Hello Musicians,

I know this title is quite polemical but the aim is here to not start a war. I explain the point and my situation that could be the one of medium musicians that want to learn more.

I completely star over my VSTs (Windows reboot ) and now I'm doing a big clean on reinstalling Softwares. I will probably have more questions but the first one.

I know what does aim an EQ and globally how it works but I want now to choose one option in order to be on my mastering chain.

For now here it is :
- ProQ or Soothe2 to clean -20/+20 and resonnance
- Smart Comp
- SplitEQ / Smooth Operator / Gullfoss to add color
- SmartLimiter
-(Ozone) if I need to expand the sound
- Insight to control loudness

When I saw people talking about this, I found the threads interesting but quite difficult to follow (I'm not English native so maybe that explains) but some of pros that you are guys, have great ideas and answers but are sometimes too technical for home learning guys like me (This is not an insult but just the fact that I saw a gap between musicians that just follow ears and pros that can ear lots of things important )

So have you a preference in terms of EQ on the Mastering Bus ?

I have some difficulties to configure my compressor. I know what it does but I don't really understand how important this is. This is supposed to change the sound or just adjust the Gap loudness ? I tried lots of compressors like Parallel compressors (IHNY 2 & Parallel Agressors) and more recently Pulsar Abyss. I hear something differant but... uh, cannot understand why this last costs around 300$ (Does it is incredible really ?) so I use smartcomp assuming that I don't really know what I'm suppose to focus on.

This is a long story but I release lots of music on Spotify and I have more and more stream (~150k/month) so I need to improve my quality to the maximum

Thanks a lot for your explanations guys
Musically

 

I think you should test the Kirchhoff EQ against the old "Pro-Q-who?" See what you think for yourself.

 

I saw a lot of good things about this one ? In why is it truelly different ? I'll test it ! ;)

 

Without any offense, but if you don't know about the pros and cons of the various EQs and are not firm in setting up a compressor, this

is beyond your reach and you should leave it to someone else, for now. As long as you are at this stage, you still have too much to learn to achieve this.

 

I mostly use Toky Dawn Labs Slick EQ Mastering for any wide tone shaping on my master. I also have Pro-Q 3 before it, but I only use it if there's some small details that need to be removed, otherwise it's disabled.

 

Thanks for your answer, no offense at all

I mostly do it by ear.. In fact I'm in the music since I'm 6 and I'm a guitarist with a family of musician so I think I have a good ear but I try to understand all the capabilities and maybe the things I'm missing. Maybe I represent myself to much as a beginner but I know mostly what I'm doing (with EQ for sure) and the capabilities behind (dynamics, transient) but I do not know what and why going deeper and deeper. At some point, I have the feeling that this is more engineering than music but I don't know if Im missing something...

I watch a lot this guy [https://www.youtube.com/@Whiteseastudio/featured] so I understand mostly what I'm doing but at some point, I don't know if I miss something and I prefere learning how to hunt than being feed ..

Have you some preferences ?

 

I use either pro-q for details or massive for delicate tone shaping, then if theres still annoying ressonaces I'll use an instance of Soothe2... but real carefully.

 

I think it's important to first define what Master Bus really is. A Master Bus is usually the "final" bus on the chain, where everything ends up, it doesn't necessarily relate to the mastering process, but it could (hence why depending on the situation some people might call it MixBus, or make another bus and call that Mixbus and throw that into the Master Bus, in which case, it has nothing to do with mastering).

Why do i even bring that up? because if you're using part of the Master bus of a mixing session for actual mastering, the tools and actions you'll need for the "mastering" part are probably going to be very different (and most likely a lot less) to what you would need if you were doing that on a separate session without access to the mixing session. For example, you wouldn't need an EQ or comp cobination that can "tame" the low end or get rid of some resonances if you could just do that on the individual parts where the problem is without affecting anything else.

So it depends on context, as always. For what i can see your list is pretty solid for mastering in the mixing sesion, there are better options and different flavours if you want to go down that rabbit hole but don't waste your time. Just be careful with what you're actually doing with those tools, like i said, working the Master Bus (mastering or not) always comes with collateral damage, if you can hear a problem like a weird resonance or something like that it's probably better to fix it at the source of the problem (if possible) instead of treating it on the Master Bus.

If it's not for the same session, i would consider a few more things but that goes beyond EQ's.

Pricetags are not indicators of quality, if anything Abyss has a lot of controls that on other compressors would require you to use extra stuff, so it's more of a convenience thing, nothing groundbreaking.

Both and more, depending on context. There's no "one fits all" answer for this, it's an automatic level lowerer, that can cause a lot of different effects and each one of those might be exactly what you need here or there. Maybe you need to change the sound, maybe you need to make things louder, maybe both (it's not illegal to stack compressors).

 

Last edited: Feb 23, 2023

https://mixchecks.com/best-youtube-channels-for-mixing-and-music-production/
Maybe you'll find some usefull channels there.

Also, I am watching this channel, as you can get some useful tips and tricks there:
https://youtube.com/@Streaky_com

 

There will always be "something missing" because as you know, music is immense territory, composition , harmony, melody, rhythm, Sound: shaping, synthesis, artistic effects, Mixing and mastering: Engineering, techniques, science etc.. Each of this not only require knowledge but also a lot of practice.
But we only have 24 hours a day.
So, IMHO, we must accept that we will not be able to do it all really correctly, and decide on what to focus, and what to let to others.
That said, learning enough at least to understand the bases of each part is important.

To learn EQ, I cant recommend enough Kilohearts Carve EQ . Because it have a match and compare functions, and graphic representation.
https://kilohearts.com/products/carve_eq
There are several videos in the end of the page.

And as always, invest in a reliable monitoring, and trust your ears.

 

Okay Thanks a lot guys for your answers ! I will learn from your links. This is interesting ! I will check Kilohearts Carve EQ for learning !

Have you guys so must have in your collections ? and why ?

It is just to understand what seems to be better for you. For example I quite enjoy SplitEQ, it helps me to rebalance easily.. and Smooth Operator sometime to add a little coloration. In your practise, which EQ and Comp do you use daily ?

Anyway Thanks

 

You're trying to use advanced tools because you read somewhere,
but still don't even know the ABC..

Stick to Pro-Q, it's all you need for now.

Only use Soothe, Gulfoss or Smart Operator on individual tracks, (not the Master)
and only when it's Strictly necessary.

These are not normal EQs, it will be long to explain, and pointless..
but if you don't know what you're doing, better not use them.

Same goes for SplitEQ..

You don't need these type of sota tools for now,
just as the world didn't need them since the beginning of music production..

So better stick to Pro-Q, Kirchhoff or Carve EQ,
any of them will be good enough. If you already got ProQ stick to that.


The same goes for SmartComp,
just because it's named "Smart" doesn't make it any better, or adequate.

Any regular Digital Comp will serve, specially if it has auto release/attack of some kind.


Since you got Ozone, you don't really need Smart Limiter either,
altho they could work in tandem.

Keep Ozone, experiment with it,
and remember always RTFM

 

Thanks for the answer, I totally agree with you...
In the meantime in terms of EQ even if I don't know what I'm doing I recognize what is better when using Smooth or Gullfoss, that's why those are named in the title --> I cannot leave them behind because I hear the difference ! Maybe the fool for producers like is the fact that with one preset or one button of each one, we can have a different sound without the need of learning :

I want normal EQ --> ProQ or Neutron
I want to work on resonnance --> Soothe2
I want rebalance a little --> SplitEQ
I want to add colour or tame --> Gullfoss or Smooth Operator

Even if I'm not a sound designer, at my level, my music works and is I think well mixed and mastered because I know what I'm doing (what is the purpose of each plugin and what preset to use) but I don' really know what is deep behind... I have a lot of streams each days and some good reviews by some pros and composers (Andrew Prahlow ) but I quite have the impostor syndrome sometimes...

 

Well, then maybe you know what you're doing in terms of EQs..

So you can focus on learning Compressors now

 

Last edited: Feb 24, 2023

Ahah Maybe ! Thanks anyway !

 

beginners shound learn the basics of EQ before considering gullfoss, soothe2, smooth operator

ok, use those tools because we are in 2023, but learning deeply pultecs and SSL EQs is "the trick"

 

To eliminate unpleasant resonances, it would be good to try TBProaudio DSEQ. You might have a pleasant surprise.

 

Tonebooster's Equalizer 4 can be good alternative to ProQ3 ngl and the demo itself have no limitations but still need to buy if you want to pledge the devs. but the real problem is there is no linear phase option.

it has all over features that proQ have, exception to phasing options

 

Last edited: Feb 24, 2023

That guy won't really teach you much as he seems to be more focused on promoting random plugins.

Here are two solid channels for actually learning and implementing audio techniques including using various EQ methods on your Master Bus:
https://www.youtube.com/@sageaudio
https://www.youtube.com/@TheHouseofKushTV

 

Being able to recognize something as good or bad doesn't automatically mean that you're able to do this yourself, even if you have the right tools. Like, looking at a beautiful sculpture...

For me, engineering is the tool I use to achieve a musical result (or at least try to ).

That's a Yes from me.

EQs: static, dynamic, spectral
Compressors: stereo, M/S, MB, spectral
Saturation: M/S
Limiter: check
Several measuring tools

For stem mastering additional comps and EQs and maybe, maybe, maybe a clipper.

I'm not using Trackspacer, Soothe, anything Smart-XY, or Match-XY, or Ozone.