I like this. Will study it and try it later today. Is out there to listen any of your work Stevie Dude? Also, where have to be saturation plugin, before first limiter or how should look you mastering chain?

 

Last edited: Jun 14, 2024

^^THIS - and not just automating volume, but also automating plugin parameters ;)

 

I'm just a noob man, my work is nothing special. Also, one day if I win an award, I'll wear a shirt with Audiosex written on it. For now, it's not worth your time.

If you're referring the 2nd harmonic trick, it's : 1st Limiter -> Saturation -> True Peak Limiter

If you meant how my mastering chain look like, it should be like this one. Not like this all the time, every genre/song has its own chain and plugins. This particular master is the 3rd revision I believe, after client notes, so there's stack of compressors, multi band and stuff added after, which I don't really remember which one was original and which one was added after.

This is for a Prog House track (I think) I did 3 4 months ago. Just randomly opened a project that has everything I mentioned in the original post in the thread. It's not really mastering, it's just "fake mastering" to push the track to right loudness for client preview, and reference for the ME (Mastering Engineer). The "mix" version is different, lower in volume without all this, if the client approves this version, ME will try to beat this one, if it makes any sense. That's how I work.



* the Multiplicity is on a Luca Pretolesi style 3BX Expander settings I replicate from his AA plugin and his videos. I figured it sounded better and more flexibility than the original. Client wanted more volume, so did some expansion and smash it with clipper.

 

Last edited: Jun 14, 2024

just for correct info

these are not "pulsar modular" plugins, these are "pulsar audio"

 

Having a lot of fun with this. Was using TimP L-bus (ssl g comp) for glue compression after the bass shift EQ, found out the preamp is already adding a lot of 2nd order harmonics, which maybe makes the Vertigo redundant. I am swapping it for Fircomp which is CLEAN as a whistle. The Vertigo is adding 0.2dB to the output signal btw.

 

Last edited: Jun 17, 2024

For me it seems that Fabfilter's L2 limiter is producing less harmonics, compared to the A.O.M., I checked the two cleanest presets I could find:

Fabfilter: Safe > Final few dB (red graph)
Invisible G3: Brickwall - True Peak Limiting (pink graph)

 

Interesting video about true peak limiting vs oversampling the limiter: