Let’s say you’re going all hardware for mastering. You got a stereo output from something, maybe an Octatrack or an Electribe Sampler or an Analog Rytm or whatever else that sounds decent if you use it right. And you wanna master the output signal and record it live as it is.
No other input, just the stereo out from a source such as mentioned above, assuming the output is composed and tweaked to sound pretty decent already.
What’s the minimum requirement to achieve this? What kind of gear do I need? Can I make do with just one solution, or would I need multiple boxes?
When I apply mastering in a DAW, I usually get away with compression and EQ and then I’m happy. But no matter how good the stuff sounds before it gets in there, it just sounds way better after just a few touches on the sliders. So for me, it’s still an essential part of the process.
If I don’t want to DAW this - I want to do it all hardware - what’s the minimum viable option?
I did search for the forum first. Found nothing. And when I googled it, I just ended up with million dollar solutions suggested by people lacking touch with reality.
Depends on budget…yours in this case. So we can connect better to your reality.
If I should answer by a rush of heartblood, I would say Analog Heat and a Limiter. Which limiter? back to the beginning…depends on budget…you can go with a cheap Alesis 3630 rev.D or modded if earlier revision.
Yes, good point, I forgot. I’d say that I can spend about 1,000 Euro on this. I’d like to keep it small, and don’t mind working with limitations or lack of options, as long as I can get a decent result out of whatever gear I use, for the purpose it’s designed for. So if it’s not appropriate for all styles and kinds, that’s fine.
For the purpose, I’m making a collection of dance tracks, lots of dust and dirt in the sound but quite funky in the beat. I’d like them to pump and the bass and lower ends in general come through, but the rest is intended to be a bit of a mess.
the most important hardware for making a good master are neutral monitors, a good room with acoustic treatment, an exact calibration of both and a fesh set of trained ears that listens to your mix in an unbiased way. So Id recommend finding a good friend that has all of this this to offer and let him do the mastering. Without these it doesnt really matter, which eq, compressor or limiter you take.
if you wanna improve the sound of you mixes for a budget of 1000 Euros, I recommend two options:
buy a really good headphone like the Beyerdynamic 1990 or a sennheiser 800s, where you can listen very closely to every nuance of your mix.
improve the acoustics of the room you mix in (if you havent done already). So you need to measure the frequency response of your room, place absorbers on the walls near the monitors and diffusors in the back. For equalizing room nodes, a dbx driverack pa2 might come in handy. But it can only equalize the frequencies for one sweet spot.
this should help you to listen and improve the sound of your mixes, so you can make better judgements.
I think Mastering is best left in the box. If you are printing your master to your daw, then you can’t change it later. Pro mastering will use high end converters to play the music through thousands of dollars of gear and record back into high end converters. You aren’t going to be able to find one peice of legit Mastering Hardwarre for under a thousand bucks and realistically you are going to need a at lest 5 peices of 3000$ gear, sick monitors and acoustic treatment. Mastering ITB can get you way more bang for you buck, is totally legitimate and you can save and edit your master instead of printing it. If you are just looking for a way to make your master output of hardware gear sound nicer, grab a heat!!!
If that’s the case, then I’m covered. I got a great set of cans and sharp ears. I won’t change my room, since I work in my living room and my wife will kill me if I do, so it is what it is. Also, I’m pretty good looking. Hardly relevant, but I don’t miss an opportunity to say it, if I may.
The AH is a good starting point… I’m sure, although I don’t have on at the moment (December target). The next gear will be an Elysia Xpressor as an end of chain.
It’s expensive of course… but as someone who don’t like daws this is a versatile option. Think about it… later on buy a hw-eq… just step by step.
expensive answer: 500 series rack with some choice eq/comp/preamps and a nice a A/D converter -> lunchbox with elysia xpressor/xfilter/nvelope (i use this hope to get an nvelope in the future)
less expensive answer: a good multi channel interface for tracking with a nice set of plugins -> uad apollo would be my biased suggestion
something within your budget: analog heat!
if I had the analog heat as an option a couple years ago when I invested heavily into this stuff I would have definitely purchased one before anything else. This with ableton and some plugins would be more than enough to make some really nice tracks.
For 1000 euros your money would really be best spent on monitors, at that price point SW is going to do a much better job than HW.
If you had a bit more money I second the Elysia 500 series stuff (disclosure - I have done some video work for them), but it has a clean, powerful sound which might go against wanting stuff to be a bit of a mess.
I don’t like participating in conversations regarding Mastering because they’ve been pretty contentious for me, but I think finding a hardware compressor you like to work with will help get you far. For something that can be transparent and highly flexible, the Elysia Xpressor sounds like a good choice. I have my eye on an SPL clone myself, but the multi-band compressor from Drawmer (1973) caught my attention as well. A lot of these compressor have certain characteristics that may or may not be appealing, and this is highly subjective and dependent upon the music as well. It’s a ton of fun for me to research different compressor, and listen to all the demos I can find. You could add EQ, saturation, all types of goodies, etc, but these can be taken care of at the source when mixing as well.
