Working with master bus plugins?

[NuEra]

I've read about this before, and I often work with a compressor on my drum bus, but not much more than that.

How does everyone here feel about working with their master bus loaded with plugins and eqs. Came across some opinions gearslutz today and was wondering what my trusted medway forums friends thought?

ps. is the a thread on here about this already. apologies if there is.

pps. if there is, did i start it? super extra apologies if thats the case. haha.

[NuEra]

Did some searching...

Originally Posted by Medway

Sven,

If its a master then compression on everything but the stereo bus is recommended. Mastering won't be able to control single elements of a mix as well as they could be in the mixdown itself, so its best they are taken care of then.

That being said I do sometimes have people resend masters with some of the compression they were using on groups or single tracks reduced if it's detrimental to the final result.

With multiband compression certain frequency areas of the mix can be controlled although with tradeoffs. I routinely get mastering jobs where the bass is too dynamic so the trick is to level this without huting the kick too much.

For a mixdown you can leave all compression off unless it's a particular effect that you want exactly as you have set. In some cases I will have the plugin that you use so I could merely disable it o change the settings if need be.

Another option is (if you use a plugin I don't have installed) is to bounce dry and effected versions of tracks you are not sure about.

This gives me not only the oppertunity to use your settings but also have a reference to what you were aiming for in order to help guide my own adjustments.

As far as live instrument tracks the same rules above apply to them.

Hope this helps,

Jesse

So we should avoid overall compression and eqing on the masterbus and save it for the masterer?

I'm also thinking it would use a lot of extra plugin power to have a load of plugins on the master bus...

[Medway]

It is good to have master buss stuff on just not too extreme. I have had a few problems mastering people's tracks in the past who mixed with very heavy settings on the master. When they take them off at my request the mix then can fall apart as all their levels were made with these processors affecting the sound.

The best way is to constantly turn off and on your master comp and limiter to make sure you are not hitting them to hard. You're looking to just glue the mix together a bit but nothing too radical. A common side effect of hitting the comp too hard is when you bypass it all of a sudden your snare jumps out at you.

I don't use too much eq on the master, sometimes a bit of Daking Q-Clone for a little sparkle. Again I try to sort that stuff out in the mix itself, but it is handy to just lay a little 12 or 16k over the whole mix if its slightly dull as opposed to eqing all the tracks up to the same point.

As you learn more how to handle these things you can start to get a bit more extreme, like perhaps I might in a mastering session. But until then start off slow and try to obtain the sound you are looking for more in the mix itself and not just the stereo master.

[NuEra]

Awesome, thats very helpful..

What effect would putting multiple compressors on a single track have. Not any serious heavy compression, but say a few db from each. Are there any benefits? Sonic qualities?

[Medway]

Yes that's a good idea as well. Compression generally works better in stages. There's a little hardware comp, the RNC that has a 'super nice mode' which essentially chains I believe 3 compression circuits in a row to achieve a smooth sound. One thing Ill sometimes do is use a multiband to smooth out say the low end peaks before hitting the comp so the comp isnt working so hard. Running your drums through a submix acheives this as well.

Watch your meters on your limiter, this will give you a good idea of what needs to be looked at in the mix. Again snares and kicks will sometimes show dramtic GR on the limiter, if so then try compressing them first before hitting the limiter. I've done plenty of loud mixes and masters with the limiter barely being hit, because of compression happening earlier in the chain.