Modern Mastering (Part 2)

Continued from Modern Mastering Part 1

STEP 6: Multiband Compression

Add the Waves Linear Multiband processor to the track right after the REQ4. Click the Load button on the LinMB interface and choose Basic Multi from the drop down list. Play your entire track without stopping playback. You now have some numbers registered in the various boxes around the interface.

STEP 7: Initial Settings

At the bottom of each of the five bands you will see a value in the peak hold box (Figure 11). Enter the value from the peak hold box into the Thrsh row. Do this for all five channels, entering the values from the peak hold box into the Thrsh box (Figure 12). Next, set the Adaptive box to -12.00 (Figure 13).

Figure 11

Figure 12

Figure 13

STEP 8: Eliminate Clipping

Again, play the whole track without stopping playback. Check the value in the Trim button (Figure 14). If it’s a positive number or 0.0 skip to Step 9. If it’s negative, adjust the gain slider to show the value from the trim box (Figure 15). This will eliminate any clipping in the output stage just like we did in Step 4 for the EQ.

Figure 14

Figure 15

STEP 9: Mega Crunch Time

Have a listen through your tune. Things should be starting to really sound nice at this point. In fact, if everything has gone well, we’re pretty much finished. The only thing left is to pump the levels up to be a little more uniform so we’re ready to put the track on a CD. If you stop now, you will have about 75% of the modern radio sound. Time to give it that last 25%.

Add the Waves L2 as the final processor on your track. Play the song through all the way without stopping so we can get the L2 setup. Once you’ve played it through you’ll see the peak hold boxes across the bottom showing some numbers (Figure 16). Find the highest number. We will choose -2.3 becuase it’s the higher of the two negative numbers. Subtract 6.0 from this number and put that value into the Threshold slider. After subtracting 6.0 from -2.3 to get -8.3 that value is entered in the slider (Figure 17).

Figure 16

Figure 17

STEP 10: Fine Tuning

Adjust the Out Ceiling slider of L2 to a value of -0.1 (Figure 18). Now play back the whole track and keep an eye on the Atten column (see Figure 19). Keep an eye on the peak box at the bottom of the Atten area. Ideally you want it to hit -6.0 exactly. If it hits below -6.0, then turn the Threshold setting up by the amount it’s under. For example, if it’s hitting -6.2, then turn the Threshold up by 0.2. If it’s hitting above -6.0 then turn the Threshold down by an equivalent amount. For example, if it’s hitting -5.7, then turn the Threshold down by 0.3. If you want to be picky, keep adjusting until you can play the song all the way through without touching anything and have the Atten peak hit exactly -6.0. You don’t really have to hit exactly -6.0 if you don’t want, you decide how close is close enough. I have decided for this example that -5.9 is close enough (Figure 20).

Figure 18

Figure 19

Figure 20

Step 11: Conclusion

That’s it! You’re now done mastering. You can mix this whole processed file down to a new stereo file and use it to make CDs, mp3 files, or whatever you want to do with it! Listen back to the track and enjoy it. At this point, stop nitpicking. Just enjoy it for what it is and just pay enough attention that you hear any major flaws that make it sound like an amateur recording.

Plugins

Waves Platinum Native Bundle price check

Sample Songs

My Malhavok album was mastered using this technique. You can hear samples of the results on

• Atrophy
• Choking
• Judgement
• User
• Never

After listening to the sound samples I hope you’ll agree that applying these techniques can make your home studio sound like some of the tracks coming out of some professional recording studios.