Mixed Electronically Sign Routing Made Easy

Mixed electronically sign routing

hi in this video we're going to be discussing their mastering chain principles now let me open up the mixer for this I'm going to go over to my master output you'll notice that I've already got three plugins inserted there as discussed we're actually going to be working on our mix I'm not going to bounce it down and master the two track I'm going to be actually mastering our stem mix here two reasons a I've got enough processing power for a start and B if you find that the plugins start to affect the balance of anything you can go back to the mix into the mix there and change it so let's do it like this for now I may go and actually do a two track master as well we'll see how we go okay so you'll see on here that I've got three plugins already inserted now if you didn't watch my mixing course and you skip straight to the mastering let me explain why okay firstly we have the game I'm just going to turn these ones off now if I turn this off here okay there's one point in the truck when that big hard clap hit actually overloads the output so we've had to insert again output know none of the other buses are clipping none of the channels are clipping so I think it's actually quite safe to put a game plug in there and reduce the gain which we have done like -2 DBS which compensates for that big clap hit there which is pushing it over the limits okay so that's our game plug in I think it's okay to use a game plug in to turn the volume of everything down you may find that everything's great all the buses nothing's clipping at all but as soon as it gets routed to the master output its clipping so it's good to insert a game plug in and reduce the gain there until you actually stop getting the read overloads which is exactly what I've done there okay next up we have the PSP vintage warmer I'll of this plug-in and all I use it for is a little bit of tape drive there that big knob that says drive I find that it just gives a bit of saturation a little bit of extra compression but it's not unnoticeable it's more of a fattening tool I've been using that forever it's amazing you know this is where without and with love it if you want to you can actually use the compressor here you can adjust the compressor just by changing the knee I find if you move it just up to up to about seven there you get a little bit of gain reduction and it's just a nice little squash but we're not going to use the compressor in that we're going to use this compressor here which is the UAD Shadow Hills compressor I'll go over it again this consists of two separate compressors or we're not separately actually they're in serial which means this compressor here the optical compressor goes into the discrete compressor and then to the output and the theory behind this is that the first compressor catches the peaks the second compress that doesn't have to work so hard and it's basically like using two compressors on your master output which some mastering Inge's engineers do I've seen that and you can do that if you want to and how this works and how I use it is very subtle the first compressor there you see I can switch the meter over to optical I set it so there's on this what looked about minus 1 dB there we go just tickling it then the second compressor I set so it's just peaking at minus 2 I have a long attack which lets most of the sound through and then I have a quick release and that's not to mess with the dynamics too much we need to put the sidechain filter in ok discrete so you can turn that up a little now if I turn it off you won't be able to hear the sound let me just get the level a little more like it sounds when I turn it off so that's off and that's on very subtle all I'm asking for is a little bit of glue at this point okay so that subtlety is the key now let's discuss the chain now the next plug-in you could put would be simply a limiter I like to use the u a delimiter but you can use any limiter but we can go a few stages further if you want you can use the logic where are we're on imaging its stereo spread the stereo spreader is a really nice plugin let's turn this down because it does what it says it actually spreads the stereo elements of the sound by using the Harz effect it's not the hard effect on this sorry it just creates extra harmonics and spread those across the frequency range and you can actually choose the frequency that it works on specifically we generally use that before the compressor you wouldn't use it afterwards because it really upsets the balance of the compressor you'll find that you might have to adjust the compressor a little here so okay so we can use the stereo spread there are various different stereo spreads we can use I am a massive fan of you ad you ad have one called the precision case stereo which is amazing because it works on a slightly different principle which is it's got an ambience recover function if you look at the factory presets we can go master raise mids and high so what I like about the case stereo is the fact that it it works on a very cluttered mix such as this one where we've got a lot of sounds competing for attention so to speak it's great at decluttering I'm not entirely sure exactly how it works but all I know it sounds great ok we've also got on here we've also got the I like that I'm a big fan of brain works the brain works plugins are amazing and we have the brain works control version 2 which does a similar sort of thing there's a few extra features in the brain works control with the mono maker one thing to be aware of with mastering is that you don't want to spread the base you don't want a stereo spread the base out because that can play havoc on big systems and also if you actually get in your tracks master to vinyl we can you you can actually cause the needle to skip believe it or not if you've got a stereo base so anything below about 150 I generally leave mono and then we can use the stereo with to enhance the mid side it works on a mid side algorithm meaning that the mids and the sides are two separate almost audio files so and this works purely on the sides spread those out a bit quite like the sound of that there's also within the brain works plugins I have the full suite here as the brain works digital v2 now I really like this one because this is a mastering EQ and stereo width enhancement mono maker is all built into one I would greatly highly recommend getting this everybody I know uses this thing it's an absolute piece of genius and I'm going to get into it a little bit later of how to use it but that's a really nice plugin and I would insert that so you got the gain you get your PSP warmer which is kind of boosting the sound case stereo yeah I've actually by accident switched off my mastering compressor but I can go back to that and put it back on I know exactly what I do with it so I'm just giving you some ideas and some overviews of of mastering one thing to bear in mind this is the as the order of the chain and some things to think about are you will get very different sounds depending on where you put the plug in for instance game will always go at the top because you want to turn down the gain if it's peaking the next one would be vintage warmer because that's just going to give it a little bit of warmth the next one I will put in I may put an EQ at this point or I may actually do the stereo width at this point after that it would be EQ stereo with after that we would put a compressor and then finally the last stage always the last stage would go the limiter because it's at that point you want to squash all the peaks and that's what gives you the loudness so join me the next video and we'll actually start working on the master