EQ Magazine - April 2009 - (Page 50) GEAR HEAD ROUNDUP MASTERING TOOLS by Craig Anderton The controversy is over: We all know there’s a reason why pro mastering engineers using high-end analog gear are pros, and we also know it’s possible to do a more than credible job of mastering in the project studio with plug-ins. The whole point is to make your final mix sound better—and no one really cares how you get there, as long as it sounds great. This special section on mastering has several elements. This month, “Sounding Board” features comments from project studio owners about how they master in the “real world”—sometimes under major time and money limitations (and there’s additional info from them at www.eqmag.com). The second section is a roundup of affordable software mastering tools with highlights, strengths, and limitations. Next, we approached some of the top mastering engineers on the planet to get their exclusive take on what it’s like in the high-end world—with many lessons that apply to the project studio. And finally, we’ve included links for the companies mentioned in all of the mastering-related sections—a good thing, too, because most of the software that’s covered has downloadable demos so you can give the programs a spin in your studio. But even all this isn’t everything we wanted to cover, so stay tuned to future issues of EQ for more on project mastering. After all, we want to help you make the best-sounding recordings possible. SOFTWARE MASTERING TOOLS Want to master “in the box”? You can: The difference between quality software tools and quality hardware continues to narrow. We won’t cover individual plugins; there are a zillion companies making individual plug-ins, and we can’t do justice to all of them. But we can cover the main editing platforms, as well as a few plug-in suites that are representative of the genre. As to detailed comparisons and evaluations, it’s not really necessary: operation in a simple, obvious way. Sound Forge is a workhorse. When someone from a competing company asked me why I still use it, I said “Well, there’s this one keyboard shortcut that has probably saved me dozens of hours when doing narration” (it pre-rolls audio before a splice, then immediately picks up after the splice). That’s why being around for a while has its advantages: There are lots of little goodies that come only from a user saying, “You know, it would be really great if you just . . .” and then having someone implement it. Strengths: User interface so simple you could be unconscious and still make it work. iZotope plug-ins. Very useful noise reduction tools. Includes CD Architect. Limitations: No spectral editing. CD Almost all of these programs have downloadable demos. Grab ’em, do your homework, and figure which works for you. But the following—in no particular order—should point you in the right direction. (All prices are MSRP/list prices.) Sony Sound Forge 9 (Windows, $319.95) Sound Forge has been around since the mid-’90s, which in software years, makes it about 3,000 years old. So why is it still successful? First, it’s a boring program—and I mean that in a good way. It doesn’t crash, it doesn’t pout, the learning curve is almost a straight line, and perhaps most importantly, Sony hasn’t messed with an exceptionally straight-ahead interface. When changes have been made, they’ve made sense—for example, including noise reduction tools and CD Architect as part of the program rather than optional extras, supplementing their original plug-ins with masteringquality plug-ins from iZotope, and integrating surround/multichannel Sound Forge’s noise reduction window is in front, with the Wave Hammer level maximizer behind it. The lower file includes video as well as audio, the top file is narration. Architect doesn’t do ASIO. Some of the older plug-ins are showing their age—the time-stretching needs work. 50 EQ APRIL 2009 www.eqmag.com http://www.eqmag.com http://www.eqmag.com
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