What's The Best Mastering Program For Os X?, Mastering Original Songs - CD Production Options

[horvath]

I'm an old pro at songwriting, performing and recording (I'm presently recording with a Roland VS-1880 Digital Studio) ... but now I'm getting into mastering my own tracks on my Mac G4 - OS X and trying to educate myself on the processes.

I'm trying to decide which one of two mastering programs I want to purchase:
1 - T-RackS - my favorite so far ... tube sounds and mastering ONLY.
2 - Sound Forge 7.0

Is anyone familiar with either of these? Or do you have other suggestions? ProTools is a bit pricey ... especially considering I ONLY want a mastering suite.

Thanks.

This post has been edited by horvath: Thu 9 Oct 2003, 14:49

[coldharbour]

Some good basic points you've gathered, pdgood.

First step=Do everything you can on a track level to get it mixed as well as possible before you master.

This is absolutely the most important point. Mastering should be only fine tuning. If you produce a crappy mix, nobody can save it by applying mastering processing to it.

EQ=When you have it down to a stereo mix use Mastering equalization to make tracks sound similar. They call this type of eq non-linear or some such.

Actually, the EQ type is called linear. Takes much more processing power than an ordinary EQ but has some desirable qualities for mastering.

Purists will say that dynamics should not be messed with and that this is a worthwhile sacrifice. I personally find multiband compression desireable.

That depends on the material. Classical music, for instance, may suffer significantly - but if you're producing something like radio pop for mass markets it's essential to have a tight sounding final product.

Some people add reverb to the final mix. This one puzzles me, but it is even part of Ozone, so someone must think it's important.

Depends on the material as well. You never add reverb to "normal" music, but in some cases (for example accapella or choir recordings) reverb may be added at the final mastering stage so the level can be balanced accurately according to the dynamics processing etc. To my knowledge, this is a very rare scenario.