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Hello everyone,

I am wondering about the various home mastering plugins that are out there for us. I just got a UAD card, and already own some PSP mastering plugs (Master-Q, Master-Comp & NEON). At this point I think I need a finalizer/Limiter. What do you think of the PSP Xenon?

Or, is the UAD Precision Mastering bundle a good/better way to go. I also have heard a lot about Ozone 4 as a possible option...

I primarily do traditional, acoustic music (no dance-club, rock, etc.). I have good mics, good pres, a treated room and good ADDA conversion. I want to preserve as much of this as possible... I need clean and transparent.

Any thoughts would be welcomed!

Take care, I appreciate your time.

~Shea

OZone is very good and has excellent SRC and dither options plus it has M/S and a bunch of other goodness.

I just used the UAD Multi-Limiter on a mastering job (please don't ask I'm NOT an mastering dude) and I was impressed with the results. I like the sound more than the waves L16 or whatever it's called.

Thanks kassonica for the info. It helps. I should have also stated that I already have BIAS PEAK and the SRCs are very good in that as well. I don't know why, but something about the OZone interface makes me hesitant. In all fairness I will give it a try if they offer a demo. After all, in the end it doesn't matter how something looks: if it sounds good, it is good!

Cheers.

I did a 50 song master in DP last year for Sony. 12 of those tracks have just been licensed for release on a UK label. The master was done in DP, primarily with stock MOTU plugs.

The two non-MOTU plugs I used were the Waves Multi Maximizer, and the RNDigital Uniquel-izer.

Dave

I use Ozone for dithering but not SRC. For the latter, I use the high-end iZotope SRC included in Wave Editor. Ozone for dithering is quite trivial: you shut off the interface (by canceling vs. loading a preset), which disables everything except dithering. Couldn't be easier!

Both SRC and dithering have improved at least four-fold in DP 7, to the point that I don't mind using them for non-critical tracks (that is, anything other than acoustic orchestral instruments).

BIAS Peak has improved SRC and dithering in version 6, but I don't know how it currently stacks up against DP, considering the improvements in both over the past couple of releases.

In some cases -- dithering in particular -- source material can make a difference in which algorithm works the best. You can also fool with the parameters for both dithering and SRC.

I also find that leaving 0.3 dB of headroom vs. the "standard" 0.0 or 0.1 dB, at the end of the mastering chain, dramatically improves the dithering to 16 bits and the conversion to MP3. It gives that extra headroom that can sometimes be critical during the conversion process.

magicd wrote:The two non-MOTU plugs I used were the Waves Multi Maximizer, and the RNDigital Uniquel-izer.

Dave

The Waves Multi Maximizer is one of my go-to plugins, along with the Linear Phase Multi-Band (which I sometimes call their "C-5"). I think the RNDigital Uniquel-izer is no longer available.

I also really like and use Xenon a lot - the K metering is especially useful.

I bought PSP Xenon during one of their recent sales, on faith alone, due to it being promoted here by people whose ears I trust.

I have found it the most transparent mastering limiter for certain acoustic music contexts where only light limiting is called for. My notes are at home regarding whether I found it better for chamber vs. full orchestra. I am now using it more than Ozone for classical and some jazz.

Shooshie wrote:

magicd wrote:The two non-MOTU plugs I used were the Waves Multi Maximizer, and the RNDigital Uniquel-izer.

Dave

The Waves Multi Maximizer is one of my go-to plugins, along with the Linear Phase Multi-Band (which I sometimes call their "C-5"). I think the RNDigital Uniquel-izer is no longer available.

Nothing's available from RND. The company has gone bye-bye unfortunately.

Thanks again everyone for the replies,

It looks like owning more than one limiter is a good way to go (like mics...). I think I will start with the Xenon and look into the others maybe later. I still don't feel good about WAVES, but will check it out if a demo is possible.

Cheers,

Shea A.J. Comfort

Can't say I blame you about Waves. I got on board with Waves when they were the best game in town, and they were very responsive to all our needs. That was longer ago than I want to think about right now. Unfortunately, once they get that big chunk of change from you, it gets very hard NOT to upgrade. I try to go a year or so without upgrading so as to spread out their cost and get more ride per ticket, so to speak, but it still costs more than any other company's upgrades. You might consider just getting a single limiter, like the LL3-MultiMaximizer, from a company like Sweetwater who can discount it at least a little bit. Then you're not paying such a high upgrade fee. The other "bargain" is to buy the whole store; all their plugins. Then your upgrade fee still never goes past $200. With multiple bundles or individual plugins, it can add up to well over that amount.

But I've beat Waves to death in this forum. I'll try to lay off. The plugins deserve respect, even if the company never misses a chance to… ooops. Sorry. I said I'd lay off.

Shooshie

+1 for Ozone.

You just can't beat what all you get for the money. Now, with version 4 we have M/S processing on the EQ module and also on the multi-band compression.. you gotta know a little about what you're doing to get the best out of it though.

You might also consider looking into Sonnox. I have the Limiter, EQ and Dynamics plugs, and they are very good. The limiter has a certain sound it imparts, a very smooth and polished "sheen".. fantastic on acoustic material, gives you that solid, full sound.

+1 Sonnox!

There's always the free simple W1 limiter:

http://www.yohng.com/w1limit.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

which does amazing brick walling

A few things on mastering:

First, the big difference between mixing and mastering is process over tools. Yes, you need a good limiter, good dither and good EQ, but lots of plugs can provide them. Ozone is worth a demo download since you can use it for free for a little while and they have a good instructional manual on mastering. I also highly recommend Bob Katz's book on mastering audio.

The big issues you will confront are tonal balance across songs and parts (so that the whole thing sounds like a unity if it's an album), translation from system to system and "sounding like other people's finished music." This is why mastering engineers are paid a lot of money.

If you do it yourself, you'll want to take lots of time and try lots of trial and error.

Another plug worth demoing is Dynamic Spectrum Mapper. It's probably overkill for your music, but stealing "imprints" from mastered music in your genre and then applying them to your recordings will be very instructive as you start out.

Also, if your room isn't perfect, be sure to try out the masters in lots of different places.