The final frontier is often the art of mastering. It’s the last touch, the polish, the moment where a track transforms from good to great, from raw to refined. But mastering is no one-size-fits-all endeavor. Just as the musician chooses from a vast collection of instruments to bring their vision to life, so too does the mastering engineer select from an array of techniques and tools to sculpt the perfect sound.
With the sage guidance of Noize London, we’ll journey through three distinct tracks, each with its own unique flavor and challenges. And as we dive deep into the nuances of each, we’ll employ not one, but four groundbreaking plugins that are helping to reshape the mastering landscape.
So, whether you’re a seasoned pro or just dipping your toes into the waters of audio engineering, strap in for an education.
Let’s dive in!
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TDR Nova
In this first track, we want you to focus on the inconsistencies in the high frequencies. It’s mainly from the vocals, likely due to the singer falling off-axis from the mic.
The first plugin we’re using is the TDR Nova. What we’ve done is apply a dynamic EQ which is a compression as a high shelf to the high frequencies. We’re bringing the threshold down at a very high ratio to where it’s almost limiting.
We also have a fast Attack and Release. We’ll Solo the Band and then take a listen. We can see that it’s being triggered largely by the percussion, possibly from the higher end of the snare and some of the hats. This is why we’ve added a second Band with a very sharp bell curve rather than a shelf.
This will deal more with those frequencies in the vocals that seem to be the source of that harshness. We have a very high Q and we’re at 7.0 kHz but with a calmer ratio of 2.0:1. Fast attack, and now a medium release.
Air Shelf
So we’re controlling those high frequencies with dynamic EQ (essentially Compression), but now we want to add a bit of that air back by controlling the levels but also adding a consistent static level back to it. For this, we’re going to use the Air Shelf.
This free plugin allows us to boost those high frequencies (20 kHz shelf). The Tame feature is almost like another dynamic EQ, similar to a de-esser. We’ll add some high frequencies with the Boost and then control them again with the Tame.
At this point we’ll listen in context with a before and after, listening for consistency in the high end and how we’ve controlled the harshness in the vocals. The differences are very subtle, but this is mastering, after all.
Arctic
This is the next free plugin we’re using, and this one’s from Acustica Audio. It’s a three-in-one with a Compressor, Limiter, and Saturator, and it has some great technology that allows you to easily morph all of these effects together. Here we’ve switched it closer to the Limiter and Saturation.
But we’re also applying a 100 Hz filter, so it shouldn’t affect the low end much. It glues the elements together a bit too much, but that’s because in the example we’re exaggerating it a bit so that it’s more noticeable for you to hear.
Now we’ll focus on bringing the vocals up, forward, and more present in the mix. For this we’ll go back to the TDR Nova. First we have a Band doing a static boost at 2.5 dB, but we’re also doing some dynamic compression at the same point. As we bring up this area, we’ll also be compressing any of the transients coming through.
KClip Zero
Lastly, we’ll focus on what people often ask about: How can you make this loud? Remember that loudness comes from the mix, but there’s something we do on every master to make sure that we can maximize the loudness without compromising the integrity of the overall recording.
First, we’ll pull up a metering plugin to find out what our peak is. In the video you can see what we’re peaking at about 3.9. And the free plugin we want to show you here is the KClip Zero which is a clipper from Kazrog.
In this plugin you’ll first click on ‘Link’, so when we bring up the input, it’ll also bring down the output which is very important. We’re going to bring the input all the way to 4.9 dB. This should clip about a decibel from the waveform and you’ll be able to see the difference in the before and after meters.
To get that loudness we’ll use the Pro-L 2, and each use will shave off about two decibels of gain reduction. As you can see just with the clipper and limiter, we’re already at under -8 LUFS (which is very loud).
We’re also adding a second instance of Pro-L 2 but this time with the Transparent style, again aiming for about 2 dB of gain reduction. Remember that it’s always crucial to listen to the before and after to make sure we aren’t losing any of that original integrity, even though we’re going pretty hard with the clipping and limiting.
Of course the difference is extremely subtle, but remember that you’re mastering, and this superfine tuning is what you want. The goal is to transparently bring up the volume without affecting the tonality or the dynamics of your record too much.
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Bonus! Don’t forget that you can also have the chance to have your track mastered for FREE. Just go to the link in the video description and follow Noize and Boombox on Instagram. Every other week we’re letting you submit your own tracks to Boombox with your valuable time-stamped comments and voice notes too. You might be the lucky one chosen to have your track professionally mastered!