Been working at mastering things for various friends for a few years now, primarily out of short budgets and necessity. This is NOT a mastering room, of course, so we slog along as best we can. Since money's tight, I've decided to take a pass at mastering my long-overdue Random Access Orkestra disc. Things sound better than i'd hoped for, so far, but i *will* find the bux for the real thing if i'm not 100% psyched. Chain i've been using thus far (all in Wavelab): Waves S1+ Stereo Imager (if nec) -> UAD LA2A comp (if nec) -> UAD Pultec Pro -> (this is the model with the extra mid bands - WOW! UAD Cambridge (for bass final highpass and a surg tweak or three if nec)-> Magneto -> UAD Precision Limiter Everything stays at 32 bit floating point until i'm ready to print, at which point i dither to 16 bits with the Apogee UV22HR. I've tried LOTS of variants on the above over the years, and this is what's working best for this particular set of pieces (particularly the old ones from my Darwin HDR daze). Kul stuff... (p.s. - if i had the bank, i'd probably pick up the Sonalskis Comp plug - i was very impressed with the demo. Their EQ rocks, too)
For quickie mastering stuff like this, look -deeply- into Izotope's "Ozone". I think you'll find it does "at home" mastering better as a complete unit than chaining all the stuff you have. Nothing wrong with your chain, mind you, and this is no flame, but Izotope is pretty damn good compared to even some of the real mastering stuff (i.e. hardware) out there. If you do look at Izotope's stuff, keep in mind that because something is there, you do not have to use it all. Just use what you need. I suggest that you also look into picking up Bob Katz's book, "Mastering Audio: The Art and the Science" it is brilliant, perhaps the best book on mastering ever wrote. Just some suggestions.
I dig their "limited" Winamp demo so much I told myself I'd go for the whole thing if I set up a simple Cool Edit platform. I'd bet that more can be done with such a setup than many think. Provided what you put into it is done right, naturally.
Can I recommend you Har Bal as a final touch? http://www.har-bal.com You can try the demo, i have a friend with the final product and it sounds great, its really an improvement. I will order the software later today.
FWIW, Har-Bal is excellent - I have used it since beta and it is a very powerful tool. One caution with it, don't buy all the "master by visual" hype he uses, trust your ears.
So does Ozone replace things like L1 and S1 from Waves? I was looking into the Mastering Suite, and then later on the Gold bundle, but this Ozone thing looks cool. Of course, I have to wait on a OSX version...
Short answer - yes. Long answer, maybe. Depends on what works for your ear and, no slam on you, your amount of knowledge on how to make the software work. Experiece goes a long way. Ozone is a great tool. Not the end-all/be-all tool but it works great at what it does.
Well I am familiar with the Waves stuff, and I can get the Power Pack for about $250, compared to $299 for the Ozone, but the Ozone looks very cool. I can't compare the two cause there is no OSX version yet If anyone has experience with both the Waves and Izotope stuff, please speak up!
