7 Essential Mastering Tools
Steinberg’s Wavelab
Adam Crute of MusicTech rounds up 7 of his essential mastering tools this week.
I’m particularly fond of this list because it offers up some less commonly used mastering gear.
Surprisingly, you won’t find any iZotope products here, so keep reading to find out what made the cut.
Crute starts this list off by recommending Steinberg’s Wavelab, which is a DAW made specifically with mastering in mind. “The software comes with an extensive collection of high-quality mastering plug-ins,” he writes, “has top-notch metering with oodles of different options, and has many other tools that are perfect for audio mastering work.”
Two of Sonnox’ plugins made the list, which includes the Oxford EQ and Oxford Limiter. Both plugins are starting to look outdated, but in regards to the Oxford EQ, Crute says that “its four EQ models make it exceptionally flexible, and suitable for a wide variety of tasks. When it comes to mastering it ticks all of the boxes, from gentle broad-brush adjustments to ultra-precise corrections, all of which it delivers with pristine clarity yet without sounding clinical.” It’s also nice to see a plugin limiter recommendation other than the wildly popular FabFilter Pro-L 2.
There are two plugin compressors on the list, both from Universal Audio, which include the Shadow Hills Industries Mastering Compressor, as well as the UAD Precision Multiband dynamics processor. You’ll need UAD hardware to use these plugins, but both devices provide a wealth of dynamics processing control.
Nearing the end of his article, Crute offers up the Blue Cat DP Meter Pro which “can operate in mono, stereo (L-R or mid-side) and surround configurations. Its main bar graph meters show peak and RMS against a scale that can be switched between a number of different standards.” From the looks of it, this meter is quite comparable to other meters within its price range, but a good suggestion none-the-less.
Last but not least is the TC Electronic Finalizer 96K which is an all-in-one mastering box that includes “Parametric and dynamic EQs, multiband expansion, compression and limiting, stereo adjustment, and more. One of the Finalizer’s strong points is its ease of set-up to deliver a professional-sounding master, and the current models – Finalizer Express and Finalizer 96K – continue this tradition.” This is a hardware unit, but it managed to sneak its way onto the end of this list. The image included for the TC Electronic Finalizer 96K is a screenshot of the Klanghelm VUMT, which happens to be the VU meter that I like to use, but it appears to have been embedded into the page accidentally.
Read the full article by Crute via MusicTech to see what these plugins look like, and find out more about them.
Charles Hoffman is a Mixing and Mastering Engineer at Black Ghost Audio. After graduating from the University of Manitoba with an English degree, Charles completed his education at Icon Collective in Los Angeles, CA.
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