can't remember the last time I sat in on a mastering session when the ME used one. Not saying that it's not good, but I'm just saying.
 
I didn´t want to sound condescending. Actually, I had to look up what the word means in German....:lol:

All I wanted to say that multiband compression (by using the finalizer) is a common thing to do for professional mixers. Maybe it´s because of the fact that you can easily and fastly hear how your mix sounds when it is mastered. This and the fact that the finalizer sounds good is the reason why a lot of mixers use it I think.

When you are in a mastering-only studio I guess there is lots of other stuff used than a finalizer I agree.
 
lol, sorry I didn't know English wasn't your native language. Could of fooled me, your grammer is better than half of the people who were raised speaking English.


Finalizer may help some people hear how a mix sounds when it's "mastered" I agree, but only to a certain extent. This would only apply if the ME was using the same exact processing. Otherwise, the master could sound entirely different.


If you give a good ME a good mix, regardless of how it sounds through Finalizer, that ME should be able to make it sound better. If not, then don't go back to that ME. That was my point about that.


Mixing through Finalizer, I don't know about. I guess this is the same debate as mixing through a 2bus comp. Yes, a lot of people do it. But pop it off of once in a while...could you have mixed it better? There are a lot of workflow advantages for doing this but....is it best? Who knows...
 
lol, sorry I didn't know English wasn't your native language. Could of fooled me, your grammer is better than half of the people who were raised speaking English.
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Thanks. :notworthy

I´ll try my best.

I think we both agree that the best starting point to do do a good master is a doing a great mix. :) No matter if you are using Waves, TC Finalizer, UAD plugs, Massenburg, Weiss or something else which is way beyond affordable.

You can do very good masterings with each of these tools as long as you know what to do with them. :Saint:
 
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