Can you do a "decent" Mastering job with Logic Built in Plug-ins?

[Joeytpg]

Nothing "PRO" just high quality Demos and some semi pro Jingle work ?

Or should I save some cash and buy something like Isotope Ozone?

[trmchenry]

It's all in the ears. I've done plenty of great sounding masters using the built in Logic plugs. The plugs that come with Logic are actually, in my opinion, the best sounding built in DAW plugs out there.

[synthoid]

Originally Posted by trmchenry

It's all in the ears. I've done plenty of great sounding masters using the built in Logic plugs. The plugs that come with Logic are actually, in my opinion, the best sounding built in DAW plugs out there.

+1. I've made lots of rough masters (just for clients to listen to mixes at home, so the levels are not ridiculously far from other tracks they listen to by comparison). Logic's adaptive limiter is really not bad, though you can't drive it as hard as some other software limiters. The linear eq is fine. The compressor is great overall, not my first choice for rough masters, but it's really not bad. Definitely can be done!

-synthoid

[Twerk]

The multiband comp in Logic is actually quite nice!

[Surbitone]

Yup. thumbsup

[Shy]

I can make the best of them, sure, but it depends what you think is "decent".

[Paul Gold]

Probably yes although I haven't tried. Can you?

[CJ Mastering]

Originally Posted by Joey Tpg

Nothing "PRO" just high quality Demos and some semi pro Jingle work ?

Or should I save some cash and buy something like Isotope Ozone?

What you have is enough to make pro quality songs. Its not the plugins that make pro quality. If you cant do it with what you have, you wotn do it with iZotope
Cj

[monsieur x]

The short answer is:

Yes, one can create quality finalized audio files using Logic Pro. Any and all money you will be saving should be invested in your monitoring (acoustical treatment, monitors, monitor controller, DA convertor).

More info based on my experience:

The multi-band is very useable if you need to ever use one, and VERY tweakable.

Logic's tape emulator plugin is "hidden" in the Tape Delay. (Instantiate the Tape Delay insert, click on the triangle in the lower left, play with saturation point and make delay time 0 and no dry, all wet) This might do something nice to overly bright and harsh mixes.

The compressor is useful, and has multiple circuit types (some are better suited for processing a summed mix), and again, checkout the "advanced triangle" section for SC equalization, distortion and all sorts of other goodies.

The only negative thing I will say regarding the plugins one might put on a whole mix to "finalize/master" is: the adaptive limiter sounds like garbage to me. It make things sound very crunchy and distorted very easily. If you use it, don't cook the mix with it.

I hope something I said here might be of help.

[Ricey]

i can't. my mastering engineer probably could.

[Twerk]

Originally Posted by monsieur x

Logic's tape emulator plugin is "hidden" in the Tape Delay. (Instantiate the Tape Delay insert, click on the triangle in the lower left, play with saturation point and make delay time 0 and no dry, all wet) This might do something nice to overly bright and harsh mixes.

Did not know this! Thanks.

[Seba_Moro]

The adaptive limiter is in fact not working satifying. But Logic has a solid "internal" limiter. Just drive the master-output level as high (into plus) as you like it to be. Or better run all faders/groups up at the same time to save Bits.

When Bouncing or Exporting, Logic seems to "cut" the peaks over zero without any artefacts or distortion. (if you don't overdraw it of course).

Honestly I use it sometimes as a very neutral sounding limiter.

[Jonathan Race]

Originally Posted by Seba_Moro

The adaptive limiter is in fact not working satifying. But Logic has a solid "internal" limiter. Just drive the master-output level as high (into plus) as you like it to be. Or better run all faders/groups up at the same time to save Bits.

When Bouncing or Exporting, Logic seems to "cut" the peaks over zero without any artefacts or distortion. (if you don't overdraw it of course).

Honestly I use it sometimes as a very neutral sounding limiter.

Really? this doesn't sound right at all to me.

Where did you find this out from?

[bobsandifer]

We run our mastering sessions all the time through logic. That is if I cant convince my client to go to Glen S. A recent project was completed with logic on a 15inch macbook pro and AKG K702's in the backseat of my Navigator. Nothing but logic plugins.

I almost forgot. The absolute best mastering tool in the world was also used every step of the way. My Ipod and stock Apple earbuds. It has quiet a bit to do with being comfortable with what you use and have a really good set of ears.

[Elvis Gotta Gun]

Originally Posted by Seba_Moro

The adaptive limiter is in fact not working satifying. But Logic has a solid "internal" limiter. Just drive the master-output level as high (into plus) as you like it to be. Or better run all faders/groups up at the same time to save Bits.

When Bouncing or Exporting, Logic seems to "cut" the peaks over zero without any artefacts or distortion. (if you don't overdraw it of course).

Honestly I use it sometimes as a very neutral sounding limiter.

I just exported an audio track clipping Logic's master bus by 3db. Re-imported it into the session, and you seem to be right; it wasn't clipping the master anymore but was pinned at 0.

[Dave Rose]

Originally Posted by Elvis Gotta Gun

I just exported an audio track clipping Logic's master bus by 3db. Re-imported it into the session, and you seem to be right; it wasn't clipping the master anymore but was pinned at 0.

Io

It would be impossible to clip the internal master output after bouncing (without adding more gain) as a wave file can simply not go over 0db. However the process of overloading the digital output in the first case causes some pretty nasty distortion IMO. The compressor is ok and pretty versatile, linear phase eq not bad but a bit plasticy, adaptive limiter is horrible and wouldn't recommend the multi band for mastering unless the mix is really skewed. Get Ozone, the limiter sounds great in Intelligent 2 mode.

[Jaypin]

Originally Posted by monsieur x

The only negative thing I will say regarding the plugins one might put on a whole mix to "finalize/master" is: the adaptive limiter sounds like garbage to me. It make things sound very crunchy and distorted very easily. If you use it, don't cook the mix with it.

What's your preference of plug-in limiters/maximizers? At the moment the main ones I have are the Adaptive Limiter and Maxim from ProTools, but I think Maxim can be driven further and sound cleaner. Just wondering how these 'default' ones compare with what's out there.

[Bob Olhsson]

Sure you can if you have monitoring that is good enough to unambiguously know when "bypass" is the best sounding setting.

[tekkentool]

Not logic per se, but I've always thought the inbuilt DSP plugs from Renoise were excellent, the maximizer sounded a lot better than my Waves l1. which surprised me.

[KRE8A]

Without a doubt = 100% Yes



KRE8A q:?)

[acmeman]

For what their worth all the high end plugins are mainly useful in a well treated studio. For adding some other flavours
on a budget Melda plugins are good value. I tried the Comp & Limiter as substitutes for Logics; Multi/Comp - Limiter
and/or Waves SSL Bus comp & EQ. Inside my DAW on headphones & nearfields... not bad and free, in fact they were a
darn sight easier to work out and had a few extra dynamic controls not found on most others. I've had the Melda Plugs
for a while and was very surprised after using Logics plugs and trialling Waves recently. Well worth the download.

Melda's GUI's are not pretty but once you get over that they are quite useful.

This was while tracking and mixing haven't tried them while mastering, I'd certainly give them a try. Subtlety being the key.

[Laarsø]

Originally Posted by Joeytpg

Nothing "PRO" just high quality Demos and some semi pro Jingle work ?

Or should I save some cash and buy something like Izotope Ozone?

Plugins will only be of use for high quality mastering if the audio is already digital. Otherwise, it would be best to use an analog processor for the program path, so you can provide A|A|A-grade mastering.

For premastering, using plugins is ok, since there has to be at least one conversion to digital for compact disc or other digital audio release formats which are "pre[glass]mastered." For what it's worth, we are only usink SonicStudio eq strips rarely and only use other people's plugins for brick wall limitink (post-everythink else, besides SRC), even with digital audio sources.



Cheersø,
Laarsø

[Lagerfeldt]

Originally Posted by Seba_Moro

The adaptive limiter is in fact not working satifying. But Logic has a solid "internal" limiter. Just drive the master-output level as high (into plus) as you like it to be. Or better run all faders/groups up at the same time to save Bits.

There's no such thing as an "internal" summing limiter in Logic Pro, see below.

You won't be "saving bits" by doing any of this since there's no such thing as "saving bits" in this context.

When Bouncing or Exporting, Logic seems to "cut" the peaks over zero without any artefacts or distortion. (if you don't overdraw it of course).

That's straight digital clipping. Apparently you're not hearing the clipping distortion or not perceiving it as distortion, but depending on your monitoring environment and experience that's quite normal with some material with lots of masking potential. Try doing it on a clean, sinusoidal signal and you'll hear the artifacts very clearly.

Alternatively, you've activated normalizing with peak protection in the bounce dialog. This will pull down the level in floating point before commiting to a fixed point file, but that won't work like a limiter, i.e. there's no clipping. So I'm assuming the former explanation is relevant for you.

Originally Posted by Elvis Gotta Gun

I just exported an audio track clipping Logic's master bus by 3db. Re-imported it into the session, and you seem to be right; it wasn't clipping the master anymore but was pinned at 0.

That's because the signal goes from an internal 32 bit floating point signal to being a 24 or 16 bit fixed signal. Any overs will now be a flatlined at full scale (0 dBFS). You can never have a fixed point signal above 0 dBFS in a file, so it'll never show up as clipping. You can have a 0 dBFS+ signal during any subsequent processing or analog waveform reconstruction (D/A) caused by inter-sample peaks, though - but that's another story.

Originally Posted by Laarsø

Plugins will only be of use for high quality mastering if the audio is already digital. Otherwise, it would be best to use an analog processor for the program path, so you can provide A|A|A-grade mastering.

For premastering, using plugins is ok, since there has to be at least one conversion to digital for compact disc or other digital audio release formats which are "pre[glass]mastered."

Almost all mastering engineers use a combination of digital and analog processing on both digital and analog sources because the need for the right tool usually surpasses a dogmatic wish for an all analog chain during (pre-)mastering.

Perhaps you're twisting words since most beginners don't realize there's a distinction between pre-mastering and mastering, but that's just silly on a forum like Gearslutz, so I'll address your comment as if you mean pre-mastering.

[Jim Williams]

Excellent mastering jobs were also done before computers. All they had were some limiters, an EQ, maybe a de-es and some relays.

How many of you can still do that?

[Lagerfeldt]

Absolutely. Using just the tools you need to get the job done means a lot for the integrity of the signal, and therefore the music.

A really good mix rarely requires much processing. While bundles like Izotope offer great VFM it's usually overkill on a DIY job since any real problems should be addressed in the production/mix instead.

So to stay on the subject of the OP: yes, you can do a fair DIY job using just Logic plug-ins if you have good monitoring and know what you're doing. The weakest link will be yourself and your monitoring environment.

[Joelistics]

I personally couldn't live with just the built in Logic plugins even for those rare mixes that don't require any analog processing.. The EQs are too imprecise, the limiter squashy and the compressor, although quite flexible usually very obvious.
Like others have mentioned however the best first upgrade would be monitoring and room...

[StringBean]

I don't know much about mastering but I find you can push the adaptive limiter pretty hard without sound degradation (compared to L2 for example), the compressor is quite transparent as well as the eq. You could probably do a great master with them, provided the mix is good to begin with and doesn't need analog color.

[YTCrazyTieGuy]

I don't want to go too off topic, but do you guys have any thoughts about other DAWs? More specifically Studio One Producer (which doesn't come with Studio One Professional's mastering features)?
Thanks.
Let me know if you think I should start a new thread.

[Lagerfeldt]

Logic Pro offers the most and most flexible bundled plug-ins. Logic Studio also includes (or rather included, in the past tense) WaveBurner, though in all honesty it's a bit of a dud.

In terms of plug-ins Studio One isn't comparable to Logic Pro, but that goes for all other DAWs as well in my opinion. However, if you're going to be using 3rd party plug-ins that's not a relevant comparison.

[polybonk]

Originally Posted by Jim Williams

Excellent mastering jobs were also done before computers. All they had were some limiters, an EQ, maybe a de-es and some relays.

How many of you can still do that?

Funny. Thats what I use mostly these days. Especially music that will go out on my label. All hardware. I don't even need a software limiter.