Mastering is a term commonly used for referring the process of taking an audio mix and modifying it for distribution. There are various steps involved in the process starting from unifying the sound of a record, maintaining consistency across an album, and finally preparing for distribution. But what is Audio mixing? Audio mixing is the process by which different types of sounds are mixed into one or more channels. In the process, a volume level, frequency content, dynamics, and panoramic position are changed and or upgraded to a higher level.
Mixing and Mastering are altogether different terms. Mixing means bringing all multiple layers of music altogether. While Mastering means optimizing the overall sound and Plug-ins are tools that the user adds to DAW. DAW stands for the digital audio workstation. Plugins emulate real-world gear inside your DAW. They’re fun toys that offer many experiments and mutations of your own recorded sounds.
As we have enlisted the process of mastering above, let us see them in a more detailed manner.
The Process of Mastering
#1 The Sound of a Record
The mission of the first step is to correct mix balance issues and enhance the sonic characteristics, taking a good mix and putting the final touches on it. This can involve manipulating levels and general “sweetening” of the mix. Consider it the contrast between a decent sounding blend and an expert sounding, completed ace.
#2 Consistency Across an Album
This process is an extension of the previous step with evaluation of how individual tracks sound in sequence and in relation to each other. This doesn’t mean that make one preset and use it on all your tracks so that they have a similar voice. The actual goal is to reconcile the differences between tracks while enhancing the character of each of them.
#3 Preparation for Distribution
The last step involves making the song or sequence of songs for downloading, manufacturing and/or duplication.
Here are some of the best mastering plugins which you can use.
1. TDR Kotelnikov
This amazing mastering plugin allows you to manipulate your track with an expert touch at free of cost. The plugin has a 64bit multi-rate processing structure. And this feature helps to improve the total accuracy of the system. This is one of the first software compressors that doesn’t irritate the users. The best thing is that it has super fast speed, yet natural sounding compression. It also has a crest factor feature. Lastly, there is the presence of a flexible sidechain highpass filter. It is perfectly suited for stereo bus compression as well as other critical applications available in the market.
2. Plugin Alliance
This bundle from Plugin Alliance comes with a touch of everything: A high/low pass filter, a versatile four band equivalent weight, a soloing button from combining associated an equivalent weight gain/frequency filter for adding punch. excellent for creating the ultimate changes before mastering a song. Plugin Alliance had few issues. But the company resolved them in a span of time with the new update. However, Plugin Alliance is one of the best free mastering plugins.
3. IVGI – Saturation and distortion processor
One of the perils of manufacturing music within the digital world is everything will sound too clean and clinical. Starting with it, the third in our list is Saturation and Distortion processor. It is the constituent of Best Mastering Plugins due to the capability of very dense and dirty distortion effects to spice up into a single amazing track. The processor also provides you with a sensible amount of controls to manipulate the character of the saturation itself. This plugin also allows you to alter the frequency dependency of the saturation with the RESPONSE management. The plugin is internally calibrated to 0VU = -18dBFS.
4. ClipShifter
ClipShifter could be a waveshaping audio plugin that functions sort of a clipping-style clipper and might be used the least bit mixture stages, from distorting basses and drums to maximizing combine buses and warming up mixes. The plugin ClipShifter have the features like controlling and changing clip shape and also to adjust the harmonic content. Setting the Clip Shape control to maximum gives a hard-clipped sound. The distinguishing feature is Scalable waveform history view with click-and-drag editing of threshold controls to easily change. There are certain paid features available like changing the frequency, oversampling and doubling, etc.
5. Ferric TDS
Many people don’t have access to a vintage magnetic recorder. Luckily, there square measure some nice tape machine plug-ins accessible which will extremely heat up your mixes and masters. FerricTDS could be a straightforward however great-sounding module, that was impressed by the graceful, dynamic shaping characteristics of some high-end reel-to-reel tape machines. The plugin has the presence of extra harmonics and saturation effects.FerricTDS have 4x oversampled core algorithms, performance-critical parts are written in assembler, and it is mainly SSE-optimized. (SSE is a processor technology that allows single instruction multiple data. It stands for Streaming SIMD Extensions)
6. Multiband limiter
The Multiband limited is one of the best plugins for mastering. There are five modules: associate degree RMS mechanical device, peak electrical circuit, high-frequency electrical circuit, clipper, and a real peak electrical circuit. Brickwall and soft limiting are supported, and use completely different temporal order settings looking on the impact you wish. Mid/side is supported, and there’s a multiband mode for additional precise management over the limiting of various frequency bands. 4x oversampling is obtainable, and you get retro level meters and a selection of 2 GUIs.
7. Revival Plugin
The revival plugin is one of the processors which has a ton of research into what makes analog gear sound so good. The minimum requirements of the system are Quad Core i5 Processor, 4GB of RAM Mac OS X 10.7 or Windows 7 & Above. The findings were all made easier into just two buttons! The revival plugin is very simple and effective for use. Two knobs and that’s it; the Shimmer knob adds some very nice air and smooth sounding prime finish to your sources, and therefore the Thickness knob adds a pleasant spherical however punchy low finish to your sources. Oh yeah, it’s totally free.
8. The U-He Podolski
Various options and various features make it included in the best mastering plugins. The podolski have “zebra-style” sequencer plus a nice set of chorus and delay effects which makes it attractive. It is in continuous development. Podolski is totally free, straightforward, CPU- effective virtual analogue synthesizer. The podolski includes one oscillator, one filter, one envelope, and an arpeggiator sequencer. It is quite simple to use. And few tricks make it more advanced. The podolski plugin can easily create high-quality sounds with ease. The recent update includes TUC toys as an additional feature.
9. Boz Digital Labs Panipulator
Boz Panipulator provides the user as if working with the best mastering plugins. It permits you to listen your own mix audio under a ton of different playback conditions. It doesn’t requires any master skills. You can do it just by the flick of a switch. And the best thing is that it is available free. Panipulator can barely create a dent in your mainframe usage, thus there’s no reason that this plugin mustn’t be neglect each single song you combine. Panipulator lets you hear what your mix will sound like in any kind of environment so you can be sure that your mixes will vary across all the existing systems.
10. Sinevibes Atom
Sinevibes Atom is not a tough thing. It is very simple to use. And yes it is also easy to look at and less fearful than other plugins available. The best feature is the multiple waveforms which grants you to experiment in tons of different ways. The dual modulators of Sinevibes atom with 8 waveforms, per-cycle chaos function and shape lag on/off switch.The processor have five various resonant filter types. And those types have three slope settings – up to super-steep -48 dB/octave. It comes in 32/64 bit format for Intel Macs running OS X ten.6 or higher version than that and supports tissue layer screen resolution.
11. Frohmage from OhmForce
We are slowly coming to a end but many best mastering plugins are still left. It have appearance as if a toy but it is certainly not a toy. The features are extraordinary and generously free. The powerful filters will drag you towards it and you will end up with frequent use of the same. Frohmage provides warmth, dirt and much more with a professional audio quality. The frohmage multi-band resonant filter has fine controls over its low-pass and bandpasses for up to fifteen further bands, furthermore as inbuilt distortion with 2 routing schemes and delay stages on every band for distinctive phasing-like effects.
12. BazilleCM
BazilleCM is a very high version of mastering synthesizer Bazille. BazilleCM is an engaging and capable audio synthesizer. Power and fashion run in the family of Bazille. Digital oscillators, analogue-style filter and flexible patching will keep you busy for a good time. There are a collection of filters available in the plugin. It also have the feature of stereo delay with optional host sync. The best mastering plugin can work in Mac and windows. The Mac and Windows must have at least 1 GB RAM storage. BazilleCM is not a product which can work alone but it requires a host software. BazilleCM can work with nearly all the available DAWs.
Final Words!
Coming to an end, we have seen various type of Best Mastering Plugins available in the market. You can easily make a choice between them. You can also take a ride among this plugin as a joy ride. They’re the superb way for awakening your setup and come up with some new extravagant ideas. Ideas lead to new lessons which ultimately leads to your progress. No plugin is the best, and no plugin is the worst. It is the features and qualities that make them so. So wear a cap on head and start installing this plugin which are totally free of cost and worthy for downloading.