My Mastering Chain
Added 2022-05-10 17:31:06 +0000 UTCHey Everyone, I recorded a video walking through my current mastering chain and how I'm using each plugin. I mention this in the video, but this is not the kind of thing you can just copy exact settings and re-use...understanding the why and how is a lot more important because so much of what these plugins are doing is level-dependent.
An important caveat: I am not a mastering engineer. When faced with someone else's shitty premaster, I am sure a good engineer could do a better job than me. I have mastered other people's music and it's been released and works well in clubs, but I think a lot of my "mastering" skill is moreso just the fact that my mixes are good and make mastering easy. I will say though, with my own music, nearly every engineer that I or a label has used produces a nearly identical result with my self master. A lot of my tracks that have been released are in fact my own self-masters.
This chain is what works for me and my music, so I encourage you to try different things and A/B test and see what works for you. But always remember it's better to fix problems at their source and not force the mastering chain to do the heavy lifting.
Drop any questions in the comments and I'll clarify as best I can
Comments
I use invisible limiter because its really nice and transparent and works well with minimal controls/tweaking (there's not much to tweak to begin with). I wouldn't necessarily recommend shelling out $ for it if you already have Pro-L, especially since you probably wont be releasing your own masters any time soon. Also, the more I've learned, the less I actually push (and rely on) my limiters, so the difference is probably even less important.
Michael
2022-06-08 02:09:41 +0000 UTC
