AW: Powered Subs...on to mastering

["Rainer Thelonius Balthasar Straschill" <rs@moinlabs.de>]

Perhaps one last thought about this endless topic:

It certainly is one of the dominant realms of Lester Ismore (with regard to
your signal chain, not with regard to your monitoring equipment, which
includes the room to a great deal, unless you use cans as Krispen does).

If you are mastering 2bus mixdowns from actual fine-treated multitrack
recordings (i.e. different from e.g. kinda-field-recordings with a recorder
with built-in stereo mic in the rehearsal room), there shouldn't be that
much devices in the chain.

What's almost always there for most people:
        * EQ
        * Compressor
        * Limiter

Not necessarily in that order, there may be EQ before and/or after
compression ("corrective" EQ, e.g. to get rid of those ultralow frequencies
which you didn't already fix in the mix before compression, "shaping" EQ,
e.g. to get a certain "sound" after compression).

I personally believe that the limiter should be used as that - limiting
short and small peaks (e.g. around 1dB perhaps) - and not as a superfast
compressor.

Btw, here's another article I found (this was the one I was initially
looking for - it's from the Finalizer's manual):
http://www.tcelectronic.com/media/katz_1999_secret_mastering.pdf

The Finalizer imo is not as bad as its reputation.

        Rainer