Iv encountered this and managed to get pretty good masters (including semi-high quality loudmasters) with the STereo imager, BT compressor/brickwall, LQ Multiband Compressor, LQ-64, sometimes id used Gclip Soft-Clipper.. its free and works very well actually. I usually used multiple of these on one master in combination with eachother, takes awhile to fine tune them all but came out with good sounding stuff. Now i use Ozone 6 mostly.

Short answer, Hellya, is yes, you can definitely master in SONAR using only the bundled tools.
 
The basic mastering chain consists of just an equalizer and a limiter. Bus compressors, tape emulators, exciters, multi-band compressors and such are optional but unnecessary. Most of us do use third-party tools, not because we have to but rather for ergonomic reasons and personal preferences. 

Thanks bitflipper. But the more i think about it i might buy the ozone 6 stuff (200.00$)...which is not that expensive plus there are plenty of tutorials on the net.. Thanks for the answer...A+

HELLYA
 
Batsbrew you said free plug-ins....any link?

 
yes, start here with your searching (sonar site)
 
then look at KVR:
 
http://www.kvraudio.com/

...I'll try to help.
For real mastering a good wave editor is nice to have. You can get Adobe Audition 3 for free. It can do so much, I'll leave it to you to google eveything it can do. I use it to edit peaks all the time. That helps reduce the work a compressor and limiter have to do later.
A good free cd burning program is good to have. I use CDburnerXP.
One of the best limiters available (IMHO) is free. LimiterNo.6 by vladg sound. He now works for Tokyo Dawn.
One of the very best Bus compressors is free...Kotelnikov by Tokyo Dawn. Get everything they have for free. They make awesome plugins!
Remember a project happens in steps...
1. Recording
2. Mixing/editing
3. Mastering (usually referring to the entire project or album)
Sonar excels at the first two, but since you can't insert cd markers your reduced to exporting each song and reassembling them in a cd burning program or a wave editor that can insert cd markers. Sonar can master songs individually, just not as a group.
Programs like Ozone and T-racks are great, but they are not wave editors. If you want one song to cross fade into another you will want to get an editor. There are others that are free (audacity, wavosaur), but I prefer Adobe Audition.
If you don't need to do cross fades (I rarely do) the one at a time approach will work with Sonar. You can create a project and import your mixes on separate tracks and balance the levels and eq...then export them. This is what Ozone and T-racks does.
Hope that helps. If you need any help finding these programs or if you have other questions...let me know.
 

HELLYA
I see Danny but i always thought that you could do everything with Sonar...I went to see the Waves stuff and oh it's expensive. I mean although i want some kind of quality for my music i'm still doing it for fun. I can't see myself paying 1 000.00 of $$$ for mastering my songs.
 

And I'd be the first one to tell you NOT to waste money having your songs mastered.....UNLESS you were going to release something and sell it. :) The good thing about having someone master that knows what they are doing....they can save you from yourself in times where you can be too close to the material to make the right calls. But you are going about it the right way. As a hobby guy, have fun with it.
 
As for free plugs, there are a few good ones out there but I don't have much luck with them. The majority of my stuff is between Waves, stock Sonar (Sonitus/Blue Tubes/Pro Channel) and UAD.
 
-Danny

Danny Danzi
 

And I'd be the first one to tell you NOT to waste money having your songs mastered.....UNLESS you were going to release something and sell it. :) The good thing about having someone master that knows what they are doing....they can save you from yourself in times where you can be too close to the material to make the right calls. But you are going about it the right way. As a hobby guy, have fun with it.
 
-Danny




Audition 3 free? go get it!
 
I know this isn't about Nomad etc but I thought to offer this too...
 
Also - not about mastering but a  great book to read is Mike Senior Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mixing-Secrets-Small-Studio-Senior/dp/0240815807
Towards the end he goves a nice run-down of issues in the final mix and remedies before sending to the ME.
 
Danny makes a good point about paid mastering and commercial releases, however, I have students who attempt basic mastering on their own material in Pro Tools with the built in plugins and yes, they make horrendous mistakes to for quite some time to begin with, but once they get the philosophy of mastering, learn to listen and improve micing/tracking/mixing, after about a year of hard work, they can start to produce material that sells fine for them at gigs and online. What is interesting is that electronic music dudes just see mastering as part of their workflow, but then again they don't have as much to do as their samples & synths are of such good quality that mastering is 'easier' for them. 98% of everyone else eventually sees the light and thinks that mastering is best left to the pro's. Quite right too.
 
But don't let that stop you. Go for it with whatever tools you have. Review your mixes first and yeah, Sonar has what you need to get started. For one thing, the more you understand about the whole process, the better the end results will be when working with any good mix or mastering engineer. It's never wasted.
 
I hope you have great fun on this journey 
 
Best
 
Gary

garyhb


Audition 3 free? go get it!
 
I know this isn't about Nomad etc but I thought to offer this too...
 
Also - not about mastering but a  great book to read is Mike Senior Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mixing-Secrets-Small-Studio-Senior/dp/0240815807
Towards the end he goves a nice run-down of issues in the final mix and remedies before sending to the ME.
 
Danny makes a good point about paid mastering and commercial releases, however, I have students who attempt basic mastering on their own material in Pro Tools with the built in plugins and yes, they make horrendous mistakes to for quite some time to begin with, but once they get the philosophy of mastering, learn to listen and improve micing/tracking/mixing, after about a year of hard work, they can start to produce material that sells fine for them at gigs and online. What is interesting is that electronic music dudes just see mastering as part of their workflow, but then again they don't have as much to do as their samples & synths are of such good quality that mastering is 'easier' for them. 98% of everyone else eventually sees the light and thinks that mastering is best left to the pro's. Quite right too.
 
But don't let that stop you. Go for it with whatever tools you have. Review your mixes first and yeah, Sonar has what you need to get started. For one thing, the more you understand about the whole process, the better the end results will be when working with any good mix or mastering engineer. It's never wasted.
 
I hope you have great fun on this journey 
 
Best
 
Gary

Haha you share my pain, Gary! Yeah I get quite a few of my students doing the same. I love that they try it, but they always seem to over-do it or they are just way too close to the material. I think the biggest issue is (at least in my experience) when you are done with a mix and press that export button, you're done or you would have never exported.
 
To the untrained ear, where do you even start to master? So they load up an Ozone preset and ruin the entire mix. LOL! Do you know what I tell my students? Mix it, put a light limiter on it and let it fly. 9 times out of 10, the mix is good enough without all the excessive eq, compression and verb/wideness they think they need in a mastering situation. I'm all for seeing/hearing them have fun....but I cringe when they ruin something. They come to me to learn how to record and mix.....when they get that down, then we can maybe tackle what I call "little m" mastering. That's really all most of them need. :) The other hard thing is recording, mixing and mastering on the same set of monitors. It makes it so much harder, sometimes it's not even worth visiting.
 
That's true what you said up there ^ about "the more you understand" etc. What people fail to realize is....sometimes what we create just sounds good and it doesn't need "mastering" as much as it may just need "a little polish". :)
 
-Danny

Hey HELLYA,
 
You've been provided with a lot of good info here. When it comes to using information on the internet, I tend to narrow my search to a couple of sources that I have been to be reliable over time. This guy has a pretty useful blog on mastering:
http://productionadvice.co.uk/
 
It's especially helpful if you're looking to get your feet wet. It's always tempting to make these huge moves in mastering because we have these powerful tools, but I find that less is definitely more in the context of mastering.
 
Also, if you're looking for some mastering tools, here they are:
http://bedroomproducersblog.com/2013/06/26/free-mastering-software/
 
I hesitated posting this because presenting someone with more tools can do more harm than good. I suggest you identify what you need for mastering, you pick 1, maybe 2, for each job and commit to learning them. In SONAR, you have a linear phase EQ and multi-band compressor. If you commit to learning those, you can certainly go far. You might find that all you need to do is pick up some metering tools and a limiter to complement the ones already in SONAR.
 
Of course, if you get Ozone and you commit to learning how to master with it, that could be a reasonable alternative. Just don't go looking for more plug-ins as that can be a huge distraction.

Hey HELLYA,
 
If you're looking for some resources, here are a couple:
http://productionadvice.co.uk/
http://www.izotope.com/masteringmonth/
 
I usually like to get my info from 2-3 sources that I have found to be reliable when it comes to the internet. This way you don't have to sift through an overwhelmingly large amount of info in order to learn. It has the added benefit of giving you focus and avoiding spurious information. Hope this helps.