I'm no expert on mastering at all, but from my tests I've found that both Relative and Absolute modes work for me in different cases:

Absolute seems to be at its best both for balancing transients and for mellowing saturated/distorted material, where the upper parts of the spectrum tend to be pretty much harshness.

Relative, as Stevie said, works like a broad band de-esser, but when mastering I've found it useful for subtly taming the presence on some drums and kinda glueing them with the rest of the instruments. It may not be the optimal solution, but it sure works nicely as a quick fix

 

looks nice, will update it later. thank you, Stevie!

 

I've used this technique to try and fix some poorly recorded double-tracked guitars and wow does it make a difference. Thanks so much!

Also - the Navy shelf in JET is AMAZING. The other emulations are nice, but I swear I had never hear a plugin do what the Navy does to a distorted guitar.

 

My 3 mastering tips are...
1. Before you master, get a positive mind and go to the gym.
2. Never believe what you heard the second before you heard it.
3. Try to replay as manytimes that you think you have "mastered".

 

Gavin is quick to make a video to confirm Stevie dude's statements !

 

For HF taming I can recommend Toneboosters Sibalance.

 

mastering is absolutely not my realm but i agreed to do a quasi "master" tomorrow for a mixing client who has budget restrictions. i'm excited to play around with a few of these concepts. tysm for posting!

 

Is this identical to what Tokyo Dawn Slick EQ does in the LF band when you activate the phase shift button?

From the manual:

"The button labeled (Phi, lowercase) represents phase shift and deserves special attention. It activates a special filter network meant to distort the phase in a musically useful manner. It does not affect the frequency magnitude (all-pass). However, the network delays low frequencies relative to higher frequencies. In other words, low frequencies lag behind.

This seemingly boring filter covers a surprising range of uses such as waveform symmetrization; attack softening and subtle bass sustain extension; correction of phase issues in the mix and creative doubling/layering trickery. Last but not least, it can even correct certain forms of “dullness” and offers a useful alternative “color” to the low band section. This function is best discovered by ear.

Note: can be tuned with Frequency, butdoes not depend on Gain (!)."

 

The one on the TDR Slick EQ is at its simplest form is an All Pass Filter, tho like TDR explained in the manual it's a special filter network. It's different processing, still awesome af but different. It's like adjusting the time domain of the low end content (pushed behind/forward), realigning it a bit that if you're lucky it will make the low end is perceived as more solid and punchy. It has to do with how high frequency reaches the listener quicker than the low end, so the processing realign the low end and high frequency behind/forward in time and using APF we can find a good spot that work.

The Bass Shift idea is making it work together with the compressor (A leveling, Vari-Mu, slow compressor) that placed after. It's like shaping the sidechain that feed the compressor, but done to the main signal instead. Doing it before the compressor making the result of compression is a little bit fuller on the low mid. I don't really know the real accurate science behind it but can roughly say, it causes some sort of interaction that make the compression creates more bass content in the midrange. The phase twist of the EQ move isn't as drastic as the 180degree phase shift of an All Pass Filter considering the EQ move is just +/-0.5db. According to Gavin Lurssen on the video in @Sapriisty post above, he learned it from his mentor, so the technique is give or take 30-40 years old. He call it "adding punch" but his partner Reuben Cohen sees it differently as he calls it "adding low support".

 

For HF Limiting I suggest three products from the evergreen Airwindows: Acceleration2, ToVynil4 and GoldenSlew

 

Can someone explain me why compression produce only odd order harmonics? I suspect it's because it's a symmetrical process (2nd order harmonics are produced by asymmetrical saturation), but I think that there could be something else

 

About the BASS SHIFT technique:

I've been re-testing some old Pulsar Modular stuff after the praise that has received their new MDN and I just remembered the OOMPH and POOMPH knobs on the P44 Magnum. I overlooked them the first time I tried the plugin but now I'm thinking they can surely be used for nice some low end tweaking.

It won't be as surgical as a parallel EQ like the 8200, but it may allow for some nice interactions both with the saturation and the kinda-exciter SWEET knob.

 

Since we're looking for parallel operation, how do you advise to set this up in a DAW? What I did now is load up three Tim Petherick Surge-EQ instances in Patchwork in the parallel chain:



As you can see, I had to play with the Q and Gain quite a bit and added a third low bell, to be able to match the frequency curve of your Pulsar settings in Plugindoctor:

 

It looks okay to me. To be really honest, I don't really know the real science behind this, as for what is really matter, is it the curve, or the phase shift introduced by the EQ move. I have tried matching the settings with Pro-Q3 before but it doesnt really give the same effect as using the Pulsar 8200 when I apply the compression after which I believe the most important thing for this trick, the EQ move does barely nothing consider it's just 0.5db +/-

One more thing to considering the idea of "Parallel EQ" is the final reconstruction of the sound consists a collection of Band Pass filters and reversed-phase Low and High Pass filters for shelves (a lot like Pultec). That way you can get the same phase response to the EQ with Parallel topology. Although stacking the EQs parallel-y could give the same curve, it's not really the same thing, as with how people saying they can accurately match Pultec's curve but the end result sound different. I could be wrong but I remember reading about this some time ago at the Tokyo Dawn Lab (or was it vladg ?) blog. I don't really know the extreme details, but roughly it's like that.

 

OK, I went back to check the Phase graph in Plugindoctor on the parallel-y chain:



Doesn't really match the Pulsar, so I decided to just add them in serial and it looks much closer:




So I guess with both plugins, not a lot of phase shifting is happening, just on the very low end?

 

Last edited: Jun 14, 2024

Just popped in to say: Good job Stevie! Community needs more posts like this. Share or be square people
Cheers

 

I've checked just for curiosity and it seems that the weird thing with the phase is something all Pulsar Modular plugins do. Both 8200 and Massive have that low-end bump even with all the knobs off (even the lo-cut), and it's also in their Mu compressor. I guess it's something to do with the HP filter, as when you turn it up the shape stays the same and just goes up along the frequency spectrum, but it probably means that the low frequency response in Pulsar products will be different from most other plugins.

 

Amazing

 

DC Filtering ? no ?

 

My 5 tips fr:

1. Don't be afraid to use automation.
2. Keep a simple chain and don't repeat plugins. (seriously, you don't need to)
3. Serial limiting! Don't use a single maximizer in the end of material. (I use 4)
4. First apply corrections to the material, then make additions.
5. Use Black Box HG-2MS.