Recommendations for plugins that help with EQ and mastering

astrochump · 2022-04-12T21:25:46+00:00

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I'm aiming to do that scooping thing to maximise the impact of each category of sound

I know it's a dark art and all that but I haven't got the patience or brain power to do it properly, so hoping some nice people have created a free plugin to make it easy : )

(windows)

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ShelLuser

Oh dear...

Now first... please be well aware that there really isn't a "one size, fits all" solution to mastering and EQ'ing your score (IMO applying EQ's falls under mixing). But there's one toolkit I can highly recommend:

https://www.izotope.com/en/shop/ozone-9-advanced.html

There's also a standard version, as well as an Elements version I think but ... if you want to go all out then you want this. Although there is some major personal bias involved on my end I still think it's fair to say that Ozone has been the "holy grail" for mastering for several years now, long before the joint venture with NI.

This is the stuff I'm using and I can tell you in full honesty: it just works.

BUT... do not expect instant results, you won't get automated insta-perfect sound by just adding parts of this toolkit since there is a learning curve involved. Not too steep though. And even the default presets can already do nice things with your score.

I am biased as heck, but .. that's only because of personal experiences. This is what I'd go for.

Hope this can help

tetsuneko

You can do subtractive EQing in Maschine just fine? I suggest you first learn that before looking further.

Subtractive EQing is hardly a dark art, it just takes listening skills and experience. Basic idea goes, in mixing, much of the battle is about all instruments being balanced against each other, with each element sounding through clearly enough. Subtractive EQ is often used (among removing unwanted frequencies from a track) to carve out frequencies from a track which are in the way of the same frequencies present in another track. Let's say a distorted guitar is making it hard to hear vocals - you would cut frequencies from the distorted guitar track at frequency areas where the guitars are masking the vocals the most.

The trick is in learning to hear when frequency content overlaps, being able to identify where this happens in the freq range, and then knowing how many dBs to pull (and what EQ Q factor to use) in order to get the overlap resolved in a way which makes all elements come through more clearly.

astrochump

Thank you for the above comments.

Ozone 9 - noted. I'll have a look on Youtube

I'll look into using Maschine's on board tools also.

I'm imagining the frequencies in say, a percussion track for example, must be all over the place. Would take some time to figure out which frequencies aren't essential. I just wondered if there was a tool out there that would analyse the track and then do all the EQ grunt work

tetsuneko

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/13506#Comment_13506

There is, if you like Izotope's offerings, look into Neutron. It's a comprehensive mixing system with AI-based tools such as mixing assistant etc, which can do some of the work for you. But at the end of the day there is no substitute for learning all that stuff manually.

If we talking percussion, especially percussion that you have recorded yourself, look also into dynamics processing. Recording percussion with certain types of mics, such as condensers can often result in a too spiky/spitty sound, which usually requires both corrective EQ as well as compression for reining in the highest peaks of the signal.

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