hey guys.... as many of you know, i use a handful of waves plug-ins for mastering...
and i also use izotope rx (standalone) and now paul frindle's dsm... and that is it!
so which plug-ins from this bundle would i recommend?
Maxx-volume : multi-stage dynamics... it's very good at increasing rms level,
i'd describe the character as mostly "tone neutral", but aggressive. i have
used it in the past year. all time parameters (e,g, attack) are on
autopilot, here we can only set thresholds and makeup; so
maxx-volume offers less control precision than separate
devices would, but really fast and easy to work with.
Puig-tec eqp-1a : strong flavor. i use it in parallel with an
unprocessed signal, and mix in a very small amount. the
purpose of course, is to make distortion. it is not
an "equalizer".
Puig-tec meq-5 : emulation of a "midrange" pultec.
i have not found a use for it in mastering.
Dorrough meters : the ballistics seem to be well sorted, they work as designed.
i look at them from time to time...
Waves center : this is based on waves' surround technology. i feel that the
algorithm induces too many side effects for me. i prefer waves' strict
m-s tools (s1 imager, etc… which are not in this bundle ).
L3-16 : it trades some flexibility for an eq... it can get fast results, or not.
i have moved away from the idea that a brickwall limiter should
color the sound, or perform much color correction, and it
is very processor heavy. since i always monitor through
a brickwall, for safety as well as sonic reasons: this
device is not appropriate for my workflow.
L3 - i have used the multi version... as i mentioned above, i don't want
to do tone shaping on a brickwall, i want it to -not- affect
tone, so i don't use it. also i need floating point
output without a bit depth change. the
brickwall for me is -not- the final
process, (i need to do a sample
rate conversion unless the client
wants 96khz (never!), src for
me (and most software src)
is a floating point process.
L3-LL - swaps out the linear phase crossovers for minimum-phase ones,
imo, the effect is o.t.t. for mastering, imo, mix engineers might
find it helpful for snare or bass drums that are hard to tame,
L2 - you know... now with mono instances as well as stereo, as steve has mentioned.
(iirc, the hardware version has dual mono capacity.)
Linear phase eq - i am not into equalizers lately. it can sound good,
but the control resolution (especially the limited frequency
choices) needs to be more precise. 24 bit output only.
Linear phase multiband - i've gotten great results from it in the past,
but at least for the time being, i am not using any multiband
dynamics that employ crossovers. i really do like it's
flexibility (it has a knee control, for example), and
can be very effective, e.g. as a de-esser.
--- regarding the price !
algorithmix sells single plug-ins
for thousands of dollars;
so in perspective...
my advice would
be:
buy only what you need.
(i would not want to master without waves' s1 ms-matrix, for example, it is simple
and inexpensive (anyone can do the same process on a mixing board); but for
some reason (?!), i find that other m-s encoder/decoder plug-ins
can't seem to produce clean results!)
jeff dinces
