I say stay away from Fab Filter L2, its latency is very high - what works good is: Elysia Alpha with 32 samples or Abeltons Glue compressor,(1 Sample) but both dont give maximum loudness, Ozone does but again it comes with Oversampling latency.
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i will not play any real-time keys like a keyboard, but id like to do occassional one-shots and sample trigs. But just when unmuting a track on my rytm a latency over 40ms makes me miss the timing quite often. id would require some practice time, id rather put into writing new tracks for the show.
i just checked on my system, and one instance of ozone on my premaster gives me 120ms latency which is too much. If i will monitor and listen very loud on my closed-back headphones i could maybe get away with
So i am just realizing how important the latency is, i would have really liked the software solution but i am currently considering buying an oto boum
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If you read the other threads youāll find my opinion of the Boum in detail: hard to control compressor, very obvious distortion (do you even want to distort your master?)
Ozone is a non starter in a live setting, donāt even bother trying it. It is made for audio quality so it does not use 0-latency filters in the EQ and a long look ahead in the limiter. In the DAW it can add 200-300ms of latency. You should also not run Ableton sessions with it loaded on master while arranging or composing because it will add that delay even when disabled (to allow click less enable/disable of the track)ā¦ unless you donāt mind that long of latency while working on the track. I use ozone, great mastering tool.
My last live set I used a sp404mk2 and then a bugbrand stereo compressā¦ the bugbrand was totally unnecessary, the sp404 did a great job by itself. 303 comp FX with no noise or warble provides a tight compressed mix.
The Mastering function of my Roland MX-1 mixer does a great job and is highly configurable (despite not documented officially).
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i dont want any distortion on my master. It does not really fit to most of my music. A little bit is fine, as long as it is almost not audible to untrained ears.
The compressor is hard to control, i realized that already and saw this in demos and reviews, i will see if it is worth the price point. Since you are second person that brings up the sp404mk2 for this task im diving deeper into that. If youād like to tell more in detail how you set that up iād be happy to read about it.
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Fwiw I use the Analog Heat +FX for this purpose and I couldnāt be (much) happier. I know the square root of jack shit about loudness, LUFs or whatever but I really really like what it does to the sound I put through it.
Light compression -> Saturation circuit with lots of filter dirt -> the great sounding EQ and then the FX which I switch on and off using macros. Master high-pass filter for transitions. Literally all I ever wanted in a box like this. Iād appreciate if I didnāt have to program the macros externally but Iām pretty sure itās coming in an update later on.
I used to have the Boum ā I liked it, found it quite musical albeit not exactly subtle. Didnāt appreciate the lack of a power switch, it was also quite noisy. Switched it for a Heat MK1 which felt more controllable, later on the AHFX.
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The secret ingredient in the HEAT is the notch filter.
Taking out frequencies is very very important.