A guide to your mastering chain in a dawless live set

The Lounge Other Gear
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In my research to find the best solution for a hardware mastering chain for my live dawless set I found many options and I wanted to make a list to help other running with similar situations. We know that a live set isn’t a mastered track so we must find a technique or somewhat a tool to improve our sound to reach a similar “finished” sound and LUFS in a club-festival-venue. Here are the many options and gear that I found useful, your choice depends mostly on the budget, the footprint-size-weight that you are willing to accept and signal flow (are you going to use the kick as a external sidechain? How are you connecting your gear and placing this end-of-chain tool? Are you using Eurorack? etc…

I wanted a Compressor, Saturator, Somewhat an EQ and a Limiter-Clipper or some kind of final controller to push down-up your volumen (maybe filtering, etc). It’s a complex chain but it would be the most accurate to a mastering chain. I wanted an analog device, at the and are options for EURORACK as well.

All-in-one tool:

-DOCtrn IMC Stimming’s Mastering Chain : Saturator + EQ + Compressor. You can’t filter out low frequencies going into compressor, you NEED to insert an external side chain. Very Expensive .

-Endorphin Golden Master (Eurorack version and Pedal standalone version): Very nice and affordable but I it’s digital and the UI is awful, A LOT of weird menu diving.

-Oto Boum: Affordable, the main downside it that you can’t filter out low frequencies going into compressor, you NEED to insert an external side chain. UI is weird.

-Deskpressor VoicAs: Not released yet, but so far I think it has everything. Saturation + EQ + compressor + analog signal chain + internal side chain. Price is close to $600 USD. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi3SjSjYz5g

-Elysia Qube Xmas : Standalone 500 series. It has everything, soft limiting, mid-side comp, tone, analog signal chain. Expensive.

Different tools

Saturators:

-Elektron Heath : Affordable but limited. Only saturation and you can manage to do a compressor-like operation but it is very limited. The last version MKIII has a digital compressor but it is more expensive and I don’t wanted a digital process on the chain). You can combine this with a compressor BUT the price of buying two devices could be not worth the hassle, also you would carry more equipment.

-Elysia Qube Karacter : Standalone 500 series analog stereo saturator. Close to 600USD.

Compressors:

-Neve 88C: VCA desktop compressor from Neve. Very nice. A little expensive to be just a compressor, close to $900USD. Setting a stereo chain would be a pain in the ass because potentiometers are not stepped, thus achieving a balanced and centered stereo signal would be chaotic, controls are not linked, internal side chain and it’s very portable.

-Elysia Qube Xpressor: Very nice comp, internal side chain and amazing sound. Close to $600-850 in the used market. A little bulky.

-Really Nice Compressor 1773 FMR Audio : It’s very clean, but needs external side chain. Affordable.

-Really Nice Leveling Amp FMR Audio: Similar to 1773 but this one has more “color”, needs external side chain. Affordable.

-Polyend Press: Stereo VCA analog compressor, it is pretty sterile and clean. Internal and external side chain. Affordable.

EURORACK OPTIONS

I can’t spend more time on this post so I will just enumerate them without my overview.

Saturators: After the research I selected the best of them, all stereo, all analog.

-Aphelion Cosmotronic

-Muti-Rover VoicAs

-Ember Aircraft Desings

-Stereo Clipper L1

End of the chain + modular to line converter + saturator + eq or filtering + visual cue: After the research I selected the best of them, all stereo, all analog.

-Nano Modules ST-OUT

-Knob.farm Ooots

-Threetom Modular Dopio

Compressors: After the research I selected the best of them, all stereo, all analog.

-Optopus Quadanalog instruments

-L1 Discrete Stereo Microcompressor

-LedPressor VoicAs

-Cascade Ember designs

-Messor Cosmotronic

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For compressors, there’s also the source audio atlas that could fit your list.

I searched for something similar a while ago, and ended forgetting about the “dawless” part to build my perfect end of chain using a customized mini pc. You can see the results and guide here: Dawless setup with headless PC for end of chain effects - #37 by sinedied

It’s more compact than a pedal, runs headless with anything you need and it’s even plugged transparently on my ST in my setup (no additional AD/DA step).

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nABC+ lets you mix the sidechain source audio into the compressed audio within the device itself, so possibly another option to consider on the relatively affordable list.

nABCp – Suonobuono – boutique music instruments

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I have the elysia expressor, but mostly i use octa, he has eq, compressor and distortion, and samples your transition. Sure the xpressor sounds better, but octs is good enough in most situation there is no treated room, so you wouldnt hear the difference in most cases.

MPc would also be an option the fx are also good, only problem is 6 ms latency. But you could have a simple template just for stero bus. Old devices will do it. (just as fx processor …)

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  • Analog Heat +FX has some great FX tools.
  • Behringer 369 : Discrete Precision Stereo Limiter Compressor
  • BBE 882 Sonic Maximizer
  • Golden Age Project Pre-73 Vintage Pre Amp
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Naive question. For live use, why do you need this stuff? Make it sound good and turn it up.

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While that’s the way I approach it personally, there’s more than one way to get a great sounding live set. Lots of people like applying stuff on their master bus to give them certain favors, or just as a safety net to catch the odd stray peak. There’s no right way to do it. :slight_smile:

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I missed this one. Very useful.

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Amazing, I will check !

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Can we all please stop using the word “mastering” all the time? Especially in a live context. No one is mastering anything while they are performing.

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Mine has a low cut, but maybe your intention with it is different.
I can filter out super lows, giving the drive and comp less rumble to work with which you cant hear anyways or the PA wont be able to reproduce.

And the UI is actually very straight forwared imho.
Yes its not knob-per-function, but only one button push + encoder .
Considering the size I am happy with that.

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Very tidy :sunglasses:

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According to the manual the low cut filter is placed after and not before the compressor, this was the main downside that forced me to look for other device. Besides this, it’s a really good choice. As far as I know, the low cut is not part of the VCA comp detector. Can you double check yours? Or maybe someone could help me to check if I missunderstod the signal flow?

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Funny, I never looked at the signal flow. And you’re reading it correctly, the low cut is post comp and pre drive.

Just from listening it sounds right, the drive is “cleaner” with the low cut, less influenced by the lowend.

To be honest, as an ‘end of chain’ device for a live rig, I set the comp very subtle so it never occurred to me that the low cut would or would not affect it.

And as a sound design tool I am actually looking for drastic effects.

One thing though to consider, this thing is noisy. The combo of comp and drive will pull up plenty of the noisefloor at lower volumes.

But if you feed it loud enough audio its all fine, meaning hardly noticeable in a live performance. Again, for sound design duties, in the studio, that’s acutall something I embrace.

Just wanted to let you know about this as a heads up, because I can absolutely recommend the BOUM.

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Thanks! I am considering this one while waiting to the full release of Deskpressor, I am also thinking about the Neve88c and Elysia Xmas, despite being very expensive both are devices that I could use daily on my studio. The Polyend seems a good choise too. But, after reading this on the Oto’s manual I tought that paralell compresion could be a workarround to compensate the lack of internal sidechain. Have you tried to do it? Do you squeeze it, cut the low end and then mix with dry signal? Could it work?

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Regarding the noise, I would use just a bit of saturation because I use the gain in my Bebé cherie to “color” my signals. The comp in the Bebé eats really fast all the bass and kick transient response, so I just use it to catch some peaks.

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So which one would people recommend? I am thinking about selling my AH+FX and getting something else.

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https://aircraftdesigns.info/ has some mastering modules

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It depends on your budget and your signal chain. I am waiting for the Deskpressor and thinking about the Xmas (but this one is very expensive so I am not sure). AH+FX it’s a good choice, why are you selling it? If you don’t like the compressor inside AH+FX you could just combine it with something like Polyend Press or Xpressor and you could have more than enough.

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But the EQ on the Deskpressor is also after the compressor, so its circuit is kind of the same as OTO Boum, right?

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Those are really nice but getting the saturator + comp + the case and HP spent could encourage a different option. A used Xpressor + a used AH mki could be cheaper. But if you already work with Eurorack and you have space in your rack it could work really nice.