Reply To: Mastering chain

[Len BairdParticipant]

I am by no means an expert , just learning like others.
But here's what I have been using to do my fake mastering lately.
If it has a lot of peaky drum hits or any unruliness when I look at the waveform, I start with an L1 limiter set to just tame down the peaks a db or two. I just use it in linked mode so the volume stays the same. I might raise it a couple db, but not up to full final volume. I am trying to get away from this by fixing this in my mixes. Saturation helps on the peaky drum parts I learned.
But on a non peaky mix I start with a Fab Filter pro q2. I have been expirimenting with low cutting the sides, at a 6 db slope, somewhere around 80-100hz. I either low cut the middle at 20 or so, or sometimes leave it alone. I do other EQ as needed, hopefully not if I did a good job in the mix (rare). On one mix, when I low cut the sides, it needed more bass, so I did a low shelf of +1db in the middle of the same frequencies I cut on the sides and it put me back in business.
Then I use compression slowish attack and release to suit the tempo of the song. Sometimes I use the Puigchild after this with no compression, if I want to soften out the sound a little. I also tried raising the input on the Puigchild to add some saturation or drive, and it seems to help fatten up an ear hurting mix. The Klanghelm MJUC just using the saturation, and the dark/hifi as a bright/dark knob is great too.
Then I use the L2 Limiter to bring it up to final volume.
My rms averages are usually around -7 to -6 on the loud choruses, less on the verses or quiet parts/songs.

If I am screwing this up I'd love to know about it 😛 That idea of using a multiband compressor to just compress the mids sounds cool I am going to try that. I often EQ out upper mids when I make my mix too bright, I'll try a multiband compressor next time.

• This reply was modified 7 years ago by Len Baird.