you will love it so…
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My use is for live performance/assembly of tracks from clips in Ableton. I do not produce tracks for commercial purposes. The mastering for is thus to control peaks, glueing and raising the overall level/drive. EQ for final polishing. I obviously do my best to process the stem groups so that they all fit together well but even with my lack of knowledge of mastering, I always find reasons to do a bit of EQing on the low and high end, and then a few dB glueing. I happy to admit that everything following mixdown is not a science I am familiar with but I guess there are many people who like to assemble their tracks on the fly with no mastering engineering getting paid on site 
Of course we could do this without the AH in the past, so why bother suddenly about it but it would be nice to see whether one could use the AH for “mastering” duties of sorts (maximising, glueing). I have my Elektron setup running into an A&H QuPac which has lots of the functionality but it is not really ideal for a live setup. Mixers like the Model 1 or the PX 5 offer now five or even six channels, nice on board effects and can mix lots of USB channels with hardware input.
Multichannel - yes, I meant multiband compression in Ableton. Not understanding this in all details, I really just want reduce peaks, if they occur, to thereby raise the level, glue compression and then adjusting a bit on the low and high end of the spectrum for final touches on the overall dynamics and with respect to the PA. This seems to be doable with the AH, leaving me only wondering about the peak reduction / maximisation and glueing.
AH has a character that can spice things up…it can be an hazard to use as a final stage but, fine tuned can deliver a lot.
I firmly believe that a “mastering” chain wisely made by good plugins can deliver more speaking about rms and peaks under control, better than AH…but we are in another territory, and I never read -anywhere- the word “mastering” side by side to “analog heat”.
If you want, I am keen to process sounds that you indicate me, or if you prefer, you can send me something and I’ll process it back to you just as a reference how AH can behave
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Can anyone who owns or has played the Elysia Karacter as well as the Elektron Analog Heat provide a comparison between the two? I really like the AH’s ability to act kind of like a compressor with its envelope modulating parameters, and I also really like the Karacter’s mid-side processing capabilities. I guess I’d like a comparison between the saturation settings on both units. Does the Karacter’s saturation sound better, considering it has far less distortion types? Are the few that are there of higher quality?
I am preparing some processing of a multitrack I downloaded from http://www.cambridge-mt.com/ms-mtk.htm#Electronica
I’ve choose the track called Albert Kader: ‘Ubiquitous’ not following my taste, just a random catch. And arbitrarily I choose to cut short it with quick fade out (quite tired, wanna go sleep…yawn)
I have imported tracks in Ableton (with their faders@-12dB) then put AH on Master with an External Audio Effect.
I used only those circuits that, in my opinion, better fit a mixbus processing, i.e.
• Flat (i.e. External Audio Effect feeding AH bypassed)
• Clean Boost
• Saturation
• Enhancement
• Rough Crunch (here the sound darken quite a lot, but it can be easily compensated by using the EQ)
There is no use of EQ nor Filter.
Master Volume at maximum;
Preset Volume at maximum;
Dry/Wet at maximum (full Wet);
Drive+Wet Level are the only two modified parameter following a “fair” compromise of Peak/RMS/Coloration.
I tried to not overtake 0dBfs but I haven’t checked every seconds…
Here the link where to listen to these:
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Thank you greatly for these. They are very very helpful.
I like to discuss about equipment and making real life comparison about features…of course I haven’t dedicated much time in preparing those files…but they can give a raw idea when it comes to mixbus duties…for all the rest is simply massive!
I think to set up the ah for a task like this, youl have to do the following.
use the clean boost (or alternative to saturation or enhancement)
set env follower dest to drive
turn drive up a little
set the wet level so that there is no difference in loudness when you turn the wet/dry level fully clockwise or anti clockwise
the difficult part is to set the attack, release and threshold of the env to a subtle setting. because these values have no scale for ms and db. mastering compressors normaly work in a range where they just cut about 1 to 3 db from the peaks and they work with longer attacks and release times than on a bus. eg the fairchild 670 is often used with a release time to 2 to 3 seconds
so when you adjusted the attack, release and threshold that the env just reacts a little, turn the amount of the env destination a bit anticlockwise and adjust the sound with the dry/wet level. this should give you subtle results. you will need good monitors and ears to do this right, maybe an analyzer set before and after the ah can help.
it might also be neccessary to turn the base a bit up, so that the env doesnt react on the kick and other bass frequencies so much.
i will experiment with this later this week with a track that Im just working on and will report of the results.
cheers
Goat
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It was supposed to be on next week but I miss the first shipment to my retailer so I have to wait for the next shipment (and for a friend to bring it to me.) Or I can pay about 1500USD and get it sooner may be in two weeks. Lets see.
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To increase RMS you need to deal with fast transients, slow release times won’t work.
I think the Key here is to start with the minimum release time, and then start increasing it if there are audible artefacts till they disappear, or till the artefacts doesn’t bothers you.
Totally agree with the inverse modulation of the Drive parameter to enhance material that is bellow the threshold without adding too much coloration to the material that is over it. 
Also totally agree with the rest.
Looking forward for you experiments results, please share!
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Thanks a lot for your time!
I think that for a quick process that doesn’t involves realtime dynamics, parallel processing, nor a dedicated mix fine tuning for that specified “processor” the outcome was very good.
For this particular examples the clean boost did a great job, RMS went from -13 to -9, character got enhanced in a pleasant unobstructive way, and all this without using ENV, Dry/Wet, EQ, and Filter.
EDIT: I just focused on the mix’s first seconds. Having full drums/percs with bass and some pad/fx are more than enough. There are some percussions later with fast transients that are going to high, those should be treated on the mix not on the mastering, that’s why there is no point to focus after the first seconds for measuring/compare.
Now I’m sure this device can be used on my live performance’s master Bus to enhance the sound and gain some RMS, or in other words as a quick mastering device for my live performance.
Thanks again!
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Indeed that Multitrack is not mixed so the AH behavior has both “goods and bads”…
Glad it took out some doubts
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I just want add to my excitement…sorry:
The pseudo stereo coming out of AH is insane!
I have experienced the beauties of Sherman FB2 connecting both Outs…
But now using FreqPan, LFO on it and Peak Filter on a kickdrum…omg!
Mono summed it have a wacky modulation…but in stereo is coming out of speakers!!
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Nice!
What about phase cancellation? How it performs when summed to mono?
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Near nothing when using band-reject filter, maximum with peak filter.
Moderate with bandpass and a bit less with lowpass.
These mainly phase out on low spectrum.
Highpass is moderate at medium-high spectrum.
Of course main wish is that if I’ll use the pseudo stereo tech no one will listen to it in mono stream… 
short attack and release times can can also dampen the heights, so be carefull. this is better done during mixing. in the mastering stage, compressors (as far as you can adjust them) shouldnt use a ratio higher than 2:1 in this stage, you just put on gentle touches.
to make the mix louder in the end, you use a limiter. a compressor should be adjusted, that the signal isnt softer, when you bypass it, otherwise you will always prefer the louder signal and you cant really compare it to bypass mode.
cheers
Goat
Goat,
A limiter is basically a compressor with infinite ratio and very fast attack/decay/release times.
So when you advice to use a limiter, basically you are saying to use a compressor with a very high ratio and very fast attack and decay times.
About to “dampen the heights”, that is de whole point, but then you have to choose a balance between the “dampen” and de audible artefacts that “dampening” can produce. As I said before, mix needs to be fine tuned with the specified device in mind.
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Awesome!
Btw, there is no need to listen to a mono stream to get phase cancellation, phase problems will be audible on any configuration, this will depend on the listener’s position. When you test drive your mix on mono then you get an idea of the worst case scenario.
Of course I listened in the sweet spot of the studio…and in stereo I just appreciated the enhanced stereo field of such modulation (especially with peak mode)
I always worry about mono compatibility because my daily job in the audiovisuals field and the most common fruition of the audio programme…TV…
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I will try those modulations for sure!
TnX!