Also do you guys like the art

In this breakdown, I'm gonna break down my thought process of having these three plug-ins work in my favor for my mixes:

Before you guys mention it, yes, I know it all looks like an absolute clusterfuck. But don't worry, because I'm gonna try my best to explain how each plug-in/effect works and how I used them for the master track.

Plug-ins

The plug-ins I'm using are the following in this order:

Airwindows Drive (Via Surge/Surge XT, although it should work the same if you have the standalone suite) or kHs Clipper
MDynamicEq (Not free, but I got it for free when it was on sale for 100% off.)
Spectral Compressor

Disclaimer

While all of this seems to work for how I wanted my tracks to sound, this is not the "right" way of mastering in-production, and there is no right or wrong way of doing so. This was put together through experimentation and selectivity, so the saying "If it sounds good, then it sounds good" was kept in the back of my head for this. ~~Yes I'm talking to both of you saphi and Cassini lmfao~~

I'm using Tracktion Waveform for these screenshots, but this can be done in any DAW with 3rd-party plug-in support.

Chain Breakdown

Waveform

But first, this waveform. We need to talk about this waveform...before all of this. For this example, I'm taking screenshots from the project file of...

...my most recent remix of Ambrose's "And So Begins a New Epic".

It hasn't seen better days to the average viewer, but if you're an experienced producer, this would imply that some kick and/or snare are hitting way too loud, a bass shot is overwhelmingly ear-piercing, or whatnot.

Clipping

I want this waveform to be averaged within the bounds that the red lines indicate. Each peak should be within 2 standard deviations of -INFdB, which is complete silence.

Standard deviations—s—are a statistical way of visualizing the spread of data from the mean on a Normal model, usually also indicated as a z-score. Within 1 std. dev. is typical and within 3 or more std. dev.'s is unusual.

Airwindows Drive

Applying an Airwindows drive at the start of the chain yields a waveform shape that looks like this:

Surge and Surge XT both come with an effects bank housing effects found in the synth itself, as well as the Airwindows effects. For the parameters, I have them set to the following:

Drive: 0%
HP: 0%
Output: 0dB
Mix: 100%

Airwindows Drive

is a distortion plug-in which, according to Chris, is like Density but a bit "angrier":

Drive hides nothing. It’s all about grit and crunch, not smooth. Go ahead and try it and see. If your sole purpose for an overdrive plugin is to make stuff ‘big and fat and thick’ then you want Density. But if you’re reaching for a distortion because you have some sound, a bass, a snaredrum, and you just want to make it sound ANGRY: not so much fat or forward or gritty or edgy, but just plain straight up pissed off… then you may want to have Drive around.

kHs Clipper

Edit: With its recent release, you can also use a kHs Clipper with the default parameters. Nothing needs to be adjusted; just insert it as the first plug-in in the master chain, and you're good to go.

kHs Clipper

is a "distortion" plug-in that simulates clipping without actually making anything clip:

Kilohearts Clipper brings the power of razor-sharp per-sample clipping to the Kilohearts Ecosystem, and lets you trim the peaks of your audio in order to leave some headroom or maybe to get that distorted sound that you are looking for. Clipper is a simple but powerful tool for sample-accurate peak trimming. Use it for mixing and mastering, taming unruly transients and giving yourself more headroom. Or get creative and push it into distortion territory for crunchy, characterful results.

MDynamicEq

Now, that's a great start to being aware of my sounds being overly loud to the point where loud sounds sound completely normal, while normal-sounding sounds become immediately quiet in the presence of these loud sounds. But while it may not pose much of an audible difference, I don't just want a literal-ass brick of a waveform like the above. So I wanted it to look like this:

Keep in mind that there isn't any compression...yet. I'm using an

MDynamicEq

directly after a Drive with the stock Master enhancer (aggressive) preset. There's also the other preset that doesn't have (aggressive) in it, but I don't know the difference between the two presets.

Note that I didn't change the bands whatsoever. Again, this is a stock preset. However, the change I made alongside the parameters below was the addition of those areas at the top of the analyzer.

Dry/Wet: 100%
Shift: 0
Input: 0dB
Output: -8dB
Saturation: 0
Analog: 0
Smoothness: 0
Nonlinear gain: 0

According to Melda Production, MDynamicEq is the manual version of MAutoDynamicEq:

Equalizing is probably the most important task when mixing, so you should get the best tool available! MDynamicEq, the little brother of MAutoDynamicEq, is an unbelievably transparent and musical sounding equalizer with a gorgeous interface stuffed with amazing features. It pushes the technology forward by introducing dynamic processing!

Spectral Compressor

Speaking of compression, the "weird kid" of the three is no other than the

spectral compressor

from NIH-plug. It's crazy that you think having this on the master is surprising, but not question Soothe2 which, according to either Au5 or Nasko, is literally another spectral compressor.

This is the only plug-in I can't show an oscilloscope for, but rather an analyzer, because you can't visualize separate frequencies in an oscilloscope. However, this doesn't disprove the fact that I have an irreversible habit of stacking a bunch of sounds to where my mix is nothing but mid-highs, so that's why I'm taming that area of the spectrum down a bit with that curve shape using the following parameters I set on Pink Noise:

Global Threshold: -38.7dB
- Center: 5.2kHz
- Slope: 0dB/oct
- Curve: 5.30dB/oct^2
Downwards
- Ratio: 500:1
- Hi-Freq Rolloff: 100

From the MAnalyzer, I have a comparison where the blue line shows the mix without the compressor, and the black fill is with it.

If you've ever heard of this plug-in, it's most likely that you've heard about it from YouTube from either Au5 or several other people on YouTube. Everyone and their moms have been talking about this for months because it's mainly a multiband compressor like OTT, but it's ACTUALLY a multiband compressor that can compress any sound via up to 16,384 bands. However, that's not even close to why people are praising this simple plug-in. The major reason is that it can be used for other use cases beyond just using it as a compressor, as demonstrated by Au5 himself. Here, I used it as a simple de-esser, which will tame the harsh higher frequencies, but you can use it to morph sounds, spectrally clip and gate sounds, and even filter sounds via a chord...all within a free and open-source plug-in.

Conclusion

As I mentioned, this chain was put together experimentally, so I tweaked some parameters and tried things out until I got something that worked in my favor. If there's one thing to take away from this breakdown, it's that you should stick with your soul because even if you don't know what you're doing (like me), you know how something may sound. So if you know it sounds good to you, then it sounds good. If it doesn't, then keep experimenting. Again, there's no right or wrong way of mastering or fixing a mix. How correct or incorrect the method of mastering or fixing a mix is in your hands to decide, and not in the hands of elitists or experts.

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