DMH's Main Mastering Bus

My two favorute plugins:

Before I get started, I'd just like to mention my favorite compressor for processing bass - the TLA-100A from Softube.

So, here is my default mastering bus "for my music". I don't quite know why, but a shelf high-end boost at 2600Hz seems to work really well for me.

Tube Compressor adds a true sense of warmth to the output bus. It's usually best to reduce the input to a level that causes no more than -2dB of compression .

The Steinberg multiband compressor adds a bit of highs to the mix, while reducing the sharp high-end peaks that can cause spikes.

Character adds even more life to the mix.

Magneto II is the best tape emulator that I know. Always use it.

The Steinberg limiter is then placed on the output buss with no more than -2dB of limiting.

When doing an emmersive mix, a high-end cut is used on the LFE channel. Notice that all of the other plugins rout to all of the emmersive channels (except character). This is the beauty of Nuendo.