Sorry, it took me longer then expected to master ‘One or Two’.
Here is the full explanation and thoughts about the mastering process.
After finishing the track, I took a day off from producing music. Doing this gave me a fresh hearing at the frequency’s. On my day off I prefer avoiding harsh noises and music.
After the day off, I try to get up early, because most of the time my ears are getting more fatigue through out the day. Unfortunately the mastering didn’t go well in one day. So I repeated this routine through the whole week and even the next week. Keep in mind I use the K.I.S. rule (Keep It Simple)
I exported the track as a .wave file (24bit). Open a new project in FLstudio20 and dragged the wave file in. The mixdown was only at -4db, so I had enough room to master.
First of all let me show you which effects I used:
Some of you will may be astonished. This time I started with a maximus plugin. If your not familiar with the maximus plugin, click on the link I added for more information.
On the maximus I used the compression on the master tab (green). On all the other tabs I disabled the compression. (comp off)
I used a very light compression to compress all the high peaks. Also the attack of the compression has a second release (REL 2), this release gave the track a more glued sound.
The second effect is a parametric equalizer 2. With the -4db headroom I had enough room to boost some frequency’s which were missing or just not yet noticeable.
The bass was already noticeable, but the ‘thump’ could be more present between 85 – 95 Hz. Also on 4Khz for more higher frequency’s.
The middle frequency’s was a challenge. I had to export this track a few times to my mobile device’s to determine where the sweet spot for the boost was.
The third effect is a patcher with a mid side PEQ2. The side PEQ2 has a roll off around 130 Hz. On the side stereo spectrum, I removed everything between 20Hz and 150Hz. So it will be less rumbled on the side stereo. There is still some rumble left, otherwise it will get to thin on the stereo part. Also I boosted the whole audio signal with 5%. (the yellow arrow can be adjusted from 0% to 200%) This will give the stereo effect more depth to the track. I kept the mid PEQ2 neutral.
On the fourth slot, there is another maximus. This maximus is only boosting the volume I had enough headroom left to just boost the volume.
On my previous attempts, I did some extra EQ, some saturation and another compression with transient processing. Unfortunately this made the mastering only worse and sounded very over-saturated / distorted. With even more problems then before. On that experience I always go back to the K.I.S. rule.
On the fifth slot I have a soft clipper to saturate. But only slightly to give the frequency’s a noticeable hearing on mobile devices and laptop speakers. (sometimes this just works).
Fruity limiter on the master. My wave file is on insert 1 and routed to the master. Why do I route the wave file to a insert ?
For me its a good control of how my volume of the track is behaving with all the effects before the master bus. Also sometimes it’s not bad to go over 0-dB on a insert. Its the master that needs to be clean and not reaching over 0-dB. If your sound is going over 0-dB, it will distort digital. Digital distortion is ugly.
I hope you liked the serie’s of streams on how I made a techno track with FLstudio plugins only.
I will be streaming every sunday (Amsterdam +1 GMT). Come say hi and have a chat.
Here is the playlist of the livestream videos:
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Jomelle Music 
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