Mid and Side routing is the isolation of the left and right signals into the mono or mid image and the stereo or side image. When observing the stereo image, the mid is at 0 degrees or centered and the side is at 180 degrees.
The quickest way to add some clarity to your vocal is to combine a high-pass filter with a gate tailored toward vocals. The high pass will attenuate aspects of the vocal that are causing plosives or unwanted rumble, and the gate cleans up the performance.
If you’re trying to make your digital master sound more indicative of an analog master, you need to start by considering how analog routing works. Imagine how the signal gets routed in an actual analog system, and consider each step that the signal goes through from start to finish.
Analog Obsession has been making great free plugins for a while now, and one of the latest makes for a fantastic mastering compressor. SPECOMP can be used for mixing but has particular functionality that makes it a great option for subtle but powerful mastering compression.
BPB Saturator is a free plugin that offers a great introduction into saturation - whether used on an individual instrument, bus, or full master, the harmonics it generates are complex. BPB Saturator allows you to introduce both Tape and Tube distortion as well as to attenuate the low and high-frequency range.
Although this may seem a little obvious, it helps to know that when you’re trying to perform bus compression, you need to insert the compressor on either your master output or an instrument group or stem. Bus compression always affects more than one instrument simultaneously.
Mid-side processing has become increasingly popular in audio production, especially in plugin form - but mid-side routing can also be utilized. Mid-side routing offers more flexibility and greater control of your signal’s timbre, stereo width, dynamic range, and more - making it truly helpful.
Stereo imagers are the easiest way to expand your stereo image and make your recordings sound wider - however, they also introduce the most phase cancellation. Using a dedicated stereo image plugin may be okay on an instrument but it’s best to avoid it when mastering a full mix.
Oversampling is an increasingly common function in most plugins, which increases the sampling rate of the signal it’s processing by a fixed multiple like 2 or 4. So if the sampling rate of your session is 48kHz, a 2x oversampling setting will make the sampling rate 96kHz.
Start your master using subtractive equalization. For this step, I’ll use the stock Logic Pro X equalizer, and use the linear phase option to avoid creating phase changes to the signal.
Multi-band saturation is a relatively new form of processing, but an incredibly useful one nonetheless. Essentially, it allows you to saturate individual bands of your frequency response using various forms and amounts of distortion and compression - in turn giving you a lot more control.
The easiest way to add clarity during a mastering session is to amplify the frequencies most often associated with clarity - 4kHz to 20kHz.
Thickening vocals with short, high-density reverb has been a strategy of music production and performance for literally thousands of years. It’s the reason opera houses were designed to be a particular size and shape, and why we sound better when we sing in the shower than in a large room.
Britpressor - Analog ObsessionWeiss DS1 MK3 - SoftubeDrawmer S73 - SoftubeComp Tube STA - ArturiaPresswork - u-hePro-C 2 - FabFilterTRackS Opto Compressor - IK Multimedia
This plugin greatly improves the detail and clarity of an instrument or a full mix by compressing quieter details and bringing them forward. It can also make a master sound full and warm, but you can greatly increase clarity with the high-frequency band.
