You’ve gotten your mixes where they need to be. Now they just need to be mastered. Simple, right? Wrong. Mastering is never simple.
Waveburner offers some excellent plug-ins for basic overall mastering of small, simple projects. The multipressor, for example, is a great tool for pinpointing areas in your mix that need attention. Also, Waveburner offers a couple different brickwall limiters to ensure that your mixes don’t clip. However, if you use too many plug-ins, you may notice that your CD is very different from your in-box mix.
I used Waveburner while mastering my most recent project, and I loved the versatility of the Multipressor, the simplistic, transient-free nature of the Linear Phase EQ’s, and the ease of use with the standard and adaptive limiters, but I noticed a little something that took a bit of wind out of my sails: my CD master sounded completely different. And not in a good way. In more of a “what if I buss an obnoxious click noise to my kick drum and sucked out all the bass” kind of way.
My only guess as to why this occurs is that Waveburner attempts to process while it burns, which, as my ears tell me, clearly does not work. I have read various accounts of this on other blogs and message boards as well, so I know I’m not crazy and I’m not just hearing something that isn’t there. This unfortunate situation led me to master entirely in Pro Tools – and my predicament turned into another golden opportunity.
After reading up on various mastering limiters and deciding that I didn’t want to troubleshoot our Ilok USB key for the rest of my life, I decided to try out the Massey L2007 mastering limiter. I’m glad I did. This intuitive little bad boy, combined with Maxim earlier in the mastering chain, allowed an incredible amount of control over the volume and overall tone of my project without squashing my snare, kick, or any other valuable piece of audio. Within the hour I had achieved the requisite volume needed in this volume war era without crushing my poor mix to death. From there it was merely a test of balance before I had the mix I wanted. A bounce and a few cut up tracks in Waveburner (yes, it still serves a function) and I had my final mix. Well, after addressing a few embarrassing digital clicks and pops in a few of the tracks….but it wouldn’t be fun if there weren’t problems every step of the way, would it?