Mastering Program?

[acos1]

Ive been using Cubase sx2 up until now to master my stuff but im always been told by people u should use Neundo or Wavelab or whatever. So just to see what does everyone here use?

[Dave Elyzium]

I use T-racks plugin on the master channel of Cubase - http://www.t-racks.com/

http://www.t-racks.com/Picts/product/RTAS_screen_small.jpg

[acidsaturation]

If you're talking about mastering a finished track, it doesn't really matter that much whether you stuck a plugin like t racks over your output channel, or use a host like wavelab, soundforge etc to use whatever plugins you want to work on the finished output file IMO. I use the latter method.

[RDR]

I usually get someone else to master it.

better objectivity.

[acidsaturation]

This is true also.

[stjohn]

but what if u have perfect ears like I do :roflmao:

only messing!

i usually jump into soundforge and use a mix of sprectal analysis - EQ - teeny bit of comrpession, maybe some harmontic excitation using Izotope Ozone.

[acidsaturation]

Has to be said, I have recently done one tune that actually sounds quite like I'd like a lot of things to sound like... and that had no mastering at all. Just straight from the mixdown.

[RDR]

Aye, tis true. mastering is like french polishing or is for a certain format, vinyl mastering for example.

I dont see anyting wrong with mastering yourself, after all its a learning process.

we cant leave it to others all the time, how would we tell if their work was good mastering if we hadnt had a go ourselves?

[acidsaturation]

Indeed...

One mistake I've made too is listening to things as reference tracks that sound amazing, particularly when I was going through a *ahem* but of a hard dance type phase in places I was going out (being single, birds in bikinis lol) 'cos it can't be denied that some of this type of stuf is complex, big sounds and so I was thinking it's difficult to get sounding nice, so will be good to listen to well produced stuff as reference.

But then trying to tame down the amount of parts in my tunes needed me to really rethink, and looking back even some quite old and maybe not brilliantly mastered acid tunes were much closer to the slightly crusty sound I wanted...

[MARK ANXIOUS]

mastering is a massive artform. and i'm one of those ppl that would rather master myself and not leave to someone who doesnt understand where i'm coming from. but each to their own.. if you want to get into it, you need to read this as a start point: bob katz 'the art and science of mastering audio'. you have to understand eq, compression and limiting in it's entirely (and multiband too) and i mean ENTIRETY... i would suggest reading at least an hour a day on the subject for a year (and i'm not joking!!!)..... t-racks is good cause it's an all-round suite that help you understand how it all works, but it's certain not the best... plus things like how dither or bitrate etc affects what you're doing if you're working in the analog/digital world, as well as tricks involving stereo field that can make your bottom end sound punchier and top end sound wider..

for mastering soundforge is pretty industry standard on a pc.. peak is cool on a mac but i would definitely rather do it on soundforge... oh and use the plugin chainer if you're on soundforge rather than just applying each effect individually...

ok hope this helps as a start...

ps the point about reference tracks is soooooo right imho. i mean, if you understand the principles of mastering, every decision you make when mastering is made based upon the tune you're mastering and what you know is right for the music you're trying to make. and that's thousands of decisions that go to make the whole. but you use a ref and bam, you've made 6000000 decisions based upon someone else's track. which is bullshit of course :)