I don't claim any of these tips are the only and correct way to do things or that they're even useful - they're just the best I've come up with so far. These ideas are the result of experimentation, reading books and net. If you know there's a better way to do things, please share it. Be explicit and detailed. I'm especially interested in knowing about plug-ins/processing, their order and useful settings range. Let me know where I got it wrong, what's valid and what could be improved on, and what's just plain stupid. "Good, this is a chance to experience awkwardness and to discover new kinds of mistakes." -Marvin Minsky on learning in The Society of Mind, a book about simple, unconscious processes, that constitute human consciousness. Highly illumining. A frequently asked question: How do I master with Logic? Lucky you, here's The Complete, How to Master using Emagic Logic aka Become a World Class Mastering Engineer During a Lunch Break. Well, not *quite*. Yet. In the meantime, some thoughts about routing, stems, ducking, naming tracks and plug-ins in the Monitor channel: Make a new song. Name it something like "[Project Name] Mastering". Don't sweat over names too much, especially if your expertise is nonsensical naming and file searching when you'd rather be doing something else. Mastering routing All tracks of Song 1, usually just one stereo track, are routed to Bus 1 named Song 1 (this has the plug-ins for the song), which goes to Monitor (Output 1-2 is named Monitor). If you want more control while mastering consider doing several bounces, called submixes or stems: Track 2 Song 1 BD (Bass Drum or Kick) Track 3 Song 1 Snare Track 4 Song 1 Bass (compressor as ducker, reacting to BD) Track 5 Song 1 Voc Lead Track 6 Song 1 Voc Background Track 7 Song 1 Voc FX (Reverb, etc) Track 8 Song 1 Inst Normal (without quiet tracks) Track 9 Song 1 Inst Quiet (tracks that have to remain quiet) Often the tracks you want to keep quiet in the background get boosted too much during mastering unless you preemptively mix them softer. Therefore you might want to consider bouncing them separately, too. Why not start at Track 1? I have named Track 1 Direct and it goes to Monitor, because I need to listen without any processing once in a while. And what could be more logical than Track 1? Track 128? Not legacy compatible. You could also use 4 buses: Bus 1 BD, Snare, Bass Bus 2 Inst (Three compressors set up as a duckers, 1 reacts to BD, 2 Snare, 3 Bass. Instead of three, you could have only one ducker reacting to Bus 1. There could even be a ducker reacting to lead vocals.) Bus 3 Voc Bus 4 Song 1 (Naturally Buses 1,2 and 3 are routed here. This one goes to Monitor.) Make the buses available in the Arrange window so you can automate them. To make it easier to find the right bus, color at least the Master Buses. You could use duckers during mixing, so that you don't need to do it (so much) here. Or you could just forget about ducking and do the job with one stereo bounce. Make markers for important locations in each song for quick comparison. Assign keys for jumping to these. Modifier, like Shift, Alt, Ctrl + numbers work fine. Here's a useful feature I'm using. While mixing, all your stuff is routed to Master (usually Bus 64) and from there to Monitor (Output 1-2, usually). You have 16 (matched loudness) reference tracks looping just the hot parts (or whatever is required) routed to a bus. Track 113 R 1 (These are routed to a bus called m Ref, which stands for Master Reference) ... Track 128 R 16 The last track needn't be 128. It can be whatever you set as the maximum number of tracks in Logic. You have 16 buttons that switch between your master and the reference tracks. You bounce the song as a full length CD if the tracks overlap and set the markers in the CD writing software. Master buses: 57 m Ref -> Monitor 58 m Drum -> m Drum Inst 59 m Inst -> m Drum Inst 60 m Drum Inst --> m FX 61 m Vocals -> m FX 62 m FX -> m Comp 63 m Comp -> Master 64 Master -> Monitor Everything goes to m FX, except stuff that needs to bypass the processing and has to be only compressed in m Comp, or you can bypass that and send it to Master, which has no processing. Tips for plug-ins in your Monitor channel, in order: RMS Buddy is a peak, average and current RMS meter. http://www.elementalaudio.com Inspector for Mac. Vintage Meter is a VU meter. There are some things about it I'm not sure of: while metering some rather punchy tracks like Bell Biv DeVoe (RMS around -11.5, take a listen to them http://www.artnomad.com/bbd/) with -12 or -14 0VU ref level, the needle hits the right edge over +6. Doesn't this defeat the idea of metering? What's the deal with -12 or -14 0VU ref point? Using -8 as 0VU ref level, the peaks hit +6, the troughs stay around -10 and -7 to -5. Is there some problem with setting the ref level by the material you're listening to? Where do I set the 0VU reference level? Some frequency spectrum analyzer with a snapshot feature for average spectrum comparing is useful. Limiter at 0 dBFS for safety, make sure it doesn't distort, ever. A duplicate of that Limiter. If you accidentally Ctrl-click (Mac Alt) the first one without noticing it for some time, so the limiter has been bypassed, your speakers are hot, and the new freeware plug-in isn't quite debugged yet.... Welcome to the +60 dBFS Club. (!!!) Multipressor with Linear Max preset, with thresholds down and compression ratios up, for radio sound emulation. Make sure reference music sounds good with this. EQ or some filters for small speaker simulation, cut highs and lows. Listening to reference music, adjust the low filter cutoff so that you don't hear any bass. Then bring it down so that you barely hear the bass. Now if your bass can't be heard thru this, you need more high frequencies to your bass. You could have several cutoff frequencies for different references. The treble is a matter of choice. Make it sound like a balanced little speaker. EQ simulating a home stereo amplifier with loudness button pressed and maximum treble and bass. EQ boosting bass and treble so that your frequency response is linear. Calibrate by ear with a sine wave sweeping up and down. You need different settings for different loudness levels. EQ boosting bass and treble maximally, but so that it still sounds good. Your reference music should sound pleasing with this on when played loud. Boost the highs and lows AS MUCH AS YOU CAN without making it sound unpleasant. If there's a frequency that's 0.5 dB higher than what you have here, you'll notice it. Start with the lowest frequencies and work your way up. At least 12 dB or more boost can usually be added to frequencies below 30. At 16-20 KHz the limit is +6 to +12 dB. Those are the low and high frequency limits for you. Now try your own track. Does it approach these limits or does it exceed them? Adjust accordingly. The next time you take your tracks to a car sub woofer system you'll hear the difference. Volume -3 dB Volume -4 dB Volume -8 dB Volume -17 dB Volume L- R+ (the other channel inverted) for listening to side information only with DirMixer Mono activated. (Or if using PC, try C_SuperStereo with center down.) DirMixer Mono Reverb 1 (Not really necessary, kind of experimental.) Reverb 2 Reverb 3 All Vols bypassed sounds REALLY LOUD, and is a bit irritating. In fact it's just 3 dB irritating. -3 dB takes off the edge, but is really the maximum I will tolerate. -3 -4 = -7 Normal mixing vol for full frequency spectrum stuff. I don't touch the bass or treble unless I'm here. -3 -4 -8 = -15 This is the optimized, pleasant level. Not too soft, not too loud. Just perfect. I can listen at this level for hours. Some days it's -13, some days it's -15. Today it was -15. Usually I start at -15 and it creeps up to -13 but -12 or -11 is definitely getting too close, too "in your face". The sound pressure is demanding my attention. It gets in the way of listening to the content. Does that make sense to you? You know when you watch the TV, it's a very narrow loudness window where you like to have it or it keeps bothering you. But when I switch to the full spectrum level, it's just great, because I've switched my "mind preset" to that level, too. Gotta take a break for a while to let the ears adjust to -15 again. -3 -4 -8 -17 = -32 Quiet. Try balancing levels with this, the small speaker simulation and mono. Also try the boosting plug-ins. The different combinations of vols pretty much cover all my listening level needs. The reverbs are for simulating distance to the sound source, but nothing beats listening in another room. Try with mono and different combinations of plug-ins. Try clipping in the Monitor channel or with a plug-in. +0.1 to +1.6 dB have done wonders for the bass drum and overall punch. Basically, it just cuts off the tops of the waveform. Make sure to listen to it with headphones to catch excessive distortion. Some rap records distort severely and are unpleasant to listen to with headphones but sound ok with loudspeakers. Emagic Compressor has a Clip feature, hard or soft. Some version of it has had a balance offset, though. Not sure of 5.5.0. Examining CDs I've seen other type of clipping too, a bit rounded, not as severe as digital, and I'd like to know more about that. Also, do you dither after clipping or before it? I guess after it. It's all about getting different perspectives on your sound. So what's ducking? A ducker is a dynamic processor which lowers or "ducks" the level of one audio signal based upon the level of a second audio signal. This is useful for making sure a sound, eg. the bass drum, always cuts through the mix. To achieve this 1 Send all tracks to be ducked to a bus. 2 Insert a compressor, which has the bass drum track selected in the side chain, to the bus. In order for ducking to function, the Emagic Compressor's automatic gain make-up or "Auto Gain" must be disabled. 3 Every time a bass drum comes along, the conflicting parts will therefore be momentarily reduced in level. You only need a very brief ducking action to let a little more attack transient through. Searching for mastering, Google found something else: http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2001/07/15/stories/13150611.htm I like Sennheiser HD-600 and Genelecs with a sub. If you're familiar with these, and know something better, please tell me what it is. [ April 20, 2003, 11:35 AM: Message edited by: Hans Sjoblad ]