Quote:
Originally Posted by Beemysch
First of all: I´m relatively new to mixing and mastering; I´m a total beginner!!!
How do you prepare your mixes for mastering?
Do you mix and master in the same project?
Do you render the mix and load it into an new project? What are the best settings for doing so?
Why are so many rendering the mix out to master it seperately. In my mind it doesn´t make sense... Is it just because of CPU issues (i.e. too many plugins in the mix causing the master+plugins to stutter/crash)?
Till this point I never ran into hardware issues and like the possibility of tweaking the mix a little bit more after applying everything to the masterchannel!
My workflow:
I use a template, where I have bus channels for every used input (guitar, vocals, bass, etc.). On the bus channels and on the mastermix, I have some plugins I use everytime (Some sort of EQ, Limiter, Compressor). These plugins are deactivated by default in my template. I set everything up (volume, pan, etc.) and start to apply the plugins per channel and/or bus. After the Channels are set up to my liking, I start to apply and setup the mastermix plugins.
Is there anything wrong in my workflow?
B
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I just finished a 14 song album. I mixed the album and they wanted me to master it as well. It was the first Master I have done in Reaper (I use to use other DAWs).
I thought long and hard and did some experiments, and for me, this is what I found the easiest, with the smoothest workflow.
I opened the Mix (which had nothing on the Master Buss) and I made sure I had -18rms of headroom.
Auditioned several compressors (all the standards for mastering). And I landed on Waves Renaissance Stereo Compressor. I did not think that this would win me over all the "mastering" compressors, but it did.
I also selected the Focusrite Red Compressor, it edged the Waves out on 2 songs that were much different than the others. And so now I had 2 compressors to select for each song.
I compressed each song and dropped the mvMeter2 behind the comp set to -18 rms. Compressing the mix can sometimes make something a little to loud and I only made very subtle tweaks to the mix.
I then rendered each song out into a folder called "This Bands Name WAV renders".
I started a new project, imported all the rendered in album order. I drug each song so it would play one after the other. Now I can trim the beginning and end. Fade in/out, etc.
With intros and outros all tight and ready. I could now add EQ. And I can still compare each song to each other to get a steady EQ across the board. I used a EQ for each song as well so I could really make the Master EQ tight with each other.
Then I used a Soft Clipper and Limiter. And then rendered them out with dithering to cd quality ready to press.
It was the smoothest this had gone for me. And I can't imagine myself not following the recipe from here out.
Make sure you also don't have you latency at 2ms or something. For this process I was at 40ms I think. Doing the comp on the mix first, let me make subtle tweaks. Then bringing the songs back in gave me super low cpu usage to finish out the master.
T-Racks 5 Deluxe has 2 plugins that are new, and VERY cool! The plugin called "One" and "Master Match". I didn't use "one" on this last master, but I could see how it could be leaned on a lot.
But Master Match? That thing is magic, and don't let anyone tell you different. You can choose a song you like the mastering sonic qualities of, load it into Master Match, and it will make your song match sonically to the song you selected.
So you can also EQ one of your songs for the album, then use Master Match to match the rest of the songs. Maybe a touch up hear and there. And BLAM, you have just EQ'd like a BOSS! And it will sound consistent across the entire album.
It can also match Volume, so if you like the volume of the song you load. you can use this to see where you are.
They don't tell you this up front, but there is a hidden Limiter inside of the Master Match EQ that they use to do the Volume matching. In the past, when I have tried other products that said to do what this thing does, I thought they were Junk. But Master Match, its gonna make a lot of Mastering Engineers mad......
https://www.ikmultimedia.com/product...pkey=tr5deluxe