STUDIO GRADE Doctron & Stimming Instant Mastering Chain // Dawless Mastering Chain part #1 

Thank you Andrew! If you have thoughts on how to improve this a bit further, would love to hear it :). It was fun to create so I might do more of these in the future

Agreed !

Yeah Baum seems very nice as well. Hope to test it out some day. Thanks for watching and your thoughts :)

I'm getting on well with Boum - the only thing this has that I wish Boum had was a basic 2 band EQ - but that is being greedy.

I heard the compression is hard to apply in a subtle way, that it smashes it without a middle ground. I’d never apply more than a 2:1 ratio while mastering so I’d find that less useful if it’s true.

Thanks! Glad you like it. Was a fun one to create

Thanks!

Thanks! Yeah it really does as advertised. Great sound.

Yeah I agree. Unfortunately I don't have access to those type of high end gear. A heat comparison will happen though :). Maybe Baum someday as well if I can get my hands on one.

@@Davemech AH's hard to compare as although they both have drive circuits they have quite different roles IMO. Boum is at its heart a compressor, like the IMC - whereas I see Heat more as a sculpting tool - with the multimode filter and EQ. You can use the envelope follower to create sidechain-like effects but it's not really the same thing. The saturation on Heat is better, IMO. Annoyingly I'm finding that I want to use both 😅

@@NateHorn with the right settings on heat you can come really close to proper compression actually. Did a lot of A/B comparisons with my bus compressor and IMC. It's also what I use it for in live situations and in the studio :). Envelope follower, attack and realease, depth etc. Just a matter of finding the right settings. For my live set i use Drive as a destination which has a different effect obviously. But set it to preset volume and you can get proper compression really. It's definitely not the same, not as transparant or good sounding as IMC but you can definitely get a similar effect. Heat is more or less a swiss army knife, IMC a precision tool :)

Dank voor het kijken! Ik heb toevallig gisteren een zelfde soort video over de heat online gezet. Denk voor dat geld redelijk onverslaanbaar. Maar kijk ook even naar de OTO Baum

A nice compressor and then soundtoys decapitator

Interesting. Will have a look at it. 👍 Can't find a pedal called platform. Which one do you mean?

Electro Harmonix make it - AudioPilz uses it on most of his jams. It’s a digital circuit.

That is indeed what I usually and up with on most compressors but as you say it’s an “advice”. There really are no rules. With the IMC I found settings of .1 and .3 to give me the most musical / best results. In the end it is about listening and using the settings that sound the most pleasing. Currently I use the OTO Boum and there I sometimes also end up using 1 millisecond rather than 10 or 30 for the same use case. It depends a bit on the track I’m using it on. To have a compressor act as a limiter one would need to use much higher ratios of more than 6:1 depending on the input signal strength of course (any ratio that compresses everything above the threshold to 1b above the threshold is basically limiting. So yeah in this case the goal is to glue the mix nicely but most of all to get the overall loudness up while keeping the signal sounding pleasing. So higher attacks will result in the transistor drive section to clip faster and thus less loudness. The drive section in this case acts as the limiter. As you push the signal through the drive it will clip and the peaks will get “chopped off” but in a very musical way. As with mastering in the studio you indeed lower the dynamic range to make the signal louder overal. So in a way this compressor and drive combination act as a glue compressor and limiter in one. Hope this helps understanding my decision for the settings. As always audio there are best practices but there are no rules. The end result is the most important. Cheers !

Wow thank you very much for the very detailed explanation!! ❤ It definitely helps a lot. Maybe another question regarding the IMC, Analog Heat and BOUM, if you have the time: As I understood from your video about the AH, the biggest downside is it's missing compressor before the drive circuit. Would you say that adding that compressor would put it more close to the IMC regarding its capabilities of sculpting the master bus than the BOUM could do it? Or is the BOUM just superior to the AH no matter what?^^

Thanks for watching the vid :) . Analog heat is an option. I'd suggest. Though it has a learning curve to understand how to get a similar effect. A few years ago I bought an RNC for this purpose. It's indeed nice as the name suggest but imho a bit too nice. It's very transparent but it simply will not catch the peaks of a signal like the IMC does. The key is the drive circuit here.

Check out the OTO Boum.

@@tchu0001 yeah OTO stuff is great. Maybe I get a chance to lend one in the future for a test

Thank you :) There’s already a part 2 where I go in depth on the analog heat. Next up is OTO boum :). Might also have a look at 500 modules in the future

Thanks Jesse! The track you can get on my Bandcamp page. There’s a video where I show how I recorded the Windorgan sounds and you can see me record the track live. The video is called ‘Sample & Jam windorgan’. In the description of the video you can find the link to the track :). Cheers

@Davemech I managed to find you on bandcamp last night. I had a flick through your music , You have some great tunes 😉 thanks I will get back on there & find it.

Ha I see you already did that, never mind ;-)

Part 3 later this year :). OTO Boum. If it’s worth it is up to the interested party. Hard to measure. IMC does something unique in a very very small footprint.

Thanks! I think it depends if you plan on using such a thing live. For live performances I’d go for this and enjoy the extra benefit of it working well in the studio. For pure studio use I’d put together a 500 lunchbox. More control :)

Exactly. Agreed on both points. Best to compare it with that type of gear :)

The IMC has much better peak control and stays a lot cleaner when pushing it. To get close to the same result you'll get saturation with heat. So the IMC is much more transparent in how it controls peaks and compresses. The compression itself is also a lot nicer in my opinion. The heat lacks the real control of a compressor really. Of course you gain loads of sound design options and creative options. It's a great effect. IMC is more focussed towards one goal and it does it really well. Hope this helps :)

@@Davemech It helps a lot, thanks for the input!

Yeah that's the kind of gear one should compare this to. Wish I could afford doing comparisons like that haha

Yeap it is :) (though I’ve sold it since then)

You could try to use the digitakt's compressor in a similar way. Won't give you the same results but it can definitely help glue things together.

@@Davemech figured as much... Hoping you find some other gems like this for this series! Dawless mastering hardware seems to be an underserved market

@@n.eminus9536 yeah there's a few options and I'll keep digging. Part 2 is already on my channel and it shows how to use the analog heat for this.

Haha no idea where you got that. I love compression :) . It's what I use heat for (although that's not true compression). The competition is pretty much as expensive but not as small. There are of course cheaper options but this thing really is a no compromise, hand built effect.

@@Davemech neither do I 🤷‍♂️ but one mystery cleared up

It depends a bit on how different your material is. In general live sets have a certain sound and most of the time even a specific genre. In that case you can use one setting and it will be fine. It's what it's made for. The important thing is gain staging all your work before performing and setting up the IMC based on the most dynamic track you'll play.

Great budget solution 👍🙂

What about delay?

If it sounds good, why not!?

What compression/EQ saturation do you use on your iPad/iphone?

Curious about that iOS workflow

Hehe yeah understandable. RNC is digital though so doesn’t really compare to this in any way. Heat doesn’t have a true compressor and so on. You definitely pay for the fact that it’s a very boutique product with not many made and also that it’s created and built by just two people. Model 1 is awesome yeah :)

Yeah this happens all the time with high end stuff. People somehow get offended by asking price. Not sure why. Nobody is forcing anyone to buy this :)

@@Davemech Precisely! I should have rephrased, though. ‘Not sure’ was more of a figure of speech, but…I will keep my pesky suspicions to myself. 😆

Because people do pay hard earned money in the end!

@@Bork_In_Volcanic only if they choose to do so.

This is a very professional piece of gear. I don't play music professionally or live. But I spend that kind of money for gear in my actual profession. It's as simple as that.

Why not both? This was build to be a no-compromise device. Certainly not for everyone, and there are already alternatives that are cheaper. Like heat. Not exactly the same though but it can come close. As with everything it's okay that it exists. Not everything is build for a broad audience.:)

Hey man, ben een grote liefhebber van jouw muziek :) Yeah het is veel geld. Denk dat je het het t beste kunt vergelijken met high end rack gear in dezelfde prijsklasse. Het is alleen erg compact. Een 808 nu kopen though... Ouchy.

It's a bit tongue in cheek, sure. I'd challenge you to create this below 300gbp ;)

@@Davemech I am sure that Behringer will pull that off just for 139€.

@@Bork_In_Volcanic possibly. Don't think they will though. Too niche.

@@Davemech they already cloning 170€ eurorack modules into 100€ ones, not talking about borrowed 303 designs (Devilfish was also a boutique, before B*ringer made a TD-3-MO) or recent DFAM. "Instant Mastering Box" could be a top earner for B, even because of the box name, with all that Behringer audience. Especially given that IMC is a fully analog (Behringer still lacks on software side), means easy to clone.

@@Bork_In_Volcanic you have it all figured out. Contact Behringer and share the idea ;)

Thanks. But it doesn't work like that in the real world. They can't make this for 1000-1500 otherwise they certainly would have. It's basically a 1-man operation, hand build from the ground up. No PCB construction in China etc. They could do that and make it cheaper, but they don't want to. So it is what it is :) . Overpriced imho means something different.

@@Davemech I'd disagree. Not where components are sourced matters but the building & quality control. Elektrons are built in Sweden (just checked one of mine), EU Soma is from Poland (owned Pulsar-23), Xaoc (one of big players in eurorack market nowadays) is from Poland. While Doctron is based in most expensive region of EU aka Bavaria and it is one man business. How that gonna work in a long term? What about support if that box does breaks? They didn't updated a manual in a year. In Eurorack world we already have examples of Cwejman (Wowa has died) & Mutable. Imagine the same for 3000€ device.

@@Bork_In_Volcanic not entirely correct. Most companies might do assembly in their own country but PCB production is most often outsourced. It's a combination of things here: high end components, hand build on demand, niche market. Also you have to compare this to high end rack mount gear if you are going to compare prices with anything.

Yeah this is definitely a high end solution and not for the wallet with a faint of hart. I’ll be doing an Analog Heat video in the near future as well showing a similar workflow. There are even cheaper solutions then Heat. But in this case you pay for a high-end solution which is hand build by a single person on demand. And it's tiny and light.

@@Davemech Would love to see this as a heat owner using it as the final link in the chain!

@@gartersnake1919 I would love to see a manor heated by these devices

@@Davemech Any idea when the Heat vid is coming man? waiting eagerly!

@@gartersnake1919 not entirely sure but might be next week :)

Not really. That’s the price they’ve decided is worth their time to make on demand. They know most people won’t want it at that price, but this doesn’t make it overpriced.

Please watch the video. In the first 2 minutes I touch upon this very subject and why I think it's not overpriced. Expensive? Yes. Overpriced? No. Ridiculously overpriced? Hell no. The amount of knowledge, research, trial and error, testing etc. That goes into this, singlehandedly, is pretty insane.

Totally overpriced. Not a single original design, everything has been taken from other previous designs and put together inside a box. The only thing it brings to the table is its reduced size and an invisible membership for the clown's fanboy club. Hipster overpriced gear.