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.
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.
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
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.
Mastering music can definitely be challenging - especially when you only have stock plugins. Fortunately, modern DAWs give you more than enough flexibility to create some great sounding masters without the need to purchase additional software.
At the same bit rate, we found that the MP3 file format resulted in less deleted signal especially when exported with a joint-stereo setting. Additionally, MP3’s are typically more accessible and supported by devices and operating systems, making it an easier and more reliable to format to share.
The Valhalla Supermassive is a truly versatile and impressive reverb. The fact that it can be used on so many instruments and sound different each time speaks to how well it was designed.
