In my REAL life, I'm a professional composer, arranger, producer - since more than 30 years. I wrote, arranged and coproduced about 50 topten titles in german speaking countries.
@Zenarctist - "In the old days writers wrote, musicians performed, singers sang, arrangers arranged, producers produced, sound engineers recorded, mixers mixed and mastering engineers mastered." That's right, but the advaces by the record companies were multiple higher!
@dbmuzik - It's right, what you write.
I'm using T-Racks, since it exists! I've tried out Ozone, each time, they released a new version, T-Racks sounds much, much better. Last week I checked Lurssen MC and I was surprised, it sounds very good, less distortion at higher levels.
I inserted Slate VTM, SSL master compressor and Fabfilter pro q2 and Lurssen MC.
I don't care, how many knobs/parameters are available, only the result counts, and Lurssen MC counts very high!

p.s.: @ quadcore64 - I love Steely Dan, but a 1977 produced album is not a referece in 2016!!!

 

off topic: I live in florida, and ultra is sold out again. 500-800 for all 3 days.Thats looks dead to me too

 

Last edited: Mar 20, 2016

Ahem...If you can listen to it, it is a reference. There are others of course but it still stands as one of the best mixes ever.

 

"Ahem...If you can listen to it, it is a reference. There are others of course but it still stands as one of the best mixes ever."

I forgot: ... but a 1977 produced album is not a referece FOR ME in 2016!!!

If I wood bring a mix like that to a record company, they'd lol and ask me: "Are you kidding us?"!

 

Then how do you explain the Black Keys?

That aside, you still miss the point. A reference is a reference.

You pick material you know well, whether it be old or recent, and determine what you are hearing
by whatever means you are using. Very Simple.

To make an argument of quite a basic thought is not serving you or anyone else.

There are all types of music and production levels within those. Good, bad and in between.

I do use other material for reference listening but will hold off mentioning to avoid yet another
needless up or down positioning/posturing occuring.

 

What I learned about mastering is that less is more and Lurssens philosophy seems to be even more so, when you look at his mastering setup. You don't need to be able to tweak every little frequency. Have 6 different MB-Compression bands on the master. If you need to do this, your mix is most likely bad, and you try to fix shit and not master a track.

I used Waves and FabFilter in the past to master and never liked Ozone myself. It's over packed with features to fix, that's not mastering to me and most people that I see use it, are still preset pushers or try to fix something. Don't get me wrong its not bad but personally I'm not a fan of this featuremania.

I like the lurssen for a quick mastering job and replaced some plug ins for it. It does not replace a quality mastering engineer (but having the same tools as a mastering engineer wouldn't make us one either) and yes it's kind off overpriced but it's not a gimmick. It misses some feature like dithering to make it a really standalone tool.

 

@quadcore64 THEME REFERENCE

What you mean "black keys"? ... on Keyboard F# G# A# C# D# - enharmonic Gb Ab Bb Db Eb ?
Steely Dan's Aja is no commercial music, its near fusion jazzrock ... music for musicians.
It sounds like played live by a band, less FXs, less filter usage, only to remove resonances. lowcut ...
My reference tracks are newer (exeption Peter Gabriels SO ), because the taste changed a lot, over last 40 years
-the frequency spectre, compression, timing/tuning, rev/room/delay Fxs ...
Recod companies, publishers and clients dictate, how it has to sound and I need the money, to live and buy all this
computers, daw, plugin stuff, libraries and ...
Therefore my "reference-taste".
(excuse my strange english)

p.s.: The first mastering, I was there (1980-vinyl - Producer: Klaus Schulze), the main problem(s) were the low frequencies, the writing pen jumped out of stencil, and we had to start from beginning!

 

Exactly! If you sell it now then you have to "calibrate" your sounds technically to be on par with what's already out there in today's music.
If it's a production reference, then yeah, time wouldn't count, but if it's from a technical standpoint then you should stick with today's standards. Some labels will even forcefully take that song if it sounds 70ish (already finished) and it will send it to their affiliated "updated" engineers to mix/master it again to maintain a consistent balance with each of their releases. As you already said @woam business ultimately dictates what you should look after in the end result.

 

Lurssen mastering plugin may be useful for someone who knows what he is doing,its just another tool.
You still need good ears and good equipment to benefit from it.

 

I love it. On a good mix it sounds fantastic... if it sounds bad I know that my mix is the reason. If I don't have time to improve mix, then I use Ozone, with that I can make a bad mix sound decent

I hope soon I will be able to hire engineer for my work

 

I think it's varying from country to country. In Germany, you can search them with magnifier!
In the States (I worked anytimes in Chicago), it's much different, more people like to go to clubs, listening to livebands,
in Gearmany, most livemusic clubs died, only disco clubs succeed in business and influence the young peoples taste.
There's also another philosophy in mastering between USA and Europe. European releases often are remixed and remastered.

 

I laugh out loud when people say something like "it's just a tool...If your mix sounds right, it will make it sound even better"....lol

Of course, if your mix sounds good enough, any reasonable eq/compressor/limiter you load in your fx chain will be able make it sound better, including a lot of free plugins...Sometimes all you need to do add a limiter/maximizer and call it day, if you have a reasonably decent mix and just want to produce a decent enough demo.

The point is, charging that much for what the Lurssen Mastering Console does is really insane...Calling it a mastering solution is equally insane, and even disrespectful to real mastering engineers.

If you think mastering is just that simple, so simple that you could do it with presets, then you have no idea about what you're talking about. Mastering is about making very critical decisions. It requires a great room, great monitors and, specially, a terrific pair of ears...If you think any plugin could do that automatically for you, then you're out of your mind, at least until they incorporate some artificial intelligence into plugins, which might happen somewhere during that next twenty years, but now, it's not possible.

The bottom line is, this plugin isn't worth what they're charging. It's not a mastering plugin well, it's a quick finalizing solution at best.

 

Last edited: Mar 20, 2016

Nobody said the Lurssen console is an automatic plugin. It just has limited tweakability, on critical yet broad EQ bands (who knows how those EQ bands are tuned, not that it matters). The maximizer sounds very transparent and the sound is polished. I don't think people need added tweakability on an LA2A to know it serves the music well. Two knobs and A few switches and it does as wonderful a job as a FabFilter compressor when the use is right. No one will say, "I can't tweak the attack and threshold of this comp, who would use such a thing!"

 

I agree with you.
MASTERING Audio is an Art, a discipline of its own & requires a lot of time and work.
You gather experiences & knowledge which may "educate" you ears. MIXING isn't neither
an easy job, it also requires the ability to take decisions and act, in the knowing that each
change will modify the results on the audio material, sometimes drastically!

In the past the title "Mastering Engineer" was a real profession which required a professional
apprenticeship...nowadays this has almost disappeared. Nearly everybody can run a recording
Studio or homestudio, but the end results of a work can be distinguished by someone who has
*trained ears*. I encourage interested people to read good books to try to comprehend the
complex reality of Audio engineering, editing & elaboration.

==============================================================

 

I simply do not understand why it was not a T-RackS 4 add-on, I know it is 64-Bit only like AmpliTube 4 is. I would be willing to bet that they're working on T-RackS 5 currently and this will be just a set/bundle that will be available via that Custom Shop manager/tool/utility thing.

I've not tried it myself dude so I can not comment but a reduced feature set is always a put off for me. I do like and use some of IK's AmpliTube pieces and also some of their T-RackS pieces, It's always an odd one/I sometimes do not understand why they manage to either deliver something really good or really junk. You know consistency problems or problems delivering consisently. It started when they put alot of eggs into the iOS basket if memory serves me correctly. I'll take some hits with misses over steady, reliable mediocrity anyday but still...Just to give one prime example, When they released Ampeg SVX it was very good stuff overall which nailed gear and sounds I'm pretty damned familar with (and it still is good, I have a few Ampeg heads and cabs). When they released AmpliTube Metal it was terrible and didn't really nail any of the gear which it was aiming for and pretty much all of it was stuff I extremely familar with/know intimately in most cases (and it still sounds like shit, As hinted at, I have the majority of bits they based the models on).

I'm left like this ¯\(°_o)/¯ too often, Just puzzled as to what in the hell we're they thinking!?!

All the best your way and to all as always

Dean

 

I'm glad you mentioned Peter Gabriel. His work from the 1990s forward are good
reference material.

It seems like you do not know your music history or the industry. Most of Steely Dans Work were commercial successes. If it sells
it is by definition, "commercial". Steely Dan were also a "cross-over" success.

The Black Keys are an American rock duo formed in Akron, Ohio. And yes Black keys exist
on piano keyboards.

How about others like Ray Charles?

Back to Steely Dan. The way their recording were engineered, mixed and mastered still
hold up today. Especially from Aja onwards. What I like is the tranparency and detail
of the material.

 

Last edited: Mar 20, 2016

Sorry in advance for necro- but this seems to be the most relevant thread...
Software like LANDR and LMC smell very much like a way to part the young and gullible from their money-
both from the standpoint of bedroom producers and studios with clients susceptible to marketing woo.
After looking at the graphics on the LANDR page (twentysomethings doing SERIOUS THINGS with big consoles and headphones)
and listening to their SC before-and-after example,
I can't imagine anyone with a clue as to what they're doing having any other reaction but holding their gut and wiping the tears
from their eyes from laughing so hard. LMC would be less laughable were it not for the lack of flexibility combined with the price.
Just don't do it, kids.

 

You just described the whole plugin industry right there...99% of it is about marketing, fancy UIs and placebo effect...

 

Now there are good ones, you just have get beyond the above and LISTEN.