Mastering in Logic - Snapshot included

[kas_lar]

Hi Everybody
I'm mastering my first full length album and I'm injoying it. I'm actually doing a remaster, so I've got another Logic Project with my master and the previous master to compare it with.

I've been wanting to try other DAW's to master in, but so far I'm sticking with Logic. But some problems have occurred.
As you can see on my chain I'm mastering with plugs only - Flux Epure to cut and do very small boosts, T-racks with just the Pultec to do low end and high end boosts.
Then the Solera to compress - this is a advanced piece of equipment, I'm still learning to do a subtle compression without ruining the dynamics.
At the end the Kjaerhus MPL 1 Pro for limiting.

1. If I do my master project this way, my Mac isn't powerfull enough to leave all the plug turned on, I have to switch them on and off when I want to compare/bounce. Is this just the way I has to be?

I've been watching the Steinberg Audio Mastering Tutorial and I've been thinking of switching to Wavelab or another DAW like Peak Pro 6 which uses a whole other way of processing the tracks. The only bad thing is I have to pay to get another program.
2.Do any of you have advice for which way to choose when mastering an album?

I've never experienced a drop out, error or anything while bouncing, but I'm bouncing realtime, cuz everybody is saying this is the only way to bounce.
3. Is this true? Is this recommended?

[Lagerfeldt]

Do you have a very, very old Mac?

Even the smallest Macs today will run those plug-ins without any hiccups.

What's your sound card and what's the buffer size?

You screenshot looks funny, the graphics are blurred and the fonts are looking wrong? Is that due to an automatic size-reduction tool on GS when uploading?

[kas_lar]

Hej Holger:-)

No it's Macbook pro 2,4.
Yeah, the conversion from tiff to jpg must have gone wrong.

Metric Halo 2882 at 1024 buffer samples

I can't run ALL of them on all channels at once.

EDIT: Ja, du kan se hvilket lydkort jeg købte istedet for dine RME convertere :-)

[macc]

Originally Posted by kas_lar

I can't run ALL of them on all channels at once.

'I'm mastering with plugs only - Flux Epure to cut and do very small boosts, T-racks with just the Pultec to do low end and high end boosts.
Then the Solera to compress - this is a advanced piece of equipment, I'm still learning to do a subtle compression without ruining the dynamics.
At the end the Kjaerhus MPL 1 Pro for limiting.'

You're doing that on EVERY channel? stike

[kas_lar]

Hi macc.

No - no every song. Some of the songs have almost nothing changed - I mean I done almost nothing to the original track.
I'd guess I could move the Limiter onto the master, but some of the songs require a different setting, and this way, I can recall the song and it's plugin setting very quickly.
I've read a lot of your threads, Macc (Holger as well), I'd be please if you'd give some advice - A newbie like me, learning more and more.

[macc]

Ahhh, right, I am with you now - I thought this was the mix, my misunderstanding.

I hear what you're saying about having one limiter on the master, though personally I don’t find it a problem to store a preset for each song for recall purposes, just in case. But I don’t see why you can’t export ‘offline’ – I am pretty sure that Logic wouldn’t do any funny business when compared to realtime rendering.

If you want to put your mind at rest you could do a realtime render, and an offline render, then do a null test to ensure that there’s no funny business. Then you can have confidence when exporting offline.

I’m sure Lagerfeldt would agree that there’s nothing strange happening with offline bounces in Logic…?

[synthoid]

If you mute the channel strips in the mixer that are not in use, rather than soloing the one you want to hear, then I believe the load on the CPU will drop.

-synthoid

[Lagerfeldt]

Logic does plug-in/CPU load differently than almost all other DAWs, Logic Pro actually being the most efficient one since it completely bypasses CPU load on plug-ins when they're not being used even though they are active.

Buffer size of 1024 seems excessive, you should be able to set it at 256. Try that first and see if it fixed the problem.

Send your arrangement to me as a zip file (without the audfio files) and I'll check what's up.

[kas_lar]

Hi Holger - Let me see if I get this right.

You say that I'm supposed to use every plug in my mix at the same time, with a 256 buffer setting?
Let me try it, and then I mail you the project.

5 minuts later -> No, I can't, even if I use the advice from synthoid - to mute the unused tracks (see pic)

Here's the project

[Lagerfeldt]

But why would you use them all at the same time?

You're mastering, not mixing.

It's one (stereo) track at a time, or maybe one overlapping for a segue.

Something is wrong in your setup or you have a malfunctioning plug-in?

[Jesse Graffam]

Originally Posted by Lagerfeldt

You screenshot looks funny, the graphics are blurred and the fonts are looking wrong? Is that due to an automatic size-reduction tool on GS when uploading?

High chroma subsampling + high compression ratio = crappy JPEGs like that.


At any rate yeah, odd way to do this, by having everything up at once. If I can ask - why are you doing it that way??

[mdoelger]

isn't t-racks3 said to be very cpu consumtive?

[kas_lar]

hi again

Holger, you're spot on as usual :-) I'm not using all the plugs at once, I work on one song (e. g. song #3) at a time. After I'm done, I then bypass the plugs on song #3, and move on to song #4 and enable plugs on the track if needed.
At the end of it all, I'd just like to compare song#5, #6, #7, #2, and so on. But I keep enabling and bypassing plugs on the songs/channels I'd like to hear. It's hard to A/B with all the time spend on bypassing/enabling the plugs.

Now I've come up with 2 solutions.
1.I do a quick bounce and keep the new version of song#2(no plugs at all) right along the version of song #2 with has the plugs enabled and ready for adjustment.

2. I bounce all the processed songs to another logic project without any plugs and listen and compare in that project.



uncajesse-> I agree, as I've stated this is my first full length album, and this is kindda odd to me too, but this is the only way I know right now. This method has the flexibility to compare right on the spot and do adjustments continually. I've created this thread to get advice or recommendations from you guys.
I'm thinking of letting go of this and starting to use 2 track programs like Peak Pro 6 or wavelab 6.

[First Aid]

Originally Posted by uncajesse

At any rate yeah, odd way to do this, by having everything up at once. If I can ask - why are you doing it that way??

surely so he can A/B the masters before bouncing?

you should be able to a/b by having track 1 unmuted and then soloing track2, muting track1 and disabling the plug, unsoloing track 2, soloing track3, muting track 2 and disabling.... etc. with no dropout between comparisons.

If you're t-racks is registered you should be able to get the individual plugs instead of using the whole suite and this will dramatically reduce cpu load.

[Lagerfeldt]

But Kasper, your explanation doesn't make any sense to me.

Unless of course there's a bug in T-RackS that causes overloads.

The "solution" you've come up with isn't necessary at all assuming things are working.

Since this is not an error in Logic it must be an error with one of the 3rd party plug-ins you're using, such as T-RackS.

[Table Of Tone]

I do often stack the tunes (mixes) up in the playback DAW (as you have) but I am not running any plugins so I don't get a CPU problem.
I'll obviously mute every track apart from the one I wanna have playback.

You are running more than enough plugins so you wanna create presets of what you've get setup for each tune and maybe set up and save a session for each song.

Open up all of the captures on quicktime after you've bounced em.

Start them all playing and just click on each one to compare.

Recall any tunes that are either too loud, too quiet or just simply not right.

You got each session saved so you can get back to what you had setup on each tune and make the necessary changes.

Once you've got em all how you want em, you'll need to use another DAW to assemble/PQ/label/Code em on.

Give it a go.

[kas_lar]

I've done some testing and it seems the T-racks is messing something up, here's a snapshoot with everything inserted expect the T-racks... (sorry for the blurry pics) And It's fine and working.
Thanks for the tip, Tableoftone, but I'd like to do it in my sequencer...

I'll chime in again in a few days when I've been in the studio again.
I'm also looking for another EQ plugin, beside the Pultec, to do boosts....

[Table Of Tone]

Glad you found the culprit!

[mdoelger]

Originally Posted by kas_lar

I've done some testing and it seems the T-racks is messing something up, here's a snapshoot with everything inserted expect the T-racks... (sorry for the blurry pics) And It's fine and working.
Thanks for the tip, Tableoftone, but I'd like to do it in my sequencer...

I'll chime in again in a few days when I've been in the studio again.
I'm also looking for another EQ plugin, beside the Pultec, to do boosts....

T-Racks is available as single processors. Maybe check them out.

[LdC]

Have you tried changing the settings in the T-RackS 3 Preferences panel? If you're only using the Pultec EQ, you don't need the Linear Phase option engaged as it only has an effect for the LP EQ. I don't think it will reduce CPU usage but it does reduce the buffer size a great deal - might be worth trying in case that's what's causing problems. You could also try using the non-oversampled option when you need to do your comparisons, since it uses less CPU, then the oversampled mode for general use.

[kas_lar]

Hi everybody.
I just got the single pultec plug a few days ago, and I've copied every setting and the logic project runs much smoother now.
I'm still thinking of switching to another program and way to doing masters.