Mastering Introduction

[JouniL]

Hi!

Lately I have read Gators excellent introductions to mixing and mastering with Audacity for RW. As a total DAW noob they have helped me alot!

Found another good introduction to mastering from Izotopes/Ozones homepage:

http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/ozone/OzoneMasteringGuide.PDF

This is explains what mastering is about (64 pages!) and you can easilly skip the Ozone specific parts.

Ozone seems to be a very cool VST plug-in that you can download and try out for 10 days and learn mastering. You should be able to use it with Audacity (using the VST enabler plug-in) but I haven't tried that myself. Anyone who knows if it works with Audacity?

I've used the free Ozone winamp plug-in which works like a charm.

/Jouni

[gatorjj]

Thanks Jouni!

Ozone is great, I use it a lot. Ozone's guide that you posted is very comprehensive, and highlights a lot of applications of their plug beyond just mastering, like using on vocal tracks or other tracks.

Don't give up on the RiffWorks tools though, there's a huge amount of good stuff in there if you know how to use it! For example TripWire is a great tool that I think is little understood. There's also a ton of good free VST's out there, I think cwight recently put the KVR link up in the Green Room.

Don't get too wrapped up in it all or you'll never record though!

[fooks]

Don't get too wrapped up in it all or you'll never record though!

i hear that!

[ShredRex]

Amen brother! Just play...send the file to Gator to master...sooo much easier.

[Les]

Ah hell,Go for it all,Gator'll bail ya out.Or if you screw it up too much,just record it again.I've done that more than 4 or 5 times.

[GuitarSlinger]

I know that Audacity is a neat free software, but the way it handles VSTs is just annoying. Reaper is such a better choice and comes with a boatload of effects.

[mickeymix]

Gotta agree with ya Jason.....that's why I use Wavelab 1st for VST FX(can be done in real time), then bring to Audacity.........for fading, converting to OGG, MP3 etc........

[GuitarSlinger]

I have wavelab on a disk that came with my soundcard somewhere, I should check it out.

Doing fades with reaper is cool too, you just grab the corner of an audio file and drag it, rick click and choose the type of fade.

My mixes are getting pretty good just with Riffworks though, but the main reason I go to other program is to get my music louder and sometimes to use a special reverb for the final mix.

[JouniL]

I downloaded Reaper yesterday because Audacity could not handle VST's properly.

Reaper seems to be really good but here we have yet another prog to learn (sigh). I feel that this is a problem with music programs since they usually all come with their own touch and feel (being very creative in that also!) in their user interfaces.

Although, in Reaper I could not find any quality settings for the OGG-Vorbis export which means I will use Audacity to export from .wav to .ogg.

I wonder if R/W does any (hidden) mastering when you do a MIX of your stuff to either OGG or WAV. Anyone who knoes?

Interesting stuff I feel I'm getting enlighted here!

[mickeymix]

Did you dowlnload and install the VST enabler for Audacity?

[cwight]

has anyone ever tried n-Track?

[JouniL]

Did you dowlnload and install the VST enabler for Audacity?

Yes I did but all I got when using a VST with Audacity was a table of the parameters of the VST, not their user interface.

[JouniL]

has anyone ever tried n-Track?

No, but I just checked out their homepage. Looks fine and the specs and features pretty much covers what I need. I will D/L it tonight and check it out.

Even though it is great to evaluate a piece of software like this, one of the more important aspects is wether the community using that software is vibrant and alive. A supporting community around a software (creating plug-ins, helping people at forums etc) is invaluable. So don't forget to check out the forums, FAQs etc of Reaper, n-Talk etc before you decide.

The good thing is that both Reaper and n-talk are reasonably priced ($50-$64).

[ailerom]

Wavosaur has good plugin implementation IMO. Next best thing to Wavelab as far as I am concerned.

http://www.wavosaur.com/

[mickeymix]

Did you dowlnload and install the VST enabler for Audacity?

Yes I did but all I got when using a VST with Audacity was a table of the parameters of the VST, not their user interface.

Yeah that's the way Audacity handles the VST's ....PLUS you can't tweak them in "real" time that's why I always use WaveLab for VST's first and then Audacity as the last step as I mentioned to Jason (GuitarSlinger) up above.......