losthighway wrote: Tue May 13, 2025 2:20 pm

MoreSpaceEcho wrote: Tue May 13, 2025 10:38 am FWIW I almost never have two limiters going, but a clipper before the limiter is pretty common. The clipper is just shaving off the biggest peaks, which if you zoom way in you'll find that a lot of these peaks are literally fractions of a millisecond long, i.e. real fucking short. That stuff can be clipped very transparently and it'll ease the burden on the limiter.

Basically, short percussive peaks can be clipped no problem (up to a point obviously). Where clipping gets super nasty is when it hits sustained sounds: piano, pedal steel, vocals, organ, etc.

But as has been said, the idea is that it usually sounds better with a few things all doing a little bit rather than one thing doing a lot. I don't really want my limiter swinging wildly from moment to moment, I want it just kind of tickling along, knocking peaks back a db or two. Modern limiters can do way more GR than that and still sound good, and sometimes that's what I do but generally I find it works best to smooth things out as much as possible before they get to the limiter. I.E. Don't rely on the limiter to fix problems, fix them before they get there, Just use the limiter to hit the peaks and bring up the overall level.

Do you ever have an ordinary compressor working across the whole track. Like, is a mixing style 3:01 with 0-5db reduction a thing in mastering?

I do but it is usually more like 2:1 with a pretty relaxed attack and release. Like 1 or 2 max dB of reduction and manual gain compensation. I have Peak limiter, Dynamic EQ, Comp, Parametric EQ, Final limiter/maximizer usually in a generic chain.

losthighway wrote: Tue May 13, 2025 2:20 pm Do you ever have an ordinary compressor working across the whole track. Like, is a mixing style 3:01 with 0-5db reduction a thing in mastering?

Sure. More like 1.5:1 (sometimes as low as maybe 1.2:1) doing a db or so, slowish attack, fastish release, I vary the release times a lot more than the attack time.

3:1 would usually be more on like a singer/songwriter vocal and guitar track where the vocal's jumping around a lot. That'd be a lot faster attack time, more gain reduction, sometimes a surprising amount, but whatever's needed to get the track to congeal nicely. TDR Kotelnikov works great for this.

Some stuff comes in hella compressed already, other stuff comes in wildly dynamic. Sometimes on the same record....

MoreSpaceEcho wrote: Tue May 13, 2025 10:32 pmTDR Kotelnikov works great for this.

This is one of the best compressors there is and it's free. If I only had one compressor plugin to use it might be Kotelnikov.

Kniferide wrote: Wed May 14, 2025 3:25 pm

MoreSpaceEcho wrote: Tue May 13, 2025 10:32 pmTDR Kotelnikov works great for this.

This is one of the best compressors there is and it's free. If I only had one compressor plugin to use it might be Kotelnikov.

Thanks for the tip! I just tried it out for 2 minutes and instantly liked it on the 2-buss in a "preserve the mix, just make it louder" way. I'll try out some of the drum smashing settings later..

penningtron wrote: Wed May 14, 2025 3:45 pm

Kniferide wrote: Wed May 14, 2025 3:25 pm

MoreSpaceEcho wrote: Tue May 13, 2025 10:32 pmTDR Kotelnikov works great for this.

This is one of the best compressors there is and it's free. If I only had one compressor plugin to use it might be Kotelnikov.

Thanks for the tip! I just tried it out for 2 minutes and instantly liked it on the 2-buss in a "preserve the mix, just make it louder" way. I'll try out some of the drum smashing settings later..

TDR's free EQ and the other little compressor they have are also very good. The Kotelnikov is kinda the go to I want an FMR Really nice compressor style plugin that you can make really invisible.

TDR Nova might be the greatest free plugin of all the times.

Chiming in after two years posting this and bumping since it was asked to revive it in another thread.

Mastering is more demystified to me. It's not all the black sorcery that it appears to be from the outside. Making things louder, clearer and more impactful sounds like a tall order, but there's so many useful tools to get you there, but always start with a good mix.

It's easy for me to master my own stuff, in that I know what I want, and while I can get it from mixing, I can certainly add more in mastering. That being said, if done professionally, I can understand the balance of doing personally preferable things vs elevating what's given to you. Curious what those of you doing this professionally approach this?

My own personal experience in the past giving my stuff to mastering engineers is just believing they can polish up a mix. I also never was the mixing engineer. There's a lot of faith in the whole process, for the musician. Although, I do recall early on in my days in a band recording and getting an album mastered, not being really happy with the initial master. It was done by a big-named engineer that the label had used. He mastered the album like it was a pop album. It just sounded weird to me. I still think about that, even though I had no good language to really express what was wrong with it, just that it felt wrong. Either the label didn't express to him the desired results, or he was just doing what he always does, considering his usually clients.

I Agree. Modern mastering loves a hyped high end, super subby lows with a scooped mid and that is what you will usually get from a Izotope AI, LANDR... etc. It sounds like shit. Usually people are pretty happy with the signature they left the mix engineer with and I see no reason to push that too hard in any direction.

When I "master" I take of 2 approaches.
1. If there is only 1 song, I am only really concerned with Level, unless there is too much sub low, or ultra high, or a resonance I'll tame that shit a little and only focus on level. I take a light hand with EQ when "Mastering"
2. If there are more songs and they are to be served together, I'll try to make them not jarring sonically moving from song to song with as few eq moves as possible and them I focus on level for deliverables.
It's like 90% level moves for me. I'll fade tips and tails, and maybe automate slight level changes if needed.
I'll do an Export pass for streaming level (-14 to -10 LUFS, -1 true peak), and a pass for full range "CD" -0.1 true peak at 16/44.1 and at 24/48k. Something like -9 to -6 LUFS depending on the music. Whatever sounds good to me.

I don't fuck with stereo width. People are leaning hard on saturation in mastering as opposed to limiters and I think it is a sin. Maybe a little dynamic eq if something is really weird. The mix engineer should be doing all the hard work and if it didn't leave the mix engineer right you can't "save" it. I am usually the bad mix engineer so I can do as many revisions as I need!

I AM NOT a mastering Engineer. I almost never charge people to do this shit, I just help friends sometimes.

cakes wrote: Wed Feb 04, 2026 1:26 pm if done professionally, I can understand the balance of doing personally preferable things vs elevating what's given to you. Curious what those of you doing this professionally approach this?

Doing it professionally, it's entirely about elevating what I'm given, it's not really about what I like or don't like. I mean, I have an opinion on how I like things to sound, and fortunately that opinion seems to agree with most people, so I stay in business, but really I'm just reacting to whatever's in front of me.

Basically I always want to do as little as possible. And that might be -1@250 and 1db of limiting or it might be a chain of a dozen things all working hard. It all depends.

If you're just mastering your own stuff, it can be relatively easy, you can figure out a simple chain that generally works for what you're doing and just tweak that as needed. Doing it professionally, the process is the same, it's all just listening and reacting, but you have a super wide range of material to deal with. All different genres, different recording/mixing techniques, wildly different skill levels, different client expectations.

Some of my clients are veteran pros, others are making their first record in a bedroom. Some stuff comes in sounding amazing, some stuff comes in sounding crazy. Some things sound finished already, others need a lot of help. Doing it professionally is really mainly about being objective, and having a room and monitors you know you can trust.

I do recall early on in my days in a band recording and getting an album mastered, not being really happy with the initial master.

If anyone's not happy with a master you got back, speak up! Any good ME will do revisions. We want you to be happy! Most MEs I know don't charge extra for revisions (within reason). Maybe if you're getting something mastered at Sterling it's different but I doubt anyone here is doing that. ~95 % of the time, people are happy with the first thing I send them, and usually if they're not totally happy the stuff they want fixed are easy little things like transitions/fade outs/relative song levels. Every once in a while they're unhappy with the sound and if so, almost invariably it's because I did too much to it, despite my best intentions. And then it's just a simple matter of getting on the same page, undoing some stuff I did, and everyone's happy.

Kniferide wrote: Modern mastering loves a hyped high end, super subby lows with a scooped mid and that is what you will usually get from a Izotope AI, LANDR... etc. It sounds like shit.

Yeah I hate that scooped sound. Midrange is where all the music is. I feel like there's some Ozone preset everyone seems to love that makes the bass all hollow and phasey, I hear it right away, sounds awful.

Usually people are pretty happy with the signature they left the mix engineer with and I see no reason to push that too hard in any direction.

Exactly. The mix is the art. Mastering is just putting a nice frame on it, making sure the lighting's right and it's hanging straight.

Ok I got one - is it possible to slightly raise the level of section of a song relative to another in mastering or would that be a disaster?

Not talking about not making the chorus bump in a mix - just wondering how it would work to clean up the other side of dynamics where you’ve got a bunch of stuff going on.