Agreed.  I use them still along side the other plugs I own!!  It's my main goto compressor for dialoge tracks in documentary mixing - just seems to work.

If you want something which will nag you occasionally but work amazingly in an unlimited demo version, check out Reaper.  I now have a Nuendo box sitting and getting dusty on my shelf as Reaper has changed my entire approach to audio.  Personal version is nothing (like $60?) and the compressors are look ahead and react solidly if you set them well.  The EQ is the best thing I've ever used and fully tweak-able.  The plugs are really functional too although nothing is pretty... it's all about being a performance program so they don't waste memory on flashy looking interfaces.   Their manual has some great explanations too - as does the Waves manual (which used to be an incredible read as an introduction to what the various elements do).  Can't recommend Reaper enough.

In regards to rolling off low end, I do this on a track by track level.  I find it's really important to solo a track, listen and look at your spectral analyzer to see what's happening in way of low end wobble.  With some bass instruments I find that I use a bass extender to put back in struggling frequencies, say <50hz...   This is tooootally frowned on but I don't care - with the right tool you can define a compression ratio for that sub bass and get it sounding pretty punchy.  Sometimes it works really well, sometimes it just falls flat.  You can't really do it to the whole mix - just some of the problematic bass instruments.

Generally I do 2 layers of mastering at the end.  One in Reaper (usually just EQ) to get it sounding clean and solid and I A/B my tune with something comercial turned down to get a feel for if my balance is right(ish).  Usually my mids are a little lacking at this point but I hit that up later.  I usually set up a temp mastering chain (EQ, MultiComp, Limiter) after I've written my first chorus or so... that way it sounds nice while I'm composing / mixing and also protects my speakers (instead of mixing at say -15dB where a 0db glitch out destroys tweeters - yes, I've seen/heard it happen!)  I take off the temp mastering chain and tweak the mix before pumping it out to a WAV file with about 2db headroom or so.

Once I've exported my final WAV, I take it into Audition 1.5 (effectively Cool Edit) for a FFT based Lowpass Filter (under 28hz at stupidly high precision), add soft look ahead compression - usually to pull the kicks back a bit, apply analog EQ (a plugin) almost always to add mids and deal with upper highs, and then tickle the final mix with a hard limiter.  Sections that are quiet or are building up I sometimes go back and compress harder so the kick ins are more predominant.  Sometimes I push up the kick in's by a dB or two just for the first second - so when they are slammed by the limiter they have more power.  I find that it's really important to be able to see what you are doing - which is why I do all of this in a dedicated waveform editor and not just in a chain of effects on the master channel of my multitrack program.

That said, don't think I'll be mastering up too many of the tunes here with that much precision ;-)

I rushed mine out and it probably sounds like ass. BUT when all is said and done the point is just to actually create stuff so anything is better than nothing

beautiful! thank you friends!

the mix i did for my first track was probably the downfall of the production, hopefully i can get a bit better at it in coming weeks.

Endorphin is an amazing free master compressor, just sayin'

Actually all of that guy's plugins are fan-freakin'-tastic. And free!

The standalone version of Ozone 5 is pretty cheap, really. 

I tend to use a combination of Ableton and Waves plug-ins for mastering and often sweeten the mix with EQ, compression, (very rarely) limiters, reverb, etc.

I've never been a huge fan of my own mastering/p.p efforts, though I made a 2012 resolution to bone up on my theory.  It's another reason why I'm here.

The basic Ableton effects are pretty good. You won't find anything thats free and better I'd say.

oh. and speaking of izotope ozone. they have a decent PDF on mastering on their site. http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/o … asp#guides

also. i recommend the book "Mastering Audio - The art and the science" by Bob Katz  http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Audio-S … 0240808371

I love those plugins. Didn't know they were open-sourced, good for him.

The old MDA-VST plugins have always been free and are now open source http://mda.smartelectronix.com/
They arent necessarily super high quality, being that they are free.. but they will get the job done.

anybody know of any decent free compressors or limiters plugins? i used the native ableton one in pre production, but im looking for something else for post. couldn't find any on pirate bay lol.

If I like what I write , I'll consider it in time.

If you have the cash, Ozone 4 does wonders!
xo

Awesome post , thanks for taking the time to respond in depth. I'm useless when it comes to Mastering and will definitely be referring back to your post/exposé in future.

There are lots of good articles online about various mastering techniques. The real important things you need to know about are EQ and Compression. An important rule of thumb is to have good reference material to compare your track to. Always listen to one of your favorite songs that is a similar genre of the song you are mastering first. Go back to it at any time to refresh your ears. The human ear and brain have a strange capacity to compress and equalize by themselves so you need a common frame of reference. There are no rules that are necessarily set in stone, but there are some guidelines that seem to work most of the time. The goal in mastering is to get things to sound reasonably natural in as many different listening situations as possible. The idea is not necessarily to get things as loud as possible, but it seems that a lot of people think that that is important. A good place to start is on EQing the roll-off points on the high and low end. On the low end, rolling off somewhere between 30hz and 60hz seems to allow enough room for you to get your mixes up to a reasonable loudness level. The High mids starting from about 1khz all the way up to 20khz seem to sound best when they smoothly roll off, roughly following the fletcher-munson curve for 85db SPL. For CD and/or internet release, things can be prevented from sounding too tinny on some devices if you have a good round curve starting from 16khz going all the way down to nothing. All of this is a rough guide and is purely subjective. Again, on the low end.. you really just have to use your ears and move the shelf around a bit until it sounds right.. but usually its somewhere between 30hz and 60hz depending on how much energy you have down there. The more you roll off the low end, the louder you will be able to get your track to sound, as low frequencies eat up more energy. Tooling around on the extreme highs is the same kind of thing.. just screw around with your high shelf until it sounds right.   For the mids, well. the idea is to get each instrument to sound clear but not unnaturally isolated. Also. if your track sounds muddy. you can usually remove some mud somewhere between 400-800hz. Most of the time you can deal with very small db increments on a parametric EQ that has its q set to about one full octave. .which is 0.30 on most eqs. Ill get back to you on the compression/limiting side of things. Need to go work on my track Hope this helps some.

I don't have much for mastering because i've yet to get Pro Tools on my computer, so usually i also work in Audacity or Reason. When i am on Pro Tools at TAFE (college) I like to use the Stereo Widener on the Master channel input to open the track up and give it some more stereo depth without any extra equalisation, i would like to find the Audacity equal if such one exists.

Limiter is pretty much a fast-attack compression and it just keep the track from clipping, so if you already got a limiter then you don't exactly need another compression, you never want too much compression on your tracks.

Equalising also helps, I do something different for every composition and it's something that im still learning, sometimes for example i put my high mids a little bit up at around 2-4k and only at about 5dB but only if it works, and most of the time i find it works out pretty good, particularly for dance music, along with some low end tweaking. i like my mixes to be full but not exactly too thick if that makes any sense. Reverb always livens things up as well.

Mastering is the correct term. I'm only learning myself but you have got a good idea yourself. It's also good to get a decent pair of monitors to get a good audio perception, something that i am investing in myself.