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Can someone tell me the best way to route the mastering tools with a final mix? Does the Psy Q go before the Optimaster and what about the Vinco? Should the entire CD be mastered with the same mastering setup or each song mastered with a unique route and settings?

EQ
PsyQ
Optimaster
Limiter (optimaster)
vintage warmer

that's what I do.

You could place PsyQ after Optimaster I guess, unless you use extreme settings that pushes specially the bass part substantially.

Think about what each plug does with volumes.
If you f.i. eq the mids, it will influence the Optimaster.
You'll want the Optimaster as a compressor to have the last word on it

If dithering is involved in the limiting process, you by law should do nothing after it, but...

I allways use 'vintage warming' after it however, which implies tape saturation, I think of it a a standard copy-to-tape trick to add natural warmth and pressure.
I use it after everything else as I often (months later...) change my mind about the wished mix pressure.
I hope the digital process won't conflict with this primitive thinking about digital tape...
Sounds good anyway, so you could take my experience for granted

The profit of dithering is effectively involved in very very dynamic music if I'm right (like classic music), where very low passages have to suffer from aliasing effects.
I wouldn't bother too much about it.
I never heard anything wrong when I put digital vintage warming after the whole thing
Correct me if I'm wrong guys

Not sure about the Vinco as mastering tool, but as it is a vintage warmer, I would do as I described.
At the safe side tho you'd want to put it just before the 'real' mastering plugs, namely compressor and limiting.

Good luck Braincell

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: hubird on 2005-12-22 18:39 ]</font>

About the cd mastering:
concentrate on mastering every song separate, just when you're finishing the new track.
Do what you have to do, choose the settings that you think is best for the song.

If you start to compose a cd, put them in one file together (crossfades, ID's etc.), and start switching on the fly through your songs.

- adjust the volumes of the separate songs. Don't look at the db values, listen to what you actually hear, as a listener of the whole cd.
Tracks with pronent mids often can be put back in volume, ambient tracks could be left not too loud, dark tracks can get some more if the bass isn't too loud, etc.
It's often a personnal choice, it depends of what effect you want the cd have on the listener all along the 60 minutes or so it takes.
The sequence of the tracks is highly connected with this, track volumes could be choosen different in different orders.

- make eq corrections to get an equal frequencies spectrum throughout the cd.
You can't do this per song on forehand, and it's not necessory at all.
To my experience you can do everything with a track what's needed to adjust it to the global perception of the cd, IF the original mixes sound good on their own.
So trust yourself

- adjust vintage warming or a normal compressor to make every track sound with the same, normalled, pressure perception.
I always choose vintage warming as 'compressor', as it should leave all balances as it is, it's a 'primitive' process after all.

- former three points are standard for me, as volume, eq and pressure always will have to be equalled in case of a cd.
But there is no need to not use other plugs, like a limiter to hold the peaks back in a track where you was too tolerant to peaks; or use a forgotten stereo enhancer, or a thin softly mixed-in reverb, etc.
It's the cd what counts, the original tracks won't get lost, isn't it?

On my site there is a lot of difference between the loose tracks and the ones that are compiled in the 'Radio' files on the home page

- Choose a good burn program, I just can speak of Waveburner (mac), it has a grafical zoom-able waveform interface with two stereo tracks, with manual crossfading, drag'n drop ID,s, etc.
The main topper is, it handles VST, per song and per track at the same time
What does a man want more except OSX support?

-----------------------
http://www.ezsound.nl

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: hubird on 2005-12-22 18:28 ]</font>

On 2005-12-22 17:33, hubird wrote:
EQ
PsyQ
Optimaster
Limiter (optimaster)
vintage warmer

I think that the limiter must be the last in chain. Vintage warmer (or an external passage througt tape or tube gear) must be one step before limiting/dithering because the limiter put the dynamic to (standard mastering cd) -0.2 db and any other passage after this operation could spoil this thresold.
Sometimes a mastering reverb (very light and transparent) is a good trick for a more confortable listening.

You're already in the process of taking rough mixes of your material to make an album. From what I've heard of your music, I'd imagine It'll be a very diverse exploration of sound. Which to my mind would mean you won't be looking for every track to be pushing DB limits as a mastering touch.

You're probably best to master each track separately as you can always tweak DB levels a little when you come to mix & splice them together for your CD. That would allow you the flexibility to easily direct which tracks you want more subdued & which you want more in yer face.

BTW, Optimaster has a limiter last in it's strip chain, so if you're using another limiter after Opti M it would be wise to bypass it on Opti M !!

Good advice. I was about to not use the Vinco at all because it didn't sound good with the optimaster.

Hmmm a producer friend of mine said EQ should always be at the end of the chain but he never used this software. You guys have the Creamware experience.

hm, that seems really nonsense to me

Okay, I won't tell him that . I'll try everyones suggestions.

As you all know, there are no rules. That happens to apply specifically to EQs, as they are increasingly used for effect rather than in the traditional "less is more" style.

In reality, you'd be breaking the laws of common sense to EQ after mastering, as it should've been done beforehand, but again, there are no rules here.

Specifically, Eq can be applied to degrade your sound pre or post record & pre or post master, it's entirely up to the engineer to decide which method suits the style.

Very few will EQ post master.

Just to clarify, I was also inadvertantly saying that Hubird's suggestion of limiting twice is not advised unless you wish to ... YES, LIMIT TWICE

I think you are confusing mastering with engineering during mixdown. My friend has been to some of the most expensive mastering plants in the world. I am sure he knows what he is talking about. Perhaps that hardware works differently.

It recently occured to me that it is possible to master and mix at the same time and thus some sounds could be left uneffected or with a different compression etc.. To me it does not make sense to run everything through the same effects yet I have heard a pro mastering plant work miracles. I doubt what we have is as good as what they have but used properly perhaps it is good enough.

it's good enough...
Ask your friend what he meant with that eq thing, now that you know better about the mastering plugs.
If he's qualified as you say, there must be a fine explanation for what hew meant
I would be pleased if you could tell it us here.
cheers.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: hubird on 2005-12-29 14:26 ]</font>

No confusion here. When I'm confused I'll maybe post a thread asking for help.

He says:

If you put eq before compression you can affect the compression by boosting or cutting frequencies, which is not necessarily the desired effect. That is not to say that you have not already "normalized" the track which in itself can include peak compression. And of coarse you can apply a final Surface" compression post eq if that is the effect you are looking for. These days you can pretty much do things anyway you like, if it sounds good to you and you trust your reference you can't really mess things up very easily.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: braincell on 2005-12-31 16:41 ]</font>

I prefer to use EQ just to remove slightly some eventually disturbing frequencies to get the overall shape I want, then applying multiband processing, because a little nasty overwheelming range can affect badly the response for the band in wich it is contained.

This is naturally for a traditional and minimalistic approach to mastering, my real goal is to solve all freq. problems in the mix and work only dinamically in the mastering process...if possible.

This is over 2 years old Braincell, but it's a good read regarding all aspects of mastering on your PC. <a href="http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/aug03/a ... htm">SOUND ON SOUND</a>

Interestingly, Optimaster gets a mention. (albeit brief)

thanks Braincell for checking the guy's approach.
I thought already something like that, it depends of how heavy the corrections are (small q-factor), or if you want the correction to be part of the compression process or exactly not.
Changing the overall color after a perfectly compressed track by lifting the global highs a bit doesn't harm anything.
There's only one real barrier of course, and that is the max zero dB level, keep it under -0,3 for safety reasons