I thought I would share my mastering chain from the last song Gone as Anders and Jeppe were curious about my "fake" mastering. 🙂 First off, I've just signed up with Ian Shepherd to do his home mastering masterclass course so I would expect my mastering chain to change a bit in the coming weeks.
I almost always use the SSL master comp on the mix but only have the needle ticking over (I'll attach a pic of the setting I use). For this song I didn't use it for the mastering stage as well though.
The first RE in the chain is an excellent MS stereo splitter (Audioworx by Quadelectra) with the free download combos for mastering, I think it's about 10 bucks. I didn't feel this song needed it so I left it bypassed.
Next is the EVE MP5 from Kuassa (think Pultec) and I started with the clear master preset and adjusted to what felt right, I really love this RE for the stereo bus.
Props own MClass was next just to control a few spots on the low end (not quite enough I guess from Warrens feedback but I reckon the bass MBC could have been tweaked a bit more).
The D-Filter I've only recently discovered and it is great for honing in on specific frequency bands, I only use this for checking and remains bypassed otherwise.
A Spektrum analyser also helps me see any potential issues like out of control harmonics or frequencies that poke out too far and like the d-filter stay bypassed unless I need it.
Finally I use the excellent Ozone Maximiser for final limiting (I also use this on the mix as a final limiter but set to just catch any clipping if it occurs) and in this case pushed it a little harder than I normally would.
Anyway, that's pretty much it and I can't wait to learn more about mastering so I can eventually call it actual mastering as opposed to "fake" mastering. 🙂
Cheers....Andrew
Andrew Mckenzie.
Andrew Mckenzie
Mastering in Reason
