Mastering Plugin Chain, START to FINISH | Mastering Masterclass Ep. 6 

a Master Giving Class With Years Of Experience 😃Thanks Adam Audio For Great Content 🙂

Easy way to see when you are being taught by someone who knows the craft inside and out, is by how simple they can explain it. So many good pieces of info in this video.

gotta say, that's an amazing sounding mix. each stage just needs to add a little kiss...he doesn't have to work too hard to make it sound amazing! the slate fg sounded really nice.

Outstanding job. Thanks Adam Audio!

Great video, an amazing song, and such a nice engineer explaining the whole process. Thanks!

Obrigado pela aula, espetacular... 👏👏👏

Just what I needed for the night, thanks a millions times John.

Another great video, thank you Adam Audio and John Mayfield

Iove your style of speaking and explanation, all clear and concise, nicely done, so well done!

Thank you so much for the valuable knowledges! 😇🙂

That was awesome! Thanks John Mayfield & Adam Audio!

Thoroughly enjoyed this. Thanks for sharing

It's Very Helpful! Thanks🙏🙏🙏

What a wonderful perspective from Mr. Mayfield and such an honor to have a pro like him reveal some of his process.

What a wonderful man with passion for his job. I truly enjoyed watching this video. Made me a bit emotional actually.

Great Masterclass! Also sounds amazing!

What great insight and experience. I gained so much knowledge from this :)

Thank you John. I really enjoyed this vid.

Thank you for a great series.

Thank you!! Loved this video!!!

Thanks for sharing John.

Great job and great explanation! Thank you very much.

Fantastic video! Watched it front to back!

A little bit here and there. Nice and subtle. Thanls for sharing.

I am so happy with your mastering on my mixes here from Norway / Himlalyd... Mvh. Roy

Thank you for this. Absolutely soothing for the ears listening to the end result. Really the sound, dynamics, differentiation and clarity I'm working to get in my work. A really inspiring lesson and walk-through...

Adam muchas gracias por el tiempo que dedica a transmitir conocimiento tan valioso, saludos desde Barranquilla, Colombia.

this video is the number one hidden mastering gem on youtube! This is how you get a radio quality master, no doubt

What a wonderful video about philosophy, feel and craftsmanship.

Sage advice given by a true master of the craft. Excellent video!

thanks for sharing this great great tips best for 2021 so far for me

such a great video on the benefits of small wins all along the way! I love the non-exaggerated and balanced focus of the work and that it isn't smashed to death....very nicely done! one small caveat that I have though, is that I don't necessarily agree that the mid and side signals can be processed completely independent of each other....Mathew Weiss proves this in his video called "The Truth About Mid Side Processing" where he shows that they are actually inter-dependent to some degree, and that changes to one, indeed affect the other.

Thank you soooo much to Adam and John Mayfield. What a kick the course was !

This helps a lot

Thank you!

Thank you for this very informative and educational video!

Amazing! Each stage and step is so subtle, but all added up, the print is night and day.

Fascinating!

Thanks for the great content!🤙🏾

Thanks for this greate video .......Awsommeeeeeee!

Boom! I’m going to watch all these videos. Felt like I was there with him. Great teacher

Thank you for taking the time to make this video.

Amazing one!!

One of the most useful contents Out there…this type of content is rarely available for free 🥰🥰🥰

Thank you John, this is very informative 👍

This is one of those videos where I wish I could hit that like button more than once.

Wow what a treasure of knowledge!

Great stuff. 🔥👍🏾💯

Amazing

Subscribed ... this is the best audio tutorial on RU-vid

grande profissional!

Love this thanks dude 🙏😊

Thanks Adam

i came to leave my gratefulness, great class man, it gave me quite some tools

I'm just loving this: loads of great insights throughout the 6 Masterclass episodes -- I've been wondering about attack and release times in the low frequencies and you gave me a great sense of where to head with that -- great tips on multiband compression! You got me thinking about the API 2500 again since it was surprising how full and musical it sounded in this instance: I'm used to it removing some tone from transients and sounding pretty percussive overall, but it wasn't like that at all here; this was very enjoyable and informative to watch -- thanks!

WAWWW.........I HAVE ADAM P11A LOVE ADAM!!!!!!!!!!!!-----THANKS FOR THE VIDEO

Thanks🥰

Very nice.

Wow, this is fantastic, 30 minutes well spent! The music is far from my genre of choice but it's easy to recognise the skills of a master at work. What's also revealing is the number of stages involved in John's processing chain.

Great video!

awesome thanks

This is such a great tutorial! I find Fabfilter Pro C 2 handles sidechain EQ input incredibly well; IMHO better than the Waves TG which has some limitations.

Another excellent video in the series - loads of useful information. I found the one on Fixing Phase Rotation particularly enlightening. BTW I highly recommend trying Ian Shepherd’s Perception plugin it really helps when comparing before and after. (I’m not connected with him in any way just use the plugin and find it very useful)

Thank you 🙏

wonderful

Great to see in the box mastering in practice.

one of the very very very very few of "mastering" video in youtube that when you compare the original and mastered version in the end you could tell the track move up a level, not just volume with 0 audible distortion or any sign of the track being crushed, not even a little. 👍

Thank you so much

I'm still trying to figure out quite hard using one compressor for a mixer track while this guy does like 5 and it's perfection😂

One of the best content I have ever heard and seen about mixing...Thanks Adam Audio for this great video and thanks to john sir for sharing his years of creative wisdom and experience with us

Ufffff. Sin palabras.

Hello John, Thank you so much for this wonderful series on mastering, from an actual ADULT. I threaded my first tape machine in 1961, and I have been involved with the process ever since. I 'marvel' at todays youngsters pretending to do this with a whopping 13 years 'experience' and a seemingly endless chain of plugins on all 80 tracks. It is so refreshing to see someone deliver stellar results with minimal use of only a few plugins, while retaining the craft of the original piece. Thank you again for proving that less is more, and there's no 'plugin' for CRAFT. Best regards, Bill P.

Thanks

Beautiful sounding song after mastering! Does not sound distorted or over compressed at all. To the naked ear it just sounds louder lol

, simply treasure

Я тоже говорю СПАСИБО,за полезный материал!

All stock compressors in LogicX have parametric mids in the sidechain. Now, I get it. 32-Bit ... and then control it before you go to the real world! Got it.

Pyramix pro, wavelab 11 or protools for mastering ? I've just got the merging anubis pro interface so thinking pyramix!

Amazing one ☝️ Dynamic is more important than loud

Man that Oxford inflator really brought some more life out of that mix. I’ve never really understood the intended use of expanders or felt the need to experiment with them but I’m going to have to change that

Okay, gonna be the first negative comment here. I'm sure this guy has excellent ears and delivers great masters, but he seems to have very little idea what his plugins are actually doing (and in one instance not actually using them properly), which is an issue in an educational 'check out my plugin chain' style video. - He has no idea what the Oxford Inflator is doing beyond making things feel louder (he keeps just saying 'it really does "inflate" the signal'). For those interested, it's an saturation / soft-clipping device with an 'elastic ceiling', which means the closer the input gets to 0db, the more it will add subtle harmonic distortion and soft clipping to peaks (hence things seeming louder and a touch brighter). It adds overtones and rounds out transients, but proportionately more on louder signals. - When he uses the Shadow Hills compressor, he claims the Iron setting adds high frequency saturation / boost - it doesn't. The Nickel setting emphasises highs, the Iron emphasises mids, and the Steel emphasises lows (and they also get increasingly intense in that order). Notice how when he sets it to Iron and takes the plugin out of bypass you hear the lead vocal move forward in the mix? That's because it's saturating the midrange the most, so the vocal's presence area (roughly between a sort of 500hz-3kHz zone) gets emphasised. - This is the big one - when he 'uses' the API 2500 compressor, it is doing essentially nothing. He incorrectly says 'this is one of those plugins that doesn't give you a digital readout of what you're doing' - what he means by this is the plugin doesn't show you how much compression (gain reduction) you're doing... except that it does. See up the top where there are meters, and next to the meters he has the GR metering option selected? That means the plugin will show you how much Gain Reduction is happening. So why aren't the meters moving? Because my dude is literally not even hitting the compressor's threshold. You can see next to the threshold knob, there's a red LED which ISN'T lighting up - that means the signal isn't going over the threshold. There is a fraction of second (19:10) where one transient makes the plugin do between 0.1 - 0.2db of gain reduction, which is so small that he might as well not even be using the plugin - that is almost an imperceptibly small amount of compression, and if the compressor weren't there that signal would be hitting the final limiter and getting gain reduced anyway. You can also tell that he doesn't know the compressor is essentially inactive because he plays an audio 'example' that lasts for over 20 seconds, turning the plugin on and off throughout, and there's maybe 0.3seconds where the plugin does anything at all (which again, is borderline doing nothing). - Finally, and most important of all, he compares the final master to the original mix and says 'the master is gonna be louder... deal with it.' We inherently hear things as better when they're louder, because we can hear the quieter parts of the mix more, our ears hear proportionally more low and high frequencies at louder volumes, so everything feels fuller and richer and more detailed. Because of this, it is almost impossible to tell if his mastering has ACTUALLY improved the song sonically beyond adding gain. For him to just say 'deal with it' means one of two things: either he isn't that confident in his master, so he wants it to be presented to us far louder than the mix so that we can't compare them properly, or he's just too lazy to turn the master down to the same RMS as the mix in order to compare apples to apples. In either case, he isn't being a good educator. This comment brought to you by my young guys and girls starting out as mastering engineers who are absolutely grinding to be good at this craft as well as to earn a living, who have guys like this to look up to who are, at best, poor educators. I'm sure he turns out great masters because of his ears, but having a video about plugins that says heaps of really incorrect stuff about them isn't helping anyone.

NOTE: To ensure the Low Frequencies are focused in Mono/Mid, The High-Pass/Low-Cut Filter has to be the Side. That leaves the region below exclusively in Mid/Mono. Even though the human ear can only hear the frequency spectrum between 20 Hz and 20 kHz, to ensure the crispness and clarity of the Low Frequencies, I'll set my High-Pass/Low-Cut at 30 Hz vs 27 Hz, which in essence isn't that much of a difference, per say, yet I want to ensure accurately anything below 30 Hz will be filtered out to remove unnecessary headroom and rumble since the lows create the most level of dB. I can understand the Oct/Slope is rather steep (looks like 48 dB), yet 24 dB/Oct would've been a better choice and recommendation. However, the Slope/Oct at 63 Hz is too steep IMO. I would've set it to 24 Slope/Oct instead of 36, which emphasizes the Low end in exclusive Mono/Mid down to the 27 Hz Low-Cut Filter. Definitely using the Pro-Q 3 is the digital EQ of choice, probably the best and most used Digital EQ Plug-in in today's Music Technology. Even more so, Instead of EQ'ing sounding the same from beginning to end. I'd make the emphasis and de-emphasis bands "Make Dynamic", which would only trigger the band when it reaches the threshold for expansion and compression (subtle, that is). I also noticed another High-Pass/Low-Cut at 63 Hz with a +1.2 dB amplification/emphasis. For me, being even more subtle is best, since less is more. For that bass to cut through today's consumer-based audio products, especially on smartphones, laptops/notebooks/etc., I'll boost/amplify subtly between 100 to 120 Hz, depending on the sonic in question. If I can get away with +0.5 amplification, that's a total win-win. If more boost is needed, my rule of thumb is, don't go above +2.0 dB. If it calls for more, I'll contact the artist/engineer to see if he/she can render another mix with less low end frequencies. The Side Emphasis at 125 Hz makes the track sound muddy on the sides, IMO, the Sides should be left for more clarity, especially when you want the Lows specifically focusing in the Mid Region. Also, there will be phase cancellation in that region. If you want that Side region more warm, use the emphasis/de-emphasis technique by creating another Band at the exact same Hz, Make it Mid, and de-emphasize -0..49 dB. That way, you avoid phase cancellation, and the lows at 125 Hz will sound more cleaner with perceived clarity, and both emphasis and de-emphasis bands would be made "Dynamic". From what I hear It sounds like the Lows are expanded into the Sides, which in my opinion, you don't want, since it adds more dB headroom, even if with the subtle emphasis. it also interferes with the Lead Vocal and Background Vocals region if the panning is hard, in-between, or soft. You can really hear the boom/mud/boxy sonic in a LCR Mix/Master. Another thing I would've done is use the Harmonic EQ Technique when necessary using the Pro-Q 3. By knowing the key of the track, EQ harmonically, especially at its Fundamental (including High-Low Pass Filters. Therefore, for example, if I create a High-Pass at 30 Hz, it might not necessarily be at the key of the track, yet anywhere close to where you want to cut will totally make the track more musical, and actually help psychoacoustically the perceiveness and preciseness, This particular EQ setting (Initial) has an extreme problem/issue: Your High-Pass/Low-Cut Filters are 100% OUT-OF-PHASE. That's because the Phase Setting is incorrect. Anytime those types of filters are being utilized, set the Phase Mode to Low-Level Linear Phase. Run it through an EQ Analyzer, and you'll see why using Zero Latency or Natural Phase will constitute Out-Of-Phase. Every DAW will compensate for Latency, that's why using the Lowest Level of Linear Phase creates a 5-second delay. The higher the Linear Phase level, the longer the delay time. If the systems are high-end, they will be able to compensate for the higher level of linear phase delay, in turn, allowing the DAW in question to run seamlessly as if no linear phase delay is taking place. Once all plug-ins were in place, the track sounds wonderful. For me personally, I would've added just a tiny bit more low frequencies via Saturation (Clean Tube from FabFilter Saturn 2) Fantastic Job Mr. John Mayfield!!! Subtly is the key to Mastering Success. Less is More, keeping it as simple as possible.

🔥

Genial

Hi hope you can reply to this message. However when I master songs I normally run the sound to a single track or mix bus with all the plugs on it. But looking at your setup it seems that you are running the song thru multiple tracks or probably aux tracks that have certain plugs on them which all then leads to the master fader. Is this correct? If so this is game changing for me. Please respond thanks 😊

16:20 I think logic pro stock compressor has that too.

This is awesome, but why didn’t you level match the before and after tracks for the comparison? If you don’t level match, you can’t tell if the mastered track is better or not. Love the content though! Keep it up!

Another argument for not smashing the loudness on a master is that, when the music goes through a broadcast compressor chain, it sounds much cleaner and more punchy than an over-compressed master, without sounding quieter.

Don’t you have the red light mastering version of shadowhills compressor? Or have I got myself confused and the greenlight is the mastering version…..

Adam can you tell me the best speaker for mastering in a home studio

Thnx, but sec. Last ozone maximizer got 2.8 db input which is above 0db input, thts why we can hear some ringing or peaking distortion.

🙏

How many of these plugins do you already have? Let us know 👇

I noticed the maximizer was redlining on the source. Is that not a problem, or is it something you just have to listen for rather than trust the meters?

Question: Are those plug ins in series or parallel? And if parallel how are they distributed, ie: is each channel receiving the same amount of signal via a send (and how much) or duplicates of the original track? Thanks.

What is the reason for the original being split into separate clips? Did he do some sort of clip gain adjustments on them before doing the processing?

you should get the original file at the same DB as the mastered one so that it would be better to differentiate the the difference.

Thank you Sir. But please fire the soundie who is recording mastering session and doesnt know how to place a lav mic. Nonetheless. This is incredible view into the mastering mystery. Its an eye opener. Thank you so much for sharing yours years experience with us. Greetings from Namibia.

Thank you very much for this good work. I am a music producer and I will like you to help me out to become a good mastering engineer

What is your mastering company called so I can contact?