41

This is exactly what I was going to recommend. Kudos.

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What’s worth the paid upgrade?

43

I use Expose by Mastering the Mix. I got it for free from Pluginboutique years ago, but for what I need it’s perfect. It measures loudness kind of like youlean (not as detailed), and it does this for as many songs as I’ve ever wanted at once. So I can see all the songs in a project next to each other and make sure they’re all in a similar range. I think Youlean can do that, but only if you export everything as a CSV, which is just an extra step I don’t need.

I think Expose 2 is around $50. It ads some sort of EQ checker/Tonal Balance Control lite.

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44

This. If your track sounds weak while mixing, mastering probably won’t help. Once you master mixing mastering is alot easier.

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45

can’t find a better thread to put this video, but I somehow missed this particular Knob Twiddlers Hangout with some mastering engineers, they mostly talking techno mastering and philosophy but not exclusive, just a great chat about all things related to mastering process and aspects from both artists and engineers perspective

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46

i think this is the best place for my question. i’m using mixcheckstudio by roexaudio for getting an “neutral” opinion on my master: tonal profile, clipping and so on.
while the service works it’s fine for me. but it want to replace it with something which runs on my own machine (as a vst)
is there a plugin you can recommend for getting a first second opinion?

47

For tonal profile there’s audiolens/tonal balance control from Izotope. I use Tonal Balance Control as a sanity check sometimes. I always have youlean loudness meter open as I work, that is my loudness measurement.

Between those two I feel pretty set in terms of measurement.

I tried to use mixcheckstudio but it errored out, so I can’t really compare further right now.

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I use serato dj player to visualize the waveform to see which frequency spectrum is in the file. Helps to do less repeats/ relisten.

49

while I don’t use any of the AI assisted stuff to get second opinion, I recently started using ADPTR Metric AB with some reference tracks and that plugin replaced a whole bunch of other analyzer plugins, it has dynamics over time, spectrum, loudness, stereo image and you can overlay your readings on the reference tracks, super useful, I don’t look to particularly match them 1:1 but I can see roughly where my thing stands out or lacks something, saves me a lot of time honestly, got it on sale for $30 and it’s awesome.
it doesn’t give opinions though, just reference comparisons, which I prefer by far.

I put it after the limiter so I can match the reference equally, loudness and all

can it use audio loopback or it has to be a file? would be cool to see the waveform without rendering…

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izotope looks like exactly like the thing i want. a bit pricey tough… :frowning:

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:100: I got Metric AB on a whim because it was on sale, I was on the fence because I can already do A/Bing in Ozone, but Metric AB is so so useful, the ability to have multiple references with cue points and all the metering and visualisation is amazing. I highly recommend it (although I’m not sure I would pay the full price for it)

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cue points is my favorite feature, being able to quickly setup loops withing the references is so easy and useful! and the layering of the meters simply on point, zero hassle, no setup sidechains no nothing…

I also love the filters, being able to quickly AB just a portion of the spectrum against a reference is so nice!

I don’t think it’s needed, PA does a lot of sales, just wait for the next one

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It seems like other companies are starting to come out with their own versions of iZotope Tonal Balance Control. There’s one from Sonible called True Balance that looks ok but I haven’t used it

54

I’ve found Logic Mastering assistant to be very effective and it’s only £50 a year if you have an iPad.

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55

I try to mix with vu meter at -18dB and get it to jump to 0 with kick and bass playing at the same time then just balance the rest. Really struggling when jamming dawlessly with gain staging (and even then, hehe).

On my master there’s always a “glue compressor” on from the beginning. Then when I start to actually “master” I might add a fast compressor next to catch high frequencies, eq to taste and to find ringing tones, and lastly i boost the mix with L2 limiter quite gently to make it louder. At the end of the chain I have SPAN with custom slowish preset which shows lufs, peaks, and the overall waveform and “how it jumps” to make sure it’s “full enough” (pardon my terminology). This generally works ok-ish as long as the mix is good

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https://www.izotope.com/en/products/audiolens.html

Audiolens is free. I like TBC a bit more, but for free vs $200 I think Audiolens is the move.

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57

I’m still on Ozone 9, but have been quite pleased with it. A couple years ago I read about the concept of ‘mixing into the plugin.’ Basically I hi pass everything to where I think it needs to fit and sometimes low pass as well, then adjust the faders for a good ballpark ‘mix.’ After that, I use Ozone’s Mastering assistant and see what it does. Sometimes you have to run it a couple times. Then I insert the PSP Infinistrip on every channel to really dial everything in. After all that it’s time for fx/busses, etc, making certain level changes along the way. Inevitably, the overall mix will be a bit too hot, but I’ll use Logic’s Multimeter, Izotope’s Tonal Balance and Insight 2 to help with final levels and eq tweaks.
Highly recommend the PSP Infinistrip, btw. Tried many channel strip plugins and it’s my favorite overall

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58

question for the ozone users: my rendering always got a tiny dropout at the beginning of a track. areound second 2. Did you encounter the same problem, and how did you fix it?

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I’d probably benefit from learning this stuff one day. I mix by ear to what sounds decent, sometimes I think I even get it close to “right”. For me, mastering used to be running it through a plain compression plugin on my phone on default settings if it’s something I wanted to be louder / punchier. It worked okay. Now I’ve got a DT and I like running everything I can through its compressor. I’ll tweak the settings a little every now and then. It sounds really good to me. But I’m a bit of an idiot sometimes :yum:
If anyone has any thoughts on using the DT compressor as the final mastering stage before recording into a Tascam, I’d love to hear them :joy:

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60

You should open a mastering facility! :wink: