'Mastering' tools?

Hello,

I plan to switch from XP to Linux (Fedora Core 5) to do my audio ‘mastering’.
I am an amateur in the audio-processing world and until now I used the Waves DirectX plugins for multi-band EQ, multi-band compression and muli-band limiting of live recorded stereo audio.

I am informing myself by looking around and asking and so far Ardour looks like a good platform. What extra’s (programs, plugins, etc) should I use to get close enough to the functionality of the Waves’ plugins?

What other software should I consider that has no Waves’ equivalent?
(i.e. & e.g.: deep FTT sonograms with filtering in the time and frequency domain? filtering/processing based on direction? etc etc etc)

Please post! Currently I am backup up the XP box so I can start real soon!

ano

http://jamin.sf.net/

'nuff said. :wink:

Thanks for the tip.
The limiter of Jamin is also multiband? Or At least very usable?

Cedar Retouch-alike functionality?
Filtering based on direction?
(e.g. more EQ for stuff right from the 2 o’clock position, or more compression on the bass)
DeNoising?

The limiter is not multiband. Jamin has good documentation on what it does. For example:
http://jamin.sourceforge.net/en/routes.html

Thanks for the info. Jamin still looks usable.

What softare does multiband limiting?

Or the other tricks I mentioned in my previous message(s)?
I just don’t want to miss out on these very nice products!

Maybe also an ‘exciter’ or subharmonics synth? (exciter for bass)

Most important for now is an application that does dithering from 24 to 16 bits. Any ideas?

Check out ‘louderbox’ as well.
http://www.spamblock.demon.co.uk/louderbox.html
8 band compressor+limiter+clipper.

Sounds pretty good to me, but you have to be careful you don’t mash it.

why do you believe you need this?

When going from 24 to 16 bit one needs dithering to avoid problems.
I found that Jack does dithering. Would that suffice?

Does anybody know a Linux application that does stereo image shuffling and works with Ardour, Jack, etc?
(similar functionality as Waves S1 if I am correct)

Perhaps related to this is the ability to filter audio based on direction in the stereo field and apply different effects to the filtered parts.
(i.e.: compress the center audio between 10 and 2 o’clock and leave the sides alone)
I guess just the splitter-filter is enough, once the split audio is in a separate track the normal tools can be used.

Thanks, will give it a try!
I will not compress too much, a few dB’s…

Hello, as I know JACK usues internally at least 24bit resolution, dithering is useful when you force it to communicate with the soundcard using 16 bits. Ardour instead works (you gurus telle me if I’m wrong) internally on 32bit, when you export & downsample a 16bit WAV file or tracks for a CD you can choose on the export dialog the resample rate and one of several dithering types for the exporting best of which should be noise shaped dithering for must purposes.

If you do everything in ardour, you shouldn’t actually really need to dither until the final export to 16bit :^)


It’s not about recording, it’s about freezing time …

You should only dither once, and that should be as your final file processes to its CD-ready, 16 bit form. Then do no further processing after that.

Does it need to be in development?

Surround sound mastering. Would be an excellent feature to have available about the same time Ardour has n.1 panning available.

I don’t know if this is the right place to ask, but… Does anyone know if JAMin is still under active development? The last news on its website seem to be from April '05.

Does it need to be in development?

I’m writing a new limiter for it to compensate some shortcomings in the current limiter, but otherwise I don’t think it needs much work. There might be some improvements in the CVS which are not in the release but I’m not aware of any major limitations in the release.

Oh, well, I was just wondering. JAMin could at least use… umm… a prettier GUI?

ducks and runs away :wink:

What happened to louderbox?