If I'm not mistaken, Cakewalk advertises the TL-64 Tube Leveler as one of their mastering plugins. Although I know it can be used for other things, I wanted to find out exactly what purpose it serves during mastering?


My guess is that it's supposed to be used as a soft-clip gain reduction tool right before the mastering limiter to clip some of the sound and reduce some gain. In this way, the mastering limiter wouldn't need to fight as much to do all of the gain-reduction, especially with the sharp transient peaks, since the Tube-Leveler reduces some of the gain prior to it.


If my guess is right, what are some of the ways the tube leveler can/should be used for this (e.g. less input + more clipping, versus more input + less clipping)?

I can never get that thing to work properly. It just makes things sound all crackly and weird no matter what I do with it.

If my guess is right, what are some of the ways the tube leveler can/should be used for this (e.g. less input + more clipping, versus more input + less clipping)?

I've never used it or thought to use that plugin when mastering. But if i where to use it, the settings i would set it would be determined on a case by case basis, depending on what i hear and what is needed for that song.  


As the old saying goes, use those 2 ugly things that are set hard left and hard right of your brain :)


Cj

I can never get that thing to work properly. It just makes things sound all crackly and weird no matter what I do with it.

Pretty much sums up my experience, too.

We have a TL-64 Tube Leveler?

Gosh! Next time I have a tube that needs leveling, I'll sure try it!

So no one uses this for this purpose?

http://www.soundonsound.c...cles/sonarworkshop.htm

sharke


http://www.soundonsound.c...cles/sonarworkshop.htm

That article, thought it looks really good, addresses the TS-64 Transient Shaper and not the TL-64 Tube Leveler.

@bitflipper... I thought I just didn't know how to use it but if it's happening to you too... well maybe I'll just avoid the thing all together. Not even quite sure what it's supposed to do. Even out/smooth the levels of a track? Isn't that what all my fancy compressor/limiters do?

Well it does the same thing as any other saturation tool, warms the track by soft clipping and removing some of the edge. However, I was just wondering about this tool in particular because it seems to especially target mastering purposes according to cakewalk.