Mixing / Mastering music

[Dagan]

I figured that I would start a thread on this specifically. There are many plugins that folks use, and everyone seems to have wildly various results.

I'm currently using the Master Plan plugin for "mastering" overall. I like it better than the Landr plugin. I get to make changes on the front end, rather than selecting a preset and waiting for the program to get done before hearing anything at all.

Soundly Shape It is my favorite mixing tool only, at the moment I've created presets of my own with it - one for bass, one for rhythm guitars, one for lead guitars, one for vocals and even one for synth use.

Anyone else around here into all of this?

 

[Crabcore]

Oh, hehehe, how much time do you have...?

Most of my mastering chain just consists of a custom multiband limiter and clipmax, possibly with a side of TDR Nova (dynamic EQ). Labels hate me for it ("waah, it's clipping!") but I swear to god, this is the best way to get a few extra DB of headroom without having to use something like OTT or gullfoss and thus compromise the heck out of the mix.

With that said, mastering your own work is kind of an oxymoron -- if you like the mix, what's there to change? Maybe that's best-suited for someone else entirely*. If you don't like the mix, there's a 99.9% (my stupid estimate) that you're just overproducing or don't know exactly what your compressors or EQs are trying to achieve. Most of the time, a little bit of dry / wet (parallel) modulation is in order to pump the breaks on it a little.

* = I also wouldn't outsource to AI just for the fact that most of it is either (assumed) heavy multiband and / or spectral processing, both of which are nearly-destined to ruin a mix entirely. Sure, the poison is in the dose, but from what I've heard it's just complete overkill for the job.

Also if you get me started on sound design, well, you'll never hear the end of it . My favorite plugins are as deep as the ocean, and I think I've made something like 100 commercial sample packs over the past 5 years. A little insane? Absolutely, but I love this stuff so much.