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so vst mastering plug-ins sound fairly shit therefore what valve stage would you buy for adding valve tone to your sound.

Get the most expensive Valve compressor you can afford... if you can't get good results with virtual tools then valve hardware is OBVIOUSLY the answer.

Spastic.

Avalon units are available used for decent prices, and while they often take a little more work to find the sweet spots than pricier models, they can do just fine in a home studio if you're willing to play with 'em a bit.

konrad wrote:Get the most expensive Valve compressor you can afford... if you can't get good results with virtual tools then valve hardware is OBVIOUSLY the answer.

Spastic.

i can get usable results but i cant get valve tone and no vst has ever come close.


cheers alphacat. yea ive seen the avalon stuff but not heard it. i guess i should just go to digital village with some jams and try them all out see what i like the most.

does anyone know of good affordable vintage equipment?

konrad wrote:Get the most expensive Valve compressor you can afford... if you can't get good results with virtual tools then valve hardware is OBVIOUSLY the answer.

Spastic.

ease down Ripley or you'll blow the trans-axell...

miss_molinari wrote:

konrad wrote:Get the most expensive Valve compressor you can afford... if you can't get good results with virtual tools then valve hardware is OBVIOUSLY the answer.

Spastic.

ease down Ripley or you'll blow the trans-axell...

Haha my day just got a whole lot better

miss_molinari wrote:

konrad wrote:Get the most expensive Valve compressor you can afford... if you can't get good results with virtual tools then valve hardware is OBVIOUSLY the answer.

Spastic.

ease down Ripley or you'll blow the trans-axell...

for the amount of $ that you'd spend on a decent mastering setup, you could have hundreds of tunes mastered by a professional-- or get 'em cut to dubplate and have (again) someone else master 'em up for you.

Leave mastering to the pros. The time you need to learn to do it, equals the time you would need to write at least a whole wagnerian opera, assuming you can't read notes and you would have to learn it first.

Honestly... The best thing you can do is to get some basic knowledge about mastering, so you know what you have to provide your mastering engineer. But the mastering itself should be done by somebody who studied it or has at least a lot of experience.

we'll yea of course i cant do proper mastering at home as i dont have

1 - amazing loudspeakers.
2 - a mastering mixing desk, equipment, tape players.
3 - a room with a good acoustic

as for the ability, from what i understand/have witnessed its 50% equipment and 50% your ear as most mastering, is playing music thro circuirty/tape until it sounds as good as possible. of course there's some tech knowledge; serviceing equiment so it always sounds amazing, limitaions of vinyl, resonace's etc etc

i want a valve stage to make everything sound as good as possible be it release worth tracks or one off jams for a gig ive got that night. my electronic music is very digital sounding and a vintage warmer plugin doesn't cut it and cassette makes it sound sluggish. i also record bands and my own analogue drone stuff which would benfit from a valve stage other than a valve gutiar amp.

id also like to look into vintage studio equipment with 'character' but i dont really know where to start and if any of its afordable...

alan wrote:
id also like to look into vintage studio equipment with 'character' but i dont really know where to start and if any of its afordable...

Try having a look at the Sound On Sound forums;

Vintage Gear

Newbie questions


They should be able to point you in the right direction in terms of what you'd be looking for.

Then I'd suggest a scour of eBay, Gumtree, your local free ad papers, second hand shops, places like Cash Converters (there used to be one half way up Winton High Street near the place that sells alloy wheels I used to go into) to find what you're after for cheap.

tl audio 5021 are very nice, you can probably get one second hand for 300 quid ish. i'd use it for tracking more than mastering though - leave that to the mastering engineer.

alan wrote:we'll yea of course i cant do proper mastering at home as i dont have

1 - amazing loudspeakers.
2 - a mastering mixing desk, equipment, tape players.
3 - a room with a good acoustic

as for the ability, from what i understand/have witnessed its 50% equipment and 50% your ear as most mastering, is playing music thro circuirty/tape until it sounds as good as possible. of course there's some tech knowledge; serviceing equiment so it always sounds amazing, limitaions of vinyl, resonace's etc etc

i want a valve stage to make everything sound as good as possible be it release worth tracks or one off jams for a gig ive got that night. my electronic music is very digital sounding and a vintage warmer plugin doesn't cut it and cassette makes it sound sluggish. i also record bands and my own analogue drone stuff which would benfit from a valve stage other than a valve gutiar amp.

id also like to look into vintage studio equipment with 'character' but i dont really know where to start and if any of its afordable...

That digital sound is either bad plugs or an overload somewhere in the signal path.Fix the problem before you lay out any cash because there is no magic bullet just tools.
Regards
Jason

Listen to the man.

you lost of the first hurdle mate!

I know some amazing plug-ins for use in mastering


for example any good Linear Phase EQ!

Jtransition wrote:

alan wrote:we'll yea of course i cant do proper mastering at home as i dont have

1 - amazing loudspeakers.
2 - a mastering mixing desk, equipment, tape players.
3 - a room with a good acoustic

as for the ability, from what i understand/have witnessed its 50% equipment and 50% your ear as most mastering, is playing music thro circuirty/tape until it sounds as good as possible. of course there's some tech knowledge; serviceing equiment so it always sounds amazing, limitaions of vinyl, resonace's etc etc

i want a valve stage to make everything sound as good as possible be it release worth tracks or one off jams for a gig ive got that night. my electronic music is very digital sounding and a vintage warmer plugin doesn't cut it and cassette makes it sound sluggish. i also record bands and my own analogue drone stuff which would benfit from a valve stage other than a valve gutiar amp.

id also like to look into vintage studio equipment with 'character' but i dont really know where to start and if any of its afordable...

That digital sound is either bad plugs or an overload somewhere in the signal path.Fix the problem before you lay out any cash because there is no magic bullet just tools.
Regards
Jason

i uses digital hardware synths, there very clean...too clean sometimes. im not over loading anything, there's no aliasing, the point where the nyquists frequncey hits is way higher than my hearing limit. just a case of me not getting my point across again. i just want to bring all the detail out and breath a little more life into them or alternativly when tracking add abit of warmth by driving the tubes slightly hot possiblly.

Joe C wrote:you lost of the first hurdle mate!

I know some amazing plug-ins for use in mastering


for example any good Linear Phase EQ!

thats great joe,i dont know what its got to do with me when i asked for valve tone. you know even harmonic warmth...or of course the transparacy and detail a good valve can coax out of a jam

if i run my tracks to high quailty 1/2" tape at 15 or 30 ips then to a valve stage or two and back into a computer at 24bit 96k they sound stunning. if i uses some waves plug ins they sound good....regardless of what you think this is my ear hearing my music.

so yea thanks but please only post if you've got any affordable (hopefully vintage) valve gear recommendations.

oh yea ive used the tla 5021 once while recording some band in a local studio, it was ok.

Hello Alan,
You might want to try analogue summing (eg you group the channels in your pc and then come out via some good converters and do a mix on a desk where you can drive the desk for some nice analogue distortion.
Regards
Jason

I am not realy a fan of the TLA rack stuff but i am not an easy guy to please mso your milage may vary

While on the mastering topic, whats the differnce between a Linear Phase Eq and say a normal parametric eq?

cheers jason.

CRYPTIC wrote:While on the mastering topic, whats the differnce between a Linear Phase Eq and say a normal parametric eq?

please somebody correct me if im wrong or can word it better than me, but i belive;

when you boost or cut a signal you create phase shift. the amount you boost/cut the frequncey creates a delay in the signal.

a linear phase eq makes that delay a constant over the entire frequncey range where as a parametric just effects the part of the signal you have chosen.

therefore genarlly linear phase are better for mastering as there very clean and transparant and parametric etc are better for tracking. yet there are times when you want a dirter(???) signal caused by the phase shift (and possible phase distortion) produced by parametric eq, there for you might choose to master with a parametric.

all comes down to the song and your ear at the end of the day. genarlly the cleaness and transparancey of linear phase equipment is desirable when mastering.

I've been looking at the Focusrite Liquid Mix. It does basically what a convolution reverb does, only they record impulses through classic EQ's and Compressors, so the DSP in the hardware interface can pretty accurately replicate the characteristics of any compressor or EQ. Plus there is a huge online library of top emulations.

Lots of Neve gear they have recorded, and all of those downloads are free.

I am saving slowly but surely, and for what it's worth, I would recommend spending £400 on one of these over a single classic unit. It's more versatile, future proof and much much cheaper. The results I've heard have blew me away.

(Although it would be awesome to have some of the original gear, I'm not farting out cash at the moment)