Build a Killer Mastering Chain | Cubase Secrets with Dom

hello everyone in this video I'm going to show you how to build a super versatile mastering chain in Cubase using only stock plugins a chain that you can adapt to any Master let's get started [Music] choosing all the different processes when it comes to mastering like compression EQ limiting saturation all these things will vary depending on the song There's no secret recipe there is no perfect preset that will make your master sound great but what we can do in Cubase is we can create a chain that we can adapt to pretty much any mastering situation so that's what I've done here and that's what I'm going to show you today I have this track right here and as you can see I've laid down my project in Cubase so that it makes sense when mastering I have a reference track here so we can compare to the original one or we can compare it to an already released track if you want to learn how to do a b comparisons in Cubase using only control room let us know in the comments down below and maybe we will make a video about it now as you can see I have my reference track I have my mix right here I have a parallel compressor Channel I'm going to explain what it is then I have a master bus and then my stereo out and also a master VCA fader so let me start explaining what each one of these things does right so let's open the mixer let me show you how things work as you can see I have my mix right here and my mix I send it to a parallel compressor using an FX channel and as you can see I'm sending this to this compressor here pre-fader which means that no matter if I move this fader here to change the level of my mix this compressor is still going to compress the same amount because it doesn't take into account the fader now as you can see I have a compressor here and this is quite a drastic compressor now this whole Arrangement here you can save it as a template so I can go file and save as a template and as you can see here I can create a new preset and save this as a project template which is great so as you can see I have a very short attack uh relatively fast release and I have my analysis to RMS I find that this works better in this kind of situation because the compressor I want it to be super fast in terms of attack but the release I might change you depending on the track the tempo and how it feels so let's have a listen [Music] Wanna Lose so I want to make sure that it just dances nicely with the tempo of the song with the drums and it gives me a nice elevated feeling now as you can see my ratio is high and now I can introduce this to my original mix one thing that you will find that this helps a lot is breakdowns or sections in the song that are a little bit more empty for example if I go here you will see that if I add the parallel compressor I'm going to have a bigger breakdown okay let's have a listen love who makes us [Music] [Music] so we already solve a big problem where the breakdowns might sound a little bit less loud a little bit more empty and of course you can automate these parallel compressors here so you can add it whenever you need it it doesn't have to be all the way up all the way but I would just use it Tastefully so let's jump to the next section which is my master bath as you can see I have a master VCA fader here so that I can do exactly this so I can just go here and I'm controlling both my mix and the parallel compressor at the same time in case I want to drive this chain that we're going to check right now in the right amount so as you can see I have quite a few plugins right here now I want to say from the very beginning you don't need to use all these plugs that I'm going to show you you need to just figure out what you need to do for each master and you need to decide which of these processors you need to use but I want to show you something that's very important if you want to save this plugin chain you can go here click on this icon and then just save this FX plugin chain in my case if I want to reload it I can just go load and my plugin chain is called Dom all-in-one mastering so the first plugin that we have is frequency and this is a corrective EQ right in this case I'm trying to make sure that I tackle any problems that maybe the mix has or maybe help the mix where it's lacking okay so in this case let me show you what I have for this specific track I have a little bit of low mids on the sides because frequency EQ is a mid-sided EQ you can turn it to mid side and you can process the mid signal to the side signal so the stereo information differently what I also have here is a different filter for the mid and side channels so as you can see I have a filter right here which is for the mids that's way way lower this is at 40 Hertz and I have another filter here which is at 91 Hertz and this is for the sides so let's have a listen who makes us [Music] [Applause] [Music] so what I'm doing here basically is I'm cleaning up the sides from any low end Rumble that might drive my compressors and limiters crazy along the way this is a very good practice especially if you know that you don't have any useful low end information in your sub area so this is something that I do then something that you might find useful if you have a mix that's lacking low end is using a resonant filter when it comes to the mids so as you can see here I have a little bit of resonance with the cue and I can just boost it a little bit this will give you a nice body when it comes to your sub bass so let me show you this mix doesn't need it but I want to show you what you can do far away [Music] [Applause] [Music] so this makes a huge difference obviously you have to be careful with this don't overdo it but if your mix doesn't have enough low end or the kick drum is weak this might be a good way to beef it up a little bit another thing that I'm doing here is I'm adding a little bit of mid-range with this band so I'm adding a little bit of mid-range where the vocals are so that's in the center so I'm using the mid band here and I'm adding a little bit of width by boosting the top end for the sides so you will hear that the difference is subtle and this is going to be a recurring thing when it comes to what we're going to do today because you don't want to add too much of any one of these plugins because we want to make sure that we add the right ingredients to get to the final result okay so we don't want to add too much EQ or too much compression so let me go to the next plugin and the next plugin is a compressor now this is a compressor that I would use use as a VCA kind of compressor so imagine an SSL or something like this and these are the settings that I use so four to one ratio I'm probably going to use around 30 milliseconds of attack and the release I'm going to check it and see how it sounds so let me overdo it so you can hear how it sounds [Music] and in this case I'm going to just barely touch the needle okay I just want this to bring the mix together I don't want to hear the compression effect right here in case we are looking for a different sound we have an alternative so I'm following this with a multi-band compressor so this is actually something that I would suggest that you use it when there's a need for it so this is the Cubase stock multi-band compressor and with this plugin I can compress every band separately so I have the low I have the low mids High mids and highs and this multiband compressor can give us a very very exciting sound let me show you [Music] so it definitely makes the sound more exciting it definitely makes this low end be more assertive so if you think that this is the sound you're going for this gives you a very modern sound right so ever so slightly start touching the needle when you think it's needed for the attack I tend to go around 30 milliseconds and for the release for this specific plugin I like to leave it to Auto it sounds really really nice in mastering situations now we're going to decide which one of these two compressors we're going to use sometimes you might want to use both but be careful don't over compress your mixes as a general rule it doesn't sound very good and now I'm going to show you something else that's extremely powerful in Cubase and this is a really special plugin and this is the multiband envelope shaper this plugin I have it in the chain just in case I receive a mix that doesn't have enough punch it doesn't have enough try transients and I want to recover some of the transit information so that we can make a mix and a master more Punchy so let me show you what I've done here in this case and you will be able to hear the difference [Music] [Applause] [Music] go away [Music] so as you can hear I can bring out those transients on the hi-hats the snares the kick drum it's very tempting it sounds really good but be careful not to overdo it okay if a mix is completely flat then you can go to town with it and start adding a little bit of punch but if a mix is already Punchy if you add too much of this you might end up in a situation where you can't make the master really loud after this I'm following with the frequency 2eq and in this case this is an identification adding stuff and the next plugin is again a secret weapon in Cubase it's Quadra fast too and this plugin can give you a lot of richness to your sound now this is another plugin that if your mix suffers in the low end then this plugin can come to the rescue what I like to do for this plugin is I like to go for the tube algorithm for the low end and tape for the rest of the bands now the tube algorithm for the low end really gives you a super big low end it sounds almost like a sub-harmonic Exciter and I really like what it does so let me show you how it sounds with and without [Music] now as you can tell this changes everything right so basically the mix sounds way way bigger way Fuller but like I said before try and be mindful with the amount of ingredients so in this case what I like to do is I like to turn the mix down and I like to just introduce as much as I need and I think if I have it all the way to 100 this would be over the top now one thing that I want to show you before I leave quadrifice is that it's a very very good Whitener so as you can see right here I am just using this width control in the upper mid range to add a little bit of width to the mix and if you want you can also make sure that the width in the low end is all the way to zero the next one is something that I would use in conjunction with quadrifars or maybe you need to decide which one of the two you're going to use the next plugin which is Magneto Mark II this can give you a great tape sound to your master so these will give you a little bit more low end you can also have some silky highs right there [Music] I just wanna keep it real [Music] the great thing that I like about Magneto is that you can add a little bit of Sheen to a Master using the high frequency adjust right here make sure you turn it on or if you have a mix that's overly bright it's a great way to make it smoother without adding an EQ that is going to make things dull in this case I'm going to keep quadrafas and I'm not going to use Magneto these are decisions that you need to make depending on the mix that you're working on and of course the sound that you're looking for so I'm going to go to the next plugin and this is the integer this plugin allows you to make things wide but again I think I'm going to use just a little bit of width in the high mids just a tiny bit of width okay I'm not adding too much because then it's going to make the mix sound unstable moving on I have some very interesting plugins to show you we have squasher this is a plug-in that's extremely powerful it can make things Extremely Loud and it can give you a sound that but pretty much no other plugin can give you what I would say though is you need to make sure that you use it right so if you're looking for this in your face loudness then this is the plugin for you let me show you what it does on this mix [Music] as you can tell it's an impressive plugin what I would say as a rule of thumb for mastering where you're using squasher is have the attack a little bit open so again 30 milliseconds is a good start release it depends on the track in this case I have it pretty fast I add a little bit of drive to each one of the bands and then I readjust the output accordingly now this plugin also has a mix control so if you want to just a little bit of that effect to your master it allows you to do this if you pay attention we added all these different plugins but if you check my master meter right here you will see that I'm not peaking I have a healthy Headroom seal and now I can start moving on to the last ingredients so that I can raise the loudness now another plug that I want to show you that is the only plugin that I'm going to show you today that is not a Cubase stock plugin is fire the clip and this I would use to raise the loudness without adding a limiter and making the sound of my master sound compressed or over limited so here are the settings that I like to use for mastering for this plugin let's have a listen [Music] [Music] and again like I said make sure that whatever you do makes sense for your tracks so this is for me already too loud okay I'm adding a little bit of clipping right there to push the sound a little bit more and now I can start finalizing I'm going to follow this with a Razer plugin that we have in Cubase this is a brand new limiter and what I like to do at this stage is add the aggressive release and I'm going to start driving it [Music] [Music] and as you can see I'm barely limiting two to three DBS maximum but we already have a good ground to build upon so once I hit my Razer limiter I don't have to add 10 DBS of gain I just add 1.7 DBS and I'm already at a good place then if I want even more loudness I can follow this up with the maximizer okay this I would use in modern mode and I'm going to adjust the release so that it floats with the track [Music] and as you can see I'm limiting in stages I don't have one limiter limiting 10 DBS I have several limiters limiting 1 DB or 2 DBS and this is a great thing that you can do if you build a chain like this see that this master bus goes to my stereo out and this is where I have the final touches in this case I have another Razer limiter but the only difference this time is that I have the release set to Auto and fast and at this stage I'm adding the last bits of loudness to my track the only thing that comes after this is the Lin diver plugin the lean one diver and this I set it to 24 bit which is going to be our output bit depth trust me it's a good idea to have a different plugin at the end of your master so let's listen to what do we have up to now [Applause] Wanna Lose [Music] so just to give the original mix a chance I'm going to add a Razer plugin to the original mix and then what I do is I push it up until it still sounds okay and not too crushed and then I compare it to the mastered version let's compare this limited version to the mastering that we did up to this point [Music] and as you can see the properly mastered version with the chain sounds louder it sounds more Punchy the kick drums and the snares have more attack and this is because we didn't just slap a limiter at the end of our mastering chain so we worked our way to the limiter that's the most important thing so there you go this is a mastering chain you can adapt to any track you're working on just make sure that you decide which plugins to use and which you're not going to use depending on the music you are going to master I hope you enjoyed this video and I'll see you in the next one bye-bye [Music] thank you foreign [Music]

Channel: Cubase

Views: 34,231

Keywords: Cubase, Creative Music Production, Sound Design, Drum Loop, Music Production Tips, Reverb, Reverence, Effect Plug-ins, Convolution Reverb, Impulses, Samples

Id: vC0L8BWQSq4

Length: 20min 37sec (1237 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 10 2022