Ryan Zepaltas wrote: Tue May 04, 2021 8:15 am I am interested in your thoughts when it comes to a simple "mastering" workflow (mainly ITB)

I have a bunch of tracks that I want to finish up for friends or just digital release, that I would like to take a crack at. These are tracks that are not worth sending off to you pros out there. I am talking practice space demos, dumb covers, old shit from my high school bands, etc.

I was thinking of acquiring a summing mixer of some sort to run to from Reaper, but I can't decide if it is necessary or not. Any insight regarding outboard gear or plugins would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Ryan

FWIW, many years ago I used a combination of a Tascam MX80 and Shure FP42 for mixing down to a cassette 2 track.
The MX80 is an 8:2 mix mixer with stepped input attenuation, and dual FET channels. Each channel also has an insert point.
Shure FP42 is a 4:2 broadcast mixer with xfrmers in and out and a limiter on the 2 that is oddly similar to a leveloc.

They would get setup depending on what I was bussing from, and as I mentioned would mixdown to 2 track and that would be the "master tape" for duplication.
This is NOT HIFI, and I haven't got the slightest what the musical context is here, but it was great for making garage and hardcore tapes.

I actually still employ both in my studio one way or another.

I'm pretty basic so I almost exclusively just use Izotope Ozone for what "mastering" tasks I need. It has all the tools I need and I don't have to switch around plugins. Just stay in one space. I will say the AI assisted mastering ALWAYS sounds like total fucking shit and I never use it. But yeah, great eq, great multiband comp, cool dynamic eq, a limiter that I try to barely use because limiters sound like shit. It has all I need.

Kniferide wrote: Fri May 14, 2021 2:06 pm I'm pretty basic so I almost exclusively just use Izotope Ozone for what "mastering" tasks I need. It has all the tools I need and I don't have to switch around plugins. Just stay in one space. I will say the AI assisted mastering ALWAYS sounds like total fucking shit and I never use it. But yeah, great eq, great multiband comp, cool dynamic eq, a limiter that I try to barely use because limiters sound like shit. It has all I need.

+1 on Ozone! you can get the iZotope Ozone 9 Elements Version for 130$. you should be able to use it as "standalone" software, so you don't need to run it as VST in other music software. I bought a couple of iZotope plugins over the years and all of them are great!

Thank you everyone for all the thoughtful replies. There are a lot of ideas here for me to help come up with my workflow.

On my master bus its typically Abbey Road TG Mastering into Audiothing's Type A into U-HE Satin. Satin glues and gives you so many option for tone shaping the mix, especially the compander.

After export my stereo track final mastering consists of TDR Nova GE finished by Venn Clipper. Not really a limiter guy.

Another really great mastering tool is the DSP DSM V3. It can add openness and clarity like "that".

handsbloodyhands wrote: Tue May 18, 2021 11:49 am ... into U-HE Satin. Satin glues and gives you so many option for tone shaping the mix, especially the compander.

+1
LOVE using Satin for parallel compression and encode/decode tricks.

Hey can I ask a silly question.

The main thing that's kept me from doing my own pseudo-mastering, just on the less important personal projects, is not knowing how to maintain perceived loudness from track to track. If I record a single song, I can get something acceptable out of Ozone or whatever. But I don't know how to go about mastering a group of songs together (aside from I guess the EQ).

For getting the limiting right and all that, do you treat each song on its own terms as in the mixing stage? or do you plot out "this song will be the Loudest song, and I'll set the rest of them relative to this one"?

I am not that concerned with limiting for its own sake, of course. I just want to reach a place where I can do the odd mastering job that is maybe kind of bad, in the long view of history, but not distractingly bad in the present.

Have a final stage where you adjust the relative loudness of the tracks, working from the one that sounds the least loud (leaving it alone), and adjusting every other track down in relation to it. It also helps because the perspective changes when you hear it in sequence, it's often strategic to go a little bit lower with certain spots to create dynamics in the overall arch of the record. That would be a simple way to go about it.

Took a look into the Youlean Loudness Meter. There's a free and pro version - https://www.homestudiotoday.com/youlean ... er-review/

You may also find this useful, depending on how/where your audience are listening.

https://www.loudnesspenalty.com/