Sure

EQ: Pro-Q 3
Compressor: The Glue, Fircomp2, Sculpt
Limiter: Pro-L 2
Saturation: Spectre, Saturn 2, TB Reelbus-4, Black Box Analog Design HG-2
Hard clipping: Kclip 3 and Saturate.

 

compressor
some mid side
multiple eq
multiple limiter

 

Decapitator
Invisible Limmiter

 

Tim Petherick L-Bus, Izotope Ozone 9 without limiter, Sonible Smartlimit.

 

Jon V Audio - Fircomp 2, Softube Tube-Tech CL 1B mk II, FabFilter Pro-Q 3, Plugin Alliance Maag EQ4, Softube Summit Audio EQF-100, ReaLimit, SPAN

 

2 oldies but goodies I still frequently use are the Logic Spread on default or adjusted a little. and Logic Sample Delay, maybe 2 or 3 samples.

 

I’m watching with interest as I’m always looking for ideas to refine my mastering chain. Just wondering though, what do you guys who use a template do? Do you have the chain on through the writing and production phase, or do you turn on after finishing the writing? Only asking as mastering effects can sometimes alter the tone, colour and flavour of the tools used in the production obviously, so wondering whether others have this in place before hand, i.e. decide on kicks, synths sounds and so on as fed through the mastering chain, or decide on kicks, synths sounds sounds and so on clean (bar the instruments’ channel effects), and then turn the mastering chain on and tweak the chain/instruments channel effects after the fact? Curious how others approach it….

 

Last edited: Aug 17, 2022

For me it's just like painting, sketch first and color later.

 

Depends, but I'll usually use;
Blackbox HG2, Britson Buss (loud preset), Parallell Room Verb (just a tiny bit), ozone, gullfoss, DSEQ, DSM3 V3 (one of my favs), OTT (sometimes, usually at 5-7%)

 

I see these as two separate stages, 1. Tracking i.e. writing and production. 2. Mixing - using the stems from stage one. For Tracking my 2Bus is irrelevant usually have Arturia Comp DIODE-609 and Waves L2 just to control peaks. Mixing - as above previous post, Only TP L-Bus comp on. Once my mix is balanced, edited, automation and I'm happy, I'll through on Ozone 9 and Smartlimit. Guess Ozone 9 & Smartlimit could even be considered stage 3. Mastering.

Even use Reaper 6 for tracking and Harrison Mixbus 7 for mixing.

 

Did you update Blackbox HG2 yesterday? I succumbed to the "special" offer and the new features are surprisingly useful. I hate myself, but not too much

 

right now, for social media-video clips (making my music (only about ten tracks) with video sound effects (another 7-10 tracks) my masterins setup is :

tb mid-side transformer
external spl passeq eq hardware working in mid side
tb mid-side transformer
soothe
tb mc1 (sometimes pa iron or other)
external art pro mpa II (crushed for paralell distorsion, better saturation tones than plugins)
tb barricade (target -14 lufs, not in a war )

really do not use lots plugins, i like tone boosters because nice interface white very readable and low resources in nuendo.

 

What update? Don't tell me I missed something sweet. I've had the plugin since their first rent 2 own that they cancelled

Edit: forgot the legendary VSM-3, try it, I love it to death

 

The new MS version was on sale @ $14.99 for those who had the original, which was a freebie for me. It's not bad for 15 bucks and can be used on the master bus, and also for individual tracks.

 

Last edited: Aug 19, 2022

Just want to share my Pulsar Massive preset on mixbus for some fairy dust magic. It's just some old technique used on a hardware Pultec. I know preset for EQ sounds silly especially for mAsTeRiNg but try it out and let me know if you can hear the difference.

copy it to - > AppData\Local\Pulsar\Massive\presets\[YOURNAME]

[YOURNAME] = create a user folder

 

Last edited: Aug 19, 2022

My ITB chain at the moment...

• -Surgical EQ (clean distracting resonances or "windy" frequencies, HPF if needed, fix problems, dynamic stereo EQ, push or cut frequencies into the compression)
• -Tape / Console / Transformers (tame peaks or harshness, add body and weight, shape tone)
• -Compression (shape envelope character)
• -Transient (get back transients from over-compression, if over-compression was done on purpose for character reasons)
• -Stereo width (may or may not need it)
• -Additive EQ or saturation (broad strokes. Have it before limiter so changes can be made easily without affecting the chain)
• -Upward compression, loudness maximizing and/or clipping
• -Limiter or 2
• -Dither

Process:

• -Prep the file in RX9 (listen and take notes, check waveform stats, check where the kick lives in the spectrogram relative to the bass, check/fix sibilance, check/fix phase rotation, fix any technical problems like clicks or crackle etc, then either send notes back to client to fix in the mix OR export and proceed, import into DAW)
• -Start with setting loudness (limiter + upward compression. Get the effect of pushing into AD converters)
• -then surgical EQ while here's are fresh
• -then the rest of the chain
• -automate macro dynamics
• -make adjustments through the chain as needed

 

your "overall" chain is very similar to what I do, in the greater scheme of things. But I have a question for you about the one difference.
I normally add the subtractive/reductive EQ after the saturation plugin, before the compressor. The idea being to push as much unaffected "juice" out of the channel strip and into the saturation, to gain density out of the ordeal. Then EQing, so you may pull down some transients before it is pushed back out into the compressor. That being said, is your way better for some reason? Thank you for explaining your detailed setup.

 

eq after limiters? nuh uh

 

I don't know if my way is "better", but my reasoning is: I want to have the cleanest signal possible before i "dirty" it up again with saturation. I'm pretty heavy handed with saturation, and i don't want to push annoying resonances into the saturator because it will magnify ugly harmonics and stuff gets messy. I see saturation as like an enhancer, and i don't wanna enhance the bad stuff. I don't know if that's right or wrong, it's just the way my brain thinks of it. I'd rather be saturating heavy-handed on a clean sound than be saturating subtly on a messy sound. Harmonics sound more homogenous and rich when they're generated from a more concise/intentional source sound in my experience.

Put it this way -- would you want to hear a distorted vocal before or after it was de-essed?

Imo, density isn't achieved by creating as much harmonics as possible, density is achieved by making sacrifices that allow more headroom to inflate the rich parts. Creating richness without sacrificing headroom is really the key. Sometimes it's addition by subtraction. It's easy to process a concise sound into being big and rich but it's hard to process a busy/messy sound into being big.

If density is the goal that can be achieved with upward compression on low-level information. As well as normal compression obviously + multiple layers of saturation.

On top of that, I like having it surgical EQ as the very first thing in my chain because then i'm more likely to do that task first. Objectivity fades fast when you're mastering (or mixing), so i'd rather tame the unfavourable frequencies before my brain gets used to them and i stop noticing them.

So those 2 reasons put together are why i have surgical EQ before saturation, but i'm open to the idea that i could be fundamentally wrong. But hey, there's no rules really, it just depends what kinda sound textures you like

 

Last edited: Aug 20, 2022

One part of my chain i'm not sure about is the position of the stereo widening. I can't decide if it's better to have it before EQ/compression/saturation/etc or after.
I usually have it later in the chain on the basis that it's a decision i usually make later in the process, but i'm not sure if it sounds better 1st or last