Sage Audio Articles

FabFilter Pro-Q 3: 10 Things You Need to Know

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

How To Clean Up A Muddy Master

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.

Are Logic Pro X Stock Plugins Any Good?

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.

How to Get Your Master Loud WITHOUT Distortion

Making your master loud without distorting it is one of the most challenging things a mastering engineer can do.

4 Steps to Make Your Master Bigger

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.

Top 6 Easy Mastering Plugins to Use

Exciter - Stock Logic PluginL1 - Waves AudioWider - Infected MushroomHarmonics Analog Saturation Pro - SoftubeTape - SoftubeMV2 - Waves Audio

What is Wave’s Best Tape Plugin: J37 Tape vs. Kramer Tape?

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.

Mastering Your Music for Soundcloud

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.

All of the Free Plugins from Klanghelm!

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.

Spotify or Tidal: Which Streaming Service Sounds the Best?

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.

10 Things You Need to Know About the FabFilter Pro-L2

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.

7 Mastering Mistakes We All Make

We all make mistakes when mastering. Most are out of habit and caused by an over-reliance on certain forms of processing and analyzers.

What is this New Free Plugin by Tokyo Dawn Labs!?

Quick Answer The TDR Molotok was released in Oct. 2020 and is a vintage emulation of multiple soviet-era audio compressors. The sound that this plugin creates is unique due to the alpha-beta-sigma variable weighting and the subtle distortion it imparts onto the signal when using a quicker attack.

Top 7 Quick Mastering Tips

Use 2 limiters and split the processing between themUse a High pass filter on your side-imageSandwich a Multi-band Expander Between 2 limitersTry EQ Matching Your Master to Another to CompareUse Parallel Compression with Low-Level CompressionSet a Quicker Limiter Release for A Transparent SoundListen to Your Master with Multiple Devices

The Oldest Plugin vs. The Best New Plugin

Quick Answer: The oldest commercially available audio plugin was the Waves’ Q1, a 10 band equalizer that’s incredibly simple by today’s standards. Although the Q10 is still used by many engineers, comparing it to the FabFilter Pro Q 3 shows how far digital processing and audio plugins have come.