Audio Mastering Tutorial – Fine Tuning with Waves C1 Compressor, L3 Limiter, LineEQ
Welcome to the next in our series of tutorials which give you an exclusive look at our new online Audio Mastering course featuring Waves plug-ins which launched this month. This weeks video (below) is taken from week six of the course which looks at mastering in action.
Fine tuning
The track used in the tutorial is a ‘Terra Firma’ produced by Joshua Black aka Point Blank tutor Jonny Miller. As we enter the final stages of the mastering process, the overall mix is sounding alot better than what we began with, but there is still some fine tuning that we can do to really nail it down.
First we need to fine tune the top end, the shaker is very energetic and is a good candidate for de-essing to control the peaks without affecting the tone too much. We can do this using the Waves C1 as demonstrated in this previous post.
Because there is a lot of content in the very high end frequencies, it is worth inserting a low pass filter, we do this using the LineEQ setting it very high so that it doesn’t affect our tonal balance.
Finally, we fine tune the final level of the track using the L3 limiter and comparing with a reference.
Check out Doug Shearer showing you the process in the video here:
The Audio Mastering course has been developed by JC Concato (Mix engineer: The Cure, Erasure, US3) and Doug Shearer (Kasabian, Jamelia), with contribution from top industry professionals, Jim Lowe (Producer, engineer: Stereophonics, The Charlatans) & Bunt Stafford Clark (Mastering engineer: Thom Yorke, Manic Street Preachers, Aloe Blacc). The aim of the course is to help you understand the role of the mastering process, develop/tune your ears, learn about EQ techniques, compression, limiting, as well as advanced techniques such as mid/side processing and multiband dynamics, and much much more. Each week you’ll master a choice of tracks yourself and get 1-2-1 video feedback (DVR) on your work from your tutor. Courses start: 9th Jan, 5th March, 30th April 2012
We’re pleased to be running the course in association with the fantastic Waves plugins but the skills you absorb can be applied to any mastering software or hardware.
“Mastering is one of the most important stages of the production process and we’re delighted that Point Blank have gone with Waves as their plugins of choice”
Gilad Keren, Waves Audio CEO
Keep up to date with all of Point Blank’s news, tutorials and giveaways by subscribing to our Youtube channel, or following us on Facebook and Twitter… and if you have something to say about this post, start the conversation with a comment below. Thanks!
