03-22-2017, 11:26 PM
Three compressors in the mastering chain seems like overkill tbh. Personally I use one on the stereo mix (with a sidechain bass rolloff and some high-end harmonic generation) and that's it.
The automated clipper thing is smart but you could probably get much the same effect by just using a peak limiter and using it well. Clipping tends to produce distortion so I would argue against it.
The kind of EQ and limiting to do in mastering is probably a hugely philosophical and esoteric field of personal preference. I have found that it's very easy to overdo it.
The Ferric TDS is colouring the sound too much for my taste. I wouldn't use it in mastering. I use the Tesla pro (also a saturation kinda deal) on certain instrument channels (it adds a bit of kick to brass for instance). But what you're doing is using a tape simulator on your entire mix. That seems a little extreme unless you really want that slightly muddy sound. It would be very uncommon in mixing classical music AFAIK.
Fundamentally, to the best of my knowledge, mastering is for correcting the entire frequency spectrum and slightly tweaking the dynamics so it's easier to listen to. Piling on the plugins isn't gonna help. Doing only what's needed and no more is gonna help.
Get one nice soft-knee stereo bus compressor, one good multiband EQ with variable curve shapes, and one good peak limiter. That should do it. Everything else should be fixed in the individual channels during mixing IMHO (and the samples we use here don't need a lot of correction in the first place).
Not to devaluate your approach of course, but IMHO less is more.
The automated clipper thing is smart but you could probably get much the same effect by just using a peak limiter and using it well. Clipping tends to produce distortion so I would argue against it.
The kind of EQ and limiting to do in mastering is probably a hugely philosophical and esoteric field of personal preference. I have found that it's very easy to overdo it.
The Ferric TDS is colouring the sound too much for my taste. I wouldn't use it in mastering. I use the Tesla pro (also a saturation kinda deal) on certain instrument channels (it adds a bit of kick to brass for instance). But what you're doing is using a tape simulator on your entire mix. That seems a little extreme unless you really want that slightly muddy sound. It would be very uncommon in mixing classical music AFAIK.
Fundamentally, to the best of my knowledge, mastering is for correcting the entire frequency spectrum and slightly tweaking the dynamics so it's easier to listen to. Piling on the plugins isn't gonna help. Doing only what's needed and no more is gonna help.
Get one nice soft-knee stereo bus compressor, one good multiband EQ with variable curve shapes, and one good peak limiter. That should do it. Everything else should be fixed in the individual channels during mixing IMHO (and the samples we use here don't need a lot of correction in the first place).
Not to devaluate your approach of course, but IMHO less is more.
