Dynamic EQs are such a luxury in the modern age of music production. They are absolute gold when it comes to correcting resonant frequencies and taming a certain frequency spectrums of a signal. To a drum loop, dynamic EQ can rebalance the kick and snare very well.
I have multiband compressors from McDSP. I have Baby Audio’s smooth operator. I have Sonible’s Smart EQ3 but still I find myself reaching for this little gem of a plugin. The even crazier part is that it’s free.
Mastering Troubled Mixes
I was recently mastering an album for a client and the mixes needed some help. Maybe it was monitoring in the control room, maybe it was just too long working on the mix but the kick drum was really present in a number of tracks.
I judiciously shaved off some subs to create a little more room. I shelved a bit. This all helped but I didn’t want to lose the bass synth weight either.
I reached for the McDSP MC303 and set it up to catch significant transients but I needed a little more precision.
Enter TDR Nova
Finally I grabbed the TRD Nova to tame a resonant bass note at 150Hz. Immediately things started to jive in the master. I liked what was happening so much that I started to add some similar processing to each track.
This was my second round of working on the album masters. I’d sent through initial test masters for the client to review and the came back with some revisions as well as a couple of mixes that needed tweaks.
I was glad that I could look at the tracks again. The additional processing definitely got some of the songs much closer to the mark than they were previously.
The Takeaway: As Black Friday sales are in full swing remember you need tools that help solve a problem. Sometimes those tools are free. If you’re mixing or mastering songs, go and download TDR Nova. It will definitely come in handy.
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