FredixBlog


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Poor man’s mastering: Mastering without a plugin

author Posted by: fredometro on date Aug 21st, 2008 | filed Filed under: Music

In a guitar forum, someone was asking where he could find good free mastering
plugin, or a working demo. And I was wondering wether it is possible to do a
reasonably correct mastering without such a plugin, only by using equalization
and compression, which is basically used in mastering.

I am not a theorist and I wanted to give it a try. So, using Tracktion, I
created a project with 4 tracks. First track for the bass frequencies, second
for the low-mediums, third for high-mediums and fourth for the highs. Each track
has its own compressor. So simple! I have now a project for mastering.. All I
have to do is to insert a copy of the final mixed track on each of these tracks.

Here is how the four tracks look:

The result is rather convincing. Listen to the three versions of the song:

1) Not masterized:
http://www.cybersouk.com/musics/2bemastrrized.wav

2) Masterized with Acuma Final Mix:
http://www.cybersouk.com/musics/masterized_by_finalmix.wav

3) Masterized with the tiny mastering project:
http://www.cybersouk.com/musics/masterized_by_project.wav

Conclusion: If your finances are low and are not working on a very demanding
project, you may take advantage by using this technique.

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