Having a great mastering equalizer is an important part of mastering in general. You need to have an EQ that you’re familiar with, and one you like the sound of.
Weiss Compressor/Limiter Flux Elixer FabFilter Pro L-2 Melda Productions LimiterX Sonnox Oxford Limiter Mastering limiters are an important part of mastering in general. They set the output of a signal, as well as help engineers achieve a commercial loudness when needed.
The signal chain that I’ll be describing here is one of, if not the best plugin signal chain that I’ve come across after experimenting with various plugins.
the-fabfilter-pro-q-3-is-a-popular-yet-rarely-fully-understood-plugin-whether-youre-using-it-for-mixing-or-mastering-there-are-some-features-that-may-have-slipped-past-you
If you master or mix is sounding muddy, it’s best to use a few forms of processing to attenuate the low-frequency range of your master. Some of the best tools for this are a mid-side equalizer, a multi-band compressor, and possibly, a tape machine emulation plugin.
Logic Pro X Stock plugins are surprisingly good for both mixing and mastering. Although you may still want to download or purchase other 2nd and 3rd party plugins, Logic Pro X Stock plugins are good and easy enough to use, to create decent mixes and masters.
Making your master loud without distorting it is one of the most challenging things a mastering engineer can do.
Making a master sound bigger is a combination of a few things. It really comes down to enhancing low-level aspects of the signal, making the signal more dynamic, and then spreading the signal into the stereo field while maintaining its focus.
Exciter - Stock Logic PluginL1 - Waves AudioWider - Infected MushroomHarmonics Analog Saturation Pro - SoftubeTape - SoftubeMV2 - Waves Audio
When trying to find a great tape plugin, Waves audio has been a go-to for many engineers. They offer 2 affordably priced and widely used plugins - the J37 tape emulation and the Kramer tape emulation.
Quick Answer When mastering music for Soundcloud, it’s important to keep a few things in mind - primarily that your audio will be normalized to -14 LUFS, and that the encoding process will affect the amplitude. Mastering to roughly -14 LUFS and having a max peak of -1dBTP is a good idea.
Free plugins are hit or miss - some are great, while others may not even load. Fortunately, Klanghelm has developed some fantastic and versatile free plugins.
Although which service sounds better may be subjective to some, Tidal provides higher quality masters using lossless files, whereas Spotify streams music using an AAC lossy format. If you intend to use lower quality formats to reduce data usage then Spotify may be better the better option.
The FabFilter Pro-L2 is a comprehensive and sometimes complex limiter. As far as limiters go, this one seems to have the most functionality and flexibility of any that I’ve come across.
We all make mistakes when mastering. Most are out of habit and caused by an over-reliance on certain forms of processing and analyzers.
