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Please tell me your preferred mastering app on iOS
Down the years I've used Final Touch, but it is very spotty as regards when it feels like working and when it doesn't these days....and therefore it's time to try another approach.
What is YOUR mastering app of choice?
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Cubasis 3 using a combination of the inbuilt plug-ins and third party apps.
The stand-alone app that I like isn’t available on the App store anymore.
Innarestin', thank you. The irony is I just exported the little thing out of CB3. Will head back to the clubhouse....
I used Auria Pro with ProQ2, C, MB, Saturn and L. Maybe not all of these, but I've used at least Q2, Saturn and L on every track.
Just FYI, I'm not a professional, just a hobbyist/amateur
My weapon of choice: https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/grand-finale/id1294979704
Cubasis 3 with Pro-Q and Pro-L, but really any of the DAW/Hosts would work.
I use "Jack of All Trades" AUM and I Master none of my projects. Because Mastering is a vinyl thing to insure a good pressing.
I select from:
What I forget to do is pan the inputs to generate a wider and more complex image. Lately I visualize the orchestra and pan according to the standard seating chart for orchestras.
Single EDM tracks - Cubasis 3 for the host, and I use MagicDeathEyeStereo, into BarkFilter Tripleband, into TB Barricade.
EDM Album - The same as above, but I place a Pro-Q2 before MDES.
Ambient - MagicDeathEyeStereo, ReelBus, and I normalise the bounced audio in TwistedWave. I never put a limiter on Ambient.
Let’s call it my master bus mix in AUM.
I’m still getting my mixing mastering chops down but I pretty much always use these two
TB EQ
Bark filter
Then Sometimes additional apps depending…
Tape Pro or another tape emulation, maybe lo fly tape 2, even Tape Cassette
Saturn
Woot
Etc… I like to try different apps when I can…
I think I need TB Barricade though.
Grand Finale from Klevgrand but I like quick and dirty.
The reviews on this are mostly negative. Maybe it was user error or their device?
All you need is FabFilter Pro L2 in the last slot of your master bus.
I suspect two things contribute to the negativity:
1) It’s purely standalone, it’s not an AUv3 that you can stick in your output bus.
2) The presets, which you would think would showcase what it can do, but which in my experience made everything sound worse than the original.
That said, I’ve pretty much given up on the whole mastering game, like McD above. I tend to be quite picky about using spatial effects and dynamics and mastering tends to mangle and squish things in what to my ears destroys everything I’ve worked for. I think this is probably dependent on the material/genre, though. The best advice I came across is that if your mix sounds off, you’re better fixing it at that stage rather than tweaking later. I occasionally need to fix the levels to match other tracks, but that’s about it.
On the other hand, I now mostly record straight to stereo, so any attempts to fix something not right rely on something resembling mastering, or I’d just have to re-do the whole thing (almost never works, take 1 is usually the best for me). This is a rare occurrence, though.
Anyway, I think there’s nothing wrong with Grand Finale per se, but you’d need to use it in quite subtle ways and ignore the presets, unless it turns out they work for your music.
The Bark Filter secret preset trick (😀) can yield spectacular results for some things, mind, so don’t discount that approach.
+1
For some good background on mastering the videos by Present Day Productions are really helpful - older dude (Mark?) is mostly a mastering engineer by trade these days:
https://m.youtube.com/channel/UC68BS3mfya3oOTrFUgu9qvg
Hopefully @Paulieworld will chime in. Would love to know his mastering methods. Just listen to his last upload;https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/comment/1051504#Comment_1051504. it's awesome!
I hope this isn't a disappointment, but I am using pretty much what everyone here uses. I got the ideas from other forum members. I try to get as good a mix as possible, then I apply BarkFilter and MagicDeathEye, then start tweaking levels and stereo placement again. Then I render it to stereo and check it out visually in Audioshare. I just try to get as close to 0db as possible overall. That's not always possible, but I can live with a few little glitches. I don't use any of the dedicated mastering apps. I have several, but they don't seem to make much of an improvement, at least to my ears. However, decades of live playing in front of loud amps have done some damage!
Pretty much. Anything more than that and fix the mix.
@tja you're absolutely right but I can see where @McD is coming from in his approach.
I think a lot of producers today don't put their recordings into the classic tried & true 3 stage approach of...
1) original multitrack session recording-->>
2) mixdown of multitrack 'stems' into stereo-->>
3) mastering of best stereo mix into completed song "Master"
...they instead combine all three steps into one. While you can do that, it makes getting a dynamic, properly equalized master that much more difficult.
As you're applying compression or limiting to certain elements on the fly in a single pass the overall EQ of those elements and surrounding tracks is thrown off. Going into different sections (verse into chorus) may necessitate automation moves or further processing that is really unecessary.
It's a foreign concept today with the ability to put 20 plugins on a single track without much CPU drain but the goal used to be to mix the song into the best possible stereo track with as little overall compression and drastic EQ curves as possible. Then that file/stereo recording is massaged & manicured in mastering to get the best overall cohesive level with subtle limiting, EQ & compression.
It also made any changes that the mix might require that much easier to pull off because the track was completed in the traditional stages. Of course rules are made to be broken and everyone individually is free to experiment and find their own sounds and processes to achieve them. Even if they're doing it wrong...lol, I kid I keeed!
Grand Finale. Also I had a good time importing audio into NS2, triggering with Slate, and mastering with the built in stuff there.
Right now just Blue Mangoo Compressor and an instance of Saturn 2.
It depends on the track I'm working on.. but there're a few that are always present on my mastering chain: TB Equalizer >> Barkfilter or Mixbox's LA2A >> Saturn 2 or TB Reelbus >> Stereo imaging if needed (lastly I'm using the one in the Cubasis' Master Strip, it works nicely) >> TB Barricade >> Youlean LM.
I also put an instance of TB Morphit in the master bus, since I'm always working with headphones.
Mines likely not actual Mastering because I don’t know anything, but more a final tweaking/polishing chain to get me what I like me:
TB Equalizer (master bus template & AI set for my genre)
TB Compressor (2:1 master bus w/ assist button)
TB Enhancer (mix maximizer w/Genre button)
TB Barricade (subtle Glue, adjust levels if necessary using the Loudness meter LKFS setting
And if I want a little more specialness, I stick 4pockets Sideband Remix at the end and tweak it to taste. Sometimes it’s too much with Enhancer.
@all Thank you so very much. More than plenty here, and I begin to see that what I think of as 'mastering' (at my simple level) is probably far more to do with judicious mixing from the getgo. Thanks again, the suggestions here make an excelent repository as I try to do better.
As someone who virtually always does more harm than good when you hand me an EQ and compressor, I swear by Grand Finale. It's literally the only app I've used where I manage to do some good. I've never failed to fairly quickly come up with surprisingly better results every time.
Now, for the part I'm completely not qualified to say, but will say anyway...
That GF can only run standalone is a plus, not a drawback. Putting a mastering plugin at the end of your signal chain is ridiculous IMO. The mix needs to be as perfect as possible before putting that last bit of spit and polish. Having it sitting there influencing your mixing decisions as you work just seems really, really destructive to me. If there are problems that emerge when running the final mix through Grand Finale, then I need to think hard about what went wrong, and redo the mix without the influence of GF and then try again. The last thing I need is to have the temptation to adjust the mix under the influence of a mastering plugin.
Grand Finale. Much easier than jacking around with a handful of individual apps. Application of any effects at this stage should be very subtle. Learn what each stage of the app is and how it works. Don’t expect a huge difference between a well mixed piece and a mastered piece. If there is, something’s wrong in your mix. And FWIW I don’t believe in Bark Filter.
BTW read anything written by a mastering engineer and you will typically hear about very narrow frequency ranges tweaked in 10th’s of a dB and compression that is practically flat. Mastering is based on subtlety.
Final Touch, Grand Finale, or Barkfilter w/MagicDeath Eye depending on the need.
I’ve found Final Touch doesn’t work right any more. A while back I was able to use tweaked presets for great results and then a month or so later I wasn’t getting the same results following the same procedures. Everything sounded distorted and overdriven. I contacted the dev and if I remember correctly they said there would be no further updates. This was 2-3 years ago.
Grand Finale doesn’t have the anti-aliasing magic that Toneboosters apps have.
Aliasing artifacts are the worst at the mastering stage, because you can’t just high-pass filter all the bass from the entire track to get rid of the low & sub frequencies caused by the hi-hats etc.
That Sounds like it could be a sample rate issue to me.
Mmhmm +