Mastering for Electronic Music

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Author: Ilpo Karkkainen

  • What Sample Rate and Bit Depth Should I Use?

    I often get questions about what is the best sample rate and bit depth to use. So let me break it down in a simple way.

    This article is updated in October 2021.

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  • Production Advice From Metalheadz Artists

    The fourth installment of the iconic Platinum Breakz album series on Metalheadz is out now. I’m happy and proud to be a part of it and wanted to celebrate the release by doing something a little bit special. I wanted to bring you guys some knowledge straight from the trenches.

    So I took to it and spoke to many of the artists featured on the album. I asked them to share advice on things they find useful in their music creation process. It goes without saying these guys are all at the top of their game so I was as interested as anyone else about picking some brains! In this article I will also expand and share some further thoughts of my own on each topic. Let’s see what they’re saying…
     

     

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  • TDR VOS SlickEQ Review

    Today is a great day for free plugins. Tokyo Dawn Labs has just released their latest VST/AU plugin called “TDR VOS SlickEQ”. I’m lucky to have been involved with the beta testing of this plugin (yes I am very happily biased with Tokyo Dawn since about 15 years now..those who know, know). So I’ve been putting the EQ to work lately.

    Let me give you a few quick details and thoughts on the plugin – for the full blast and downloads please head over to Tokyo Dawn.

    TDR VOS SlickEQ is a mixing/mastering equalizer designed for ease of use, musical flexibility and impeccable sound.

    The plugin is a collaboration with three very talented people: Herbert Goldberg (of Variety of Sound), Fabien Schivre (Tokyo Dawn) and Vladislav Goncharov (Tokyo Dawn/Vldag Sound). You might know these guys previously from plugins like TDR Feedback Compressor, VOS Thrillseeker and Vldag Molot just to mention a few. There’s no need to say this but I’m going to say it anyway: these guys know what they’re doing. Hearing they are putting their great minds together to work on a free plugin was just fantastic news for me, and the results didn’t disappoint (quite the contrary). 

    The plugin looks simple on the surface but it’s full of cool functionality, such as:

    • A clever auto gain function that automatically compensates for changes of perceived loudness during EQ operation.
    • Mid/Side/Mono/Stereo operating modes.
    • Four distinct EQ models: “American”, “British”, “German” and “Soviet” with optional non-linearity.
    • Four output saturation stages: “Linear”, “Silky”, “Mellow” and “Deep”.
    • Easy to use A/B comparison feature.
    • Support for mouse wheel adjustments (doesn’t sound like much but it’s always a big one for me)
    • Advanced 64bit multirate processing scheme that eliminates typical problems of digital EQ implementations such as frequency-warping, quantization distortion and aliasing.
    • Clean, user-friendly interface.

    In short, no matter wether you are looking at this plugin from the perspective of coding, functionality, sound quality or design and user friendliness – this plugin is top notch. It feels great in use and I am getting good results with it.

    For me the guys have just nailed the essence of modern EQ’ing here, simple. And hey, finally we Mac users get our hit of that VOS sound we keep hearing about right? Sweet.

    So there you have it. The plugin is available completely free in VST format for Windows and VST + AU formats for Mac. For the full details and specs head on over to the official TDR VOS SlickEQ download page.

  • 8 Tips on Making Your Mix Loud

    I get this question a lot.

    What can I do to make my music sound louder?

    Well, there’s lots – in fact most things you do when making music affect loudness somehow.

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  • Maschine MK1 vs MK2 – Review of Differences

    The Native Instruments Maschine MK1 vs MK2 debate is running hot. I recently acquired the MK2 myself. I’ve been using the Maschine MK1 model for about 8 months and liked it a lot.

    A lot of people are contemplating on wether to upgrade to MK2 or not. The MK2 is currently priced at 599 € by Native Instruments. It’s a lot of money to spend on an upgrade that may seem superficial on the surface.

    Here is a review of the differences between the Maschine MK1 and MK2 hardware, along with my personal impressions. Maschine MK1 vs MK2, let the battle commence…

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  • Secret Feature in Ableton Live: Show Devices / Plugins on Tracks

    One of the things I have been missing in Ableton Live is the ability to see all of the devices/plugins of all of the tracks at once. It’s a bit annoying having to hop tracks to see what devices each one has loaded up.

    Well, one of you (thanks Martin) pointed me out to a solution. Ableton have in fact created the feature to show device slots in Live but left it out for some reason. However with a little tweak we can make it happen.

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