I know there are two schools on mastering. Add color when tracking and mixing. Then when you have the sound you want, master with more transparent tools to fine tune. The other school is to add a little more color at the mastering stage. It really depends on how your two bus mix sounds which would determine which way to go.

The Waves Mastering plug ins are more of the transparent way. I have downloaded the 14 day trial period, and once I got past the basic learning curve, I have been pretty impressed with it. I did not think the EQ would be much better than the Cambridge EQ from UAD, but for mastering purposes, I was able to get more pleasant results with the Waves. Also the mulitband compressor takes chucks of freq's and adjust them to get your mix to gel better and even things out. The L2 is of course well known, and if used gently, can help you mix sound a little louder.

When I first tried them out, I had a Pent III computer and it just drove my CPU to 100%. But now with a Pent IV, I have enough power to run the plugs. Now with version 5, it works at 96 as well.

Has anyone else tried or is using the Waves Mastering plugs? What do you think of them.

Cheers

--------------------
revelationsoundstudio.com

I must say that for the price I find Waves stuff extremely over-rated. Give me the UAD and Powercore stuff anytime. The UAD Precision Limiter kicks the Waves L2/L3 ass!

Quote Electrodaddy:

---

I must say that for the price I find Waves stuff extremely over-rated. Give me the UAD and Powercore stuff anytime. The UAD Precision Limiter kicks the Waves L2/L3 ass!

---

But have you used the Mastering software? I did a A/B between the UAD PL and L2, and found them pretty close. The PL had a little more of an open sound but not by much.
I agree that when many of their plugs came out 5 years ago, now there are newer plugs that I prefer from UAD and Powercore. However the Waves Mastering plugs are newer, look fresher, and work very well.

--------------------
revelationsoundstudio.com

Hi Blueberry

I use the v4 mastering plugs in my studio.

I find them to operate exactly as you said - in a pleasantly transparent yet pretty powerful way. Having paid for them I would like to think this is something to do with their much hyped phase linearity. In any event, to my ear they certainly do seem to leave the sound alone when you want them to but are also capable of pretty muscular intervention when necessary.

I run them alongside a DBX Quantum and have recently found myself using them more often on restoration and mastering jobs.

But, again just as you said, there is a bit of a learning curve - or possibly I'm just an old sod.


Loopy

I have used the L1 quite a lot and find it to be very transparent, not to mention easy to use! Easy to get around 6dB of gain on a track without introducing audible artifacts, but retaining a good degree of dynamic range.
Too many tracks recently suffer from over-use of such plug-ins however - I was listening to Kosheen's Resist album the other day and by the time I got to the end my ears felt worn out!
Dynamic range in music is almost as important to me as other fundamental variations in music such as chord changes etc.
I would highly recommend the L1 and although I tend to agree with the previous post that Waves stuff is generally over-rated, these are definitely an exception for the reasons outlined above.

Edited by AndyJones (03/11/04 08:06 PM)

I use the L2 and the Linear Multiband. I no longer use the Master EQ, as I just think there are better plugs for that. For my experience, the Linear MB and the L2 (when used gently) yields good and transparent results.

Quote pdarg:

---

I use the L2 and the Linear Multiband. I no longer use the Master EQ, as I just think there are better plugs for that. For my experience, the Linear MB and the L2 (when used gently) yields good and transparent results.

---

That is interesting, since the EQ is Blueberry's favorite. what do you like better?

--------------------
James
"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake" ~Napoleon Bonaparte~

I find Izotope Ozone better for mastering purposes than the Waves plugs, but really all these tools should do a perfect job, I think even with a plain Wavelab or Adobe Audition audio editor you should be able to do more than adequate mastering job.

--------------------
www.descentintomadness.com

I use L2 for final normalising and the denoising SW is not bad, but that is it. The rest is done using hardware. The eqs are toys, not tools (my biased opinion!) and the reverbs seem to all sound dreadfully similar.

The prices seem to reflect the amount of advertsing they buy and not the quality.

--------------------
Auf der Oberbaumbrückenschlacht in Berlin geht es jährlich um die Territorialvorrechte. Sei dabei!