best mastering program?

The best mastering "software" is between your ears. If you have SONAR, that's all you need.

The legendary British recording engineer Paul White: "The most important tool is the ear of the person doing the job, regardless of the equipment being used." Any other professional recording engineer will say the same thing.

I told him in my first reply that if he already had SONAR, then that's all he needs, and it is. He need not waste his time or his money on anything else. There is no "magic bullet" -- no hardware, no software, no gizmo or any other panacea that is going to do any better mastering job than his own ears.

Can't really say what is the best... it depends on what sound you like and how well you can use the software. Some of the choices are:

* iZotope Ozone

* IK Multimedia T-Racks

You can also use dedicated audio editors like...

* Sony Sound Forge

* Adobe Audition

* Steinberg WaveLab

And of course, you can also just master audio inside of Sonar (mainly version 7 and 8 because they include the high-end LP-64 plug-ins).

Best,
Scott

--
Scott R. Garrigus - Author of the Cakewalk Sonar and Sony Sound Forge Power book series. Get Sonar 8 Power - Today! Go to: http://www.garrigus.com/ - http://www.musictechshop.com/ - http://www.cooltechshop.com/

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+1 for Izotope Ozone, and you may also want to check out Har-Bal.

The art of mastering is the art of listening carefully and critically. No hardware or software package can do that. Any basic set of modern audio manipulation software and/or hardware is capable of making all the necessary adjustments to produce a "mastered" recording. But only the human ear can tell you what those adjustments need to be.

After going into and out of this forum over the past 11 years, since the days of Pro Audio 8, as my schedule allows, I have seen the same things over and over and over again. People constantly fall for any and every product on the market that wears the label "mastering" on it. Don't be fooled. Other than the human ear, there is absolutely nothing special that anyone needs to do mastering. It can all be done using any basic set of audio manipulation gear, whether it's made by Cakewalk (Roland), Steinberg (Yamaha), or anyone else. I even know several engineers who still swear by the 10-year-old Cool Edit Pro 2 (the predecessor of Adobe Audition, and they wouldn't even think of touching any Adobe software today). BTW, Cool Edit Pro 2 runs very well under Vista (with UAC disabled), although I don't know why anyone would actually want to use Vista for serious recording.

If you don't trust your own ears sufficiently and send a recording to a mastering engineer, he (or she) is NOT going to make any wholesale changes to your recording. If it needs any wholesale changes (such as noise reduction), then he (or she) will send it back as being not ready for mastering. Mastering engineers only make very subtle changes here and there, and you can do the same thing yourself if you listen carefully and critically to your recording. (It's easy to train yourself to do this by comparing your recordings to commercial recordings and trying to figure out what the engineer did to make the recording sound that way.)

Mastering engineers also spend considerable time, sometimes years, becoming intimately familiar with the qualities and capabilities of the gear they have, both hardware and software, so you are very unlikely to find any of the latest and greatest gizmos and gadgets (i.e., so-called "mastering" software) in their studios. (And if they should have something along that line, then you can bet on two things: (1) they were very well paid to endorse the product; and (2) the product is collecting dust somewhere out of sight and out of mind.)

There is no substitute for an intimate familiarity with the equipment you have, and the more you have, the less likely it is that you will ever become that familiar with any of it.

Way to go, notnat! Did you have to use the registry tweak to get Vintage Channel to show up?

My overall point, of course, is that any good, solid, basic package of audio manipulation software, such as SONAR, already has plenty of tools at your disposal for any mastering task. Not only that, but you also have unlimited opportunities to learn how to use them through destructive as well as non-destructive experimentation, comparison and fine tuning of your audio recordings without having to buy any extra software for mastering purposes. Most of what passes for so-called "mastering" software is just a collection of effects and procesors that you already have in your basic package. All the known ways of manipulating digital audio have been around since at least 1983 (and some go back to the theoretical studies done in the 1920s). Even 64-bit processing has been around for at least 13 years. The effects and processors in so-called "mastering" software are simply different combinations of effects, filters, limiters, compressors and so on that are put together like building blocks, which you already have if you have a good basic package like SONAR. That's what FX bins and auxiliary sends are for: You can mix and match anything you like in virtually any combination to achieve anything at all touted by these so-called "mastering" packages.

Don't let that "mastering" label take you in, as it has so many others (including me at one time). It's only an advertising gimmick to separate you from your hard-earned money.

As was said before, if you've got Sonar 7 or 8 PE, you've got everything you need. If you don't , I would recommend upgrading. If you do, I would spend the money elsewhere.

Technically, your comment about Sonar being all you need is flawed, since I consider all plugs to be additional tools whether they come with Sonar or not. And some versions of Sonar do not include most of the high quality plugs you'd need to master your works...even with golden ears.

Also, you'd need a copy of CD Architect or some other authoring application as well if you want to master your works and create redbook CDs with all the text, ISRC and crossfading abilities that many would be looking for.

I agree it takes good ears, and knowing your environment, and HAVING a decent environment, but to brush useful tools aside to make your point doesn't make sense.

Ears, environment, AND tools are needed. But the OP was looking for insight as to which software many might consider as the best tool, be it VC-64, T Racks, or whatever one might suggest.
Telling him over and over again it's his ears isn't really helping him.
...and he never mentioned having Sonar in the first place.

Yeah but I like to operate like Luke Skywalker, except I don't put a blast-shield over my eyes, I put huge ear muffs on my ears so I can't hear a thing. Then I put a hand on each speaker and feel the vibrations. Now that's mastering...all this use your ears crap is for the seriously impaired

If you aren't sure what you're trying to accomplish, you can't choose the right tool. Once you know what you're trying to accomplish, the tool needed becomes obvious.

ORIGINAL: moosetex

The best mastering "software" is between your ears. If you have SONAR, that's all you need.

Sooo untrue!

Mastering is not only about the audio part. It's the final step before commiting your audio to its final destination, be it Film, TV, DVD, CD, Theater, Super Audio CD, MySpace, etc...

Sweatboxstudio, your question, I have to admit, opens a can of worms of sorts. If you have an unlimited budget, go for Sequoia. Wavelab(which is what I use) is incredible. Ozone is not a Mastering progam, but a Mastering plugin - which is entirely different. If you have the ears, then these tools will get you a long way. Let some others here output IRSC codes and index points with their ears!

Comments for sweatboxstudio, who started this thread:

As you can tell by now, there are strong feelings about the software you asked about. Since you have not told us anything about your studio (if any), your equipment (if any), your aims or your particular needs, it is more difficult for anyone to help you with specific information.

There are those of us who feel you need not waste any of your money on "mastering" software per se, but in all fairness, there are a large number of people who believe it is very useful for the work that they do. However, they have specific needs and goals in mind -- we all have different needs and goals and resources. So some things are more or less useful to some of us than they are to others, and for different reasons, but it is all based on needs and goals.

Just because I find no use for the software you asked about doesn't mean you might not need it yourself for some specific reason, need or goal. I do not believe there is any such thing as "the best" of any kind of software, whether it be mastering software or anything else. All the packages are different and some are better at doing some specific things than others, and some offer more choices and features than others. There may be no "best" product for what you want to accomplish, but there are certainly choices and alternatives, and some of them might depend critically on how much money and/or equipment you might need to reach your goal.

So... I believe a better way to phrase your question would be something like, "What would be a better product, software or technique for doing X (specific thing)?" That way, you might find some good, solid help at hand instead of arguments and debates that really don't lead anywhere.

If you don't give us some idea of what you're looking for or need, then I really don't see any point in continuing this thread, especially since you have not responded to anything at all since you started the thread.

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