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I'm trying out the Vienna Suite demo and am very impressed with it so far.
I'm almost finished up with a project and I want to try mastering it. I never mastered before, just mixed. I've watched the videos and they're very helpful. But I'm wondering, when mastering, in what order should I run the plugins? Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks,
JET
Hello JET,
like always in audio, there are no rules, just guidelines that might (or might not) fit the task at hand.
Plugin order and settings will depend a lot on what you want to achieve. The most common thing would be to have a Limiter as the final processor, to avoid any overloads. Other than that, you will most likely need a Master EQ, a Compressor and/or maybe a Multiband Limiter for spectral balance, but you will have to find out yourself which one comes first. - I know that quite a few master-engineers use small amounts of artificial ambience to enhance the imaging of a mix; there were also cases when some distortion (in the sense of Exciter, or even in the sense of satruration effects) helped the mix a lot. - Sorry to be so unspecific, but it's a bit like explaining how to fly an aeroplane in three sentences. ;-)
That said, it is always a good idea to have somebody else doing the master of a mix you did, ideally in a different (properly tuned) acoustic environment. A "second opinion" helps a lot to avoid misbalances due to personal preferences (or acoustic problems). (Mixing is my main professoion since more than two decades now, and I try to avoid mastering my own mixes whenever I can. :-) ...)
... there are many online sources available covering the topic in depth,e.g. http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/aug04/articles/computermastering.htm , http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/feb99/articles/20tips.478.htm , or books like http://bobbyowsinski.com/The_Audio_Mastering_Handook.html.
HTH,
Hi Dietz,
Thank you very much for the advice and the SOS links. That's just what I was looking for.
I agree completely that in a perfect world it's best to have someone else master. In my real life I was a studio musician, and everyone else took care of the recording aspect. But in today's world, I get to play: videographer, video editor, composer, musician, mixing engineer and mastering engineer. What's the old saying,"a Jack of all trades, a master of none". it seems to apply to me today. That said, the many presets of Vienna Suite make this process less ominus than it onc was to me.
JET
