Please can someone recommend a Best mastering compressor for me . Thanks .

 

Hardware? Software? Music style? Budget?

 

A combination of Shadow Hills Industries Mastering Compressor and your EARS.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Jul 26, 2017

yeah and don't forget the $8000 to buy the compressor.... guess you have 2 or 3 of them @tonyg0499
so you could give him a great deal on a 2nd hand one eh ?

 

The question was recommend the BEST though

 

Yeah, I have 3. I will keep one for myself and give the other two to you and him for $1 plus S & H. LOL. Herr Durr, when someone asks what is the best without any qualifiers the answer should be whatever "the best" is regardless of what the tag price is. In this case, the Shadow Hills Industries Mastering Compressor is, IMO, the best there is. As Tooloud noted the OP never specified Hardware / Software / Music style Budget.

 

Question was asked and answered. BTW the recreation of the Fairchild 670 Stereo Limiter by ADL is a mere $19,000 compared to $30,000 for the original one.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Jul 26, 2017

well then you didn't initially tell him the best one after all ha? ...

granted it was a dullard n00bish question from @krewznie ... and ok.. I am suitably taken the piss out of on this one... good show

 

Acustica Coral, UAD Elysia Alpha.

 

Cobalt and Pearl to me. But sometimes the best mastering comp is none. Especially when the mix is spot on.

 

I'm sorry, but what?

 

Absolutely. If the mix sounds great already. Mastering compressor is generally used by Loudness Warriors Inc. before the final limiter, to make the limiter's work easier and with less distortion.

 

For mastering the goal is a transparent mid/side compressor, imho.

 

Last edited: Jul 26, 2017

He means the Acustica Audio Acqua plugs of those names. It's a bit of a fetish but once discovered you have to have them all pulled out after the Acqua truffle.

Generally mixing into a main buss compressor is the same as using a mastering compressor. The Acustica plugs are convincingly gentle and the Elysia Alpha only has 2.4 max ratio but can do anything, including MS and a tone tilt. The aim I think is 'gluing' rather than maximising. I don't like the UAD Shadow Hills, that's just a bit too squishy sucky analoguey for my taste and my music, I prefer the Massenburgian quest for clarity. I can understand why people who rave about it do, though, it is very seductive. The UAD Manley Vari-Moo is very tempting, but I prefer the others in mastering. The Manley is very much a take it or leave it sort of compression in my opinion.

The nice thing about Acustica is that you get a 30 day trial of the things with no mess on the through put. So try before you buy legitamately with them.

 

L1 with -24 in db reduction...

 

Please tell us a little more about yourself

 

To compress what? Just show me only a sublime music that I can imagine any compressing activity for it. Don't pursue, because I've done that before and have not found anything.

 

The best hardware compressors probably are Elysia Alpha, Shadow Hills and the Weiss DS-1 MK3.
In software the Algorithmix compressor and the Sonoris Mastering Compressor. If you're not
a professional Mastering engineer you're best bet probably is the Sonoris one. It costs 199
Euro and sounds great.

 

I never liked Alpha, can't understand people using it, no offense. It sounds just flat and makes the mix lifeless. And I tried it several times, I wanted to like it. bx_opto is PA's best attempt to a good bus compressor IMO. Quite a nice plugin. (I'm talking the plugin version of Elysia Alpha, of course, hardware unit is pretty rare).

 

It's a hard debate between WinRar and 7zip (more latency).

Jokes aside, the context is we are in AZ sister site.