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A Mastering thread
So over the years we’ve had various iOS apps that can be used for “mastering” a final track. I’ve used many, some all-in-one and lots of combinations of apps.
So I wanted to kind of put everyone’s ideas and methods in one thread for convenience and to see what worked for different types of music(EDM, Acoustic, whatever) and for different ears.
I started and liked using Auria’s FabFilter apps for a super clean acoustic sound, but drifted away and used all kinds of combinations: for example Barkfilter + 4pockets SideBand Remix is one I liked but never hear anybody else use. Blue Mangoo’s EQ and Multiband Compressor with Multiband Haas is nice but obscure too.
Anyway I’d really appreciate anyone listing their methods and whether they like to keep it simple or stack apps like puzzle pieces to craft their final product.
Thanks
Comments
I generally keep it fairly simple but it’s hard to really nail down anything specific because I like to try all different methods. I do make pretty noisy and experimental music though so Barricade is a must and is on basically every track. I recently bought NoLimits 2 to try as a full track limiter though so we’ll see how that goes.
Outside of that I swear by Toneboosters apps. Also a big fan of the AU3FX apps. Peak is my go to EQ. Reelbus or Super VHS on the master is fun too.
I don’t really get hung up on the mastering part anymore. It’s hard to accurately master your own music so I just focus more on the mix itself anymore and use Barricade usually to push the final mix up to the loudness that I want. If I want a little mix glue or color, I’ll use MagicDeathEye stereo for the tubes and light compression and then maybe a bit more with Barricade and or Reelbus cos I like the sound of tubes and tape but most stuff I’d try to tackle in the mix first.
Yeah that’s basically what I do. Shoulda mentioned I was mostly referring to mixing.
I try and get the mix as good as possible and then like you, I’ll bump it up with a limiter or Maxima or something if need be.
Same. I also try to get the mix sound as good as possible without any plugins. I always filter out unnecessary low end, if need be then some more EQ, maybe a compressor to glue it together and always a limiter to get that final control of loudness. I try to use different ones in different projects as a rule of thumb, but I have to say stock plugins will get you very far if not the whole way, regardless of DAW. I have also had very good results using only TB Barricade or Grand Finale 2.
I always use headphone correction (TB Morphit) to get the mix to sound generic when mixing and mastering , and try it on speakers on my iPad, my home stereo and in my car as well before finalizing it.
My take on it: I do this for fun on my iPad only for my own enjoyment. If by pure coincidence I would stumble across something in the making that someone would even remotely want to make anything serious with, they will have far more knowledge and resources than me. So, I feel kind of relaxed with mixing and mastering. If it sounds good enough to me and others, I won’t dig any deeper. I am too far a hobby musician and I’ll waste my time trying for hours to listen to different nuances in the sound coming from different apps. FX fine, but when it comes to different subtle ”characters” of different compressors for example, I’m out.
😁
/DMfan🇸🇪
Logic Pro’s “Mastering” button does 95% of the work now after I final my mix. Then just little adjustments after and I’m done. Makes a huge difference for me. And I tend to mix too heavy in the mids, which LP now fixes.
Oh yeah I forgot about Morphit, that lives on my monitoring cos I’m always using headphones. If we ever get Can Opener on iOS, mixing will be a breeze for us headphone mixers
Morphit is one app I don’t have that I need to get. Might go ahead and pick that up and use it while I’m working on finishing up this new release. Thanks for the reminder
I highly recommend Trinity also. Every track I’ve released has went through it during the final stage.
@HotStrange Morphit has been pretty invaluable for me, highly recommended if you mix with headphones. I listen to a lot of tracks through it as well for more reference and my mixes have really started to sound like what I expect them to when I listen to the final mix on different speakers. The low end has still been a bit tricky to pull off, at least for me cos it always gives me trouble, with just Morphit but taking it to a chain of Can Opener and Morphit on desktop has greatly helped me get more clarity in the low end than just Morphit alone. But that could just be based on my skill cos I’m still learning a lot as I go and Morphit has definitely helped me hear what I need to better.
Has anyone tried like a stereo IR of monitors going into Morphit? I don’t know if that could help any with more clarity or if it would just cause more problems in the middle
I recently resubbed to LP4i due to its Mastering Assist. I plan to release an EP to SoundCloud before the end of the year (either my "2005" EP full of cheesy early-2000s EDM twaddle, or something I concoct in the OP-1 Field), and honestly I can't really be arsed trying to master an EP on my own. 🤣 Tried that with my Koala EP in Cubasis 3 with MagicDeathEyeStereo, Reelbus, and Barricade, and the results were decent.
Yeah, $5/month for AI mastering in LP4i isn't a bad deal. 😂 Maybe the whole LP4i workflow will click with me at long last.
Thanks! Heard can opener is great but I don’t have a desktop. Might pick up MorphIt tonight though. I’m trying to have this project out by the years end but there are 2/3 tracks that still need a little work with the mix so hopefully this will help.
“LP4i” was cryptic when I first read through this thread. A reread and the 💡 came on! I have often thought about reaching out to you and asking you to put up a wiki article about how you have been doing mastering. I have appreciated how professional your tracks sound. I read somewhere that you are considering paying for mastering and personally I think you should. Go balls to the wall! I really think you have the right stuff!
That being said, I don’t use LP but I do have a license. And I’m pretty sure I have enough hd space to install it without any instrument downloads. I have also been looking at tutorials on using the AI Mastering Assistant and it doesn’t look like rocket surgery. I have at least a half dozen tracks close to or ready for the magic pixie dust treatment. Can you give a little more feedback on your use of the Mastering Assistant? Thank you!
For me when it comes time to ‘master’ my tracks I just use a high quality limiter on the master buss to get the final volume where I need it to be. On iOS that would be Pro-L, on the desktop it’s Limitless.
Everything else I just address in the mixdown since it’s my track and I have that option. For client mastering, it’s obviously a lot more involved since I don’t have (or even want) that option.
I agree that the less you do at the mastering stage the better. Getting the mix spot on is 90% of the battle
This is why I mix into a limiter. I have the level of the limiter far higher than when I go to master it, so if it sounds pretty much perfect while squashed to all hell, it'll sound even better when I set the volume to -14 LuFS.
@Sawiton I still haven't tried mastering assistant yet, lol. I have nothing to master as I'm taking a short break from producing. But normally when I master "by hand", I simply gainstage the mix to -12dB peak (not -12 LuFS, peak), slap on MagicDeathEyeStereo, slap on Reelbus for some top quality tape saturation, , and then slap on Barricade and Youlean to get the level to -14 LuFS, no matter what genre I'm mastering.
third'ed. if we get the mix right, mastering becomes just format/platform readying IE loudness and bit rate. admittedly this is with singles in mind, while collections might need some eq to match, but then again you could use the collection as mix references and sort that in the mix stage too. or thereabouts at least.
Yes, as I've come to find out, mastering an EP is much harder than mastering a single. It's why I plan to use Mastering Assistant once I have an EP ready for mastering.
So @Tarekith if you were needing to Master somebody else’s not perfect mix using only iOS and additional apps besides Pro-L, what would you reach for sir?
We all want to know…
That’s really why mastering is something that is a sought after skill. Prior to digital one button mastering being available most people wouldn’t generally attempt it themselves as getting two or more tracks to sound good on any playback device was an extremely difficult task. The names of good mastering engineers were whispered with awe.
I only ever met one guy back in the day whose sole job was mastering engineer. We had a really good talk about 50s and 60s music, and how producers (no matter how famous they were) would have their mixes returned to them by the record company if the mastering engineer didn’t think they were good enough, and were told to remix the album. Interestingly, he said the hardest thing he ever had to master was a Scottish military band with bagpipes (although I don’t remember the exact reason as I’m trying to recall this from the early 80s).
One thing I do remember though is someone else in the studio telling me the guy would do nothing for days after he got final mixdowns except listen to them over and over while filling notebooks with notes.
Super interesting guy who sadly passed away before his time.
I can't imagine being a mastering engineer. I only know enough to know what type of single-track mastering works for me.
The biggest advantage I've seen so far is that by using mastering automation I can avoid the "ear blindness" which naturally comes from listening to your own material for too long. An automated system can create a profile for your music and compare it to similar music in a completely unbiased way. I love using the Mastering feature in Logic Pro. It has completely changed the quality of my mixes (for the better).
Believe it or not, Mastering Assistant is the sole reason I resubscribed to Logic. But, now that I'm getting a new piece of pricey hardware whose name I won't mention 😂 , if I can send audio from it to the iPad Mini 6 via USB-C and can record it in Logic, that's an extra bonus.
Apple has received a lot of criticism over LP for iPadOS, but the Mastering tool is a total winner.
I agree. I'm starting to watch tutorial videos about the Mastering Assistant, and I made the right call to resubscribe to LP4i. $5/month for a mastering assistant and recording environment is well worth it in my opinion. Or I can use my newly acquired "toy" to record a loop to further mess with in LP4i with Beat Cutter and such.
I agree the Mastering Assistant in LP for iPad is really excellent. I’m not for one second trying to say that I am any kind of expert but I’ve mixed and mastered my last three albums and it’s an aspect of being a songwriting recording musician I really love and look forward to. (I’m in the pop/rock genre I guess)
My weapon of choice is the desktop Ozone Advanced which costs hundreds of dollars - in fact I’ve just upgraded from version 8 to 11, and even that was into three figures. I mix and master in a fully acoustically treated room on decent studio monitors.
I recently tried a shootout between my best effort using Ozone, vs. LP’s Mastering Assistant. I was careful to gain match accurately to ensure I wasn’t fooled by one being slightly louder than the other. In my honest opinion, I still preferred Ozone, but it was very, very close. Ozone felt a little more ‘open’, there was a touch more clarity. That said, the difference was so small, I doubt anyone else would notice or care!
So yeah, I think Mastering Assistant is great, and in terms of value for money LP for iPad is extraordinary when you think many subscription based AI mastering services cost more than £50 a year, and that’s all they do.
How does it compare (if you’ve competed them) to the AI mastering assistant in BandLab? I’ve had good results with it. But if I need to resubscribe to Logic for better results I may.
It really is a skill. The best of the best can do things no one else really can when it comes to music. I wish I could be at that level some day.
There's been a couple people on this forum who came to me for mastering and wanted to keep it all iOS/iPadOS only. I used Pro-L as mentioned, along with Pro-Q2 for EQ and Mid-side tweaking. Pro-C I might reach for as well if I need more dynamics control than I can get out of Pro-L, but that's pretty rare for me.
Yeah, I haven't used BandLab. All I can say is compared to everything else I've tried, it is really easy and instantly gives me professional results I can use. Give it another shot.
I agree with NeuM. Definitely resub to Logic.
Even if just for mastering assistant alone.