Anyone use Lurssen Console Mastering Plugin?

[Ted]

Last night I was looking at the IK Multimedia website and saw they had a Mastering plugin called the Lurssen Mastering Console. They offer a free 9 day trial so I downloaded it and went back through a lot of my tracks in Logic and used it to remaster some of my tracks. It seemed to help some of my tracks quite a bit-- this is the first mastering software I've used-- up til now I just use a variety of compressors, eq, limiters on my master mix.

My tracks sounded a lot beefier and fuller-- a lot of it probably due to the built-in unseen brickwall limiter that is automatic. One thing about using it that confused me is how much to drive the input dial-- I would drive it enough so that the needles would be well into the red on the Console GUI-- though my master output on my DAW was never in danger of clipping. I watched some demos of Lurssen and his assistant mastering tracks and the needles would be well into the red-- I guess I'm confused because I thought "RED/plus dB=bad, do not do" I could hear more distortion as I turned the input dial up past a certain point.

At a certain point I'd like to invest in some mastering software and I'm looking at some options. Wondering if anyone here uses the Lurssen and finds it to be worth the money.

[RPaul]

I picked up the Lurssen Mastering Console last year. It was on sale for $49.99, and I was able to use $14 worth of IK Jam Points, so got it for $35.99. That was easily in impulse buy territory, and it's certainly been worth that money for me.

I haven't used it on too many of my masters, but I have used it on some, and, if I didn't have other options, I could reasonably easily imagine using it a lot more. My most common choice at present is a combination of the Waves Abbey Road TG Mastering plugin and the iZotope Ozone Advanced Maximizer plugin (sometimes combined with PSP Neon HR if I need some additional EQ at that stage). I've also used the more general iZotope Ozone plugin occasionally, and I have IK's T-RackS MAX, though I don't think I've used that in mastering recently (I do use some of the individual plugins at the track level or on effects buses). (I'm pretty much a plugin junkie in general. If curious on how bad, see http://rickpaulmusic.com/equipment-and-software/.)

As for the Lurssen Mastering Console, one nice thing about it is that it is probably as near to instant gratification as I've seen on the mastering front. It is limited in flexibility, but that is part of what provides the instant gratification. You pick a genre preset, which controls what modules are used under the hood. Sometimes you can adjust a few of the under-the-hood parameters, but mostly you just get to tweak the input drive, the "push" (which I gather does some enhancement across all EQ bands) and some fixed frequency EQ tweaks. My M.O. with that is to try different genre presets to find what comes the closest, then make any further tweaks that might be needed. For the most part, though, if it feels like it needs too many tweaks, it may not have enough flexibility for that project, so I'll probably use another plugin (or set of plugins) instead.

Rick

[Ted]

Thanks Rick!

Yeah one thing I liked about the Lurssen was that you can slap it on the master channel and have a huge improvement in limiting and a boost in loudness immediately. I like the idea of something that limits my choices a bit so I don't tweak knobs I shouldn't and screw up the process. I'm slowly learning the process of serial compression in my projects-- but I've not been as successful getting the results I wanted with getting that nice solid brickwall waveform out of the stock Logic limiter. But the Lurssen gives me that immediately.

I'm still not sure how to use the VU meters within the app in relation to distortion/clipping though.

I've been looking at the Izotope stuff on their website and it all looks very impressive, though if/when I ever move to those plugins I'll have to devote a good bit of time learning how to use them-- just like anything really. I've been spending the past month and a half still learning to digest everything in NI Komplete 12 Ultimate-- which was my first plugin investment. I had no idea when I bought it just how powerful this software was and just how many mindblowing tones would soon be under my fingers.

I looked at your list of software and it's impressive-- you have some great stuff there. I just bought IK's Amplitube Max and have some jam points I can use-- maybe if the Lurssen goes on sale again I'll snag it.

Up til now I used to look at guitars in the Sweetwater catalogue and fantasize about which one I wanted next. Now it's all about plugins.

[RPaul]

Hi Ted,

With respect to the meters on the Lurssen Mastering Console (which I was actually playing with a bit last night to do a quick work mix of a song I'm mixing in its early stages), it's probably important to recognize they are VU meters, rather than digital peak or RMS meters, so will read differently than the meters on your DAW. In particular, they tend to be more of an average reading, but also with some sluggishness in response (so, for example, they won't get every percussive transient). I was actually reading a few articles about mixing with VU meters yesterday, after having seen some discussion of doing that in a recent Waves master class. Here is one of those: https://www.musicianonamission.com/vu-meter/. And another: https://sonimus.com/blog/tutorials/vu-m ... evels.html. One question mark for VU meters in a plugin is how they are calibrated -- i.e. what does 0 on the VU meter represent? I was using the Waves VU meter plugin yesterday, and they default to -18 dBFS, which I gather is pretty common, but is that what the Lurssen plugin uses? (I don't know one way or the other.)

Beyond the VU meter nature, though, and whatever understanding (or misunderstanding) I may have of that, I have to say I'm feeling like the VU meters in the Lurssen plugin may not be reading things quite right. There is a switch to toggle between reading the input signal and the output signal. While the output meter feels to me like its reading somewhere in the ballpark of what I might expect, the input meter feels like it is reading way lower than I'd expect. And, if I crank up the input drive significantly, it is easy to get distortion. My general approach with the input level on that plugin has been to go by whatever I'd normally be doing with my mix prior to that point and, generally, not touch the input drive on the plugin.

I'm generally not looking for master wave forms that look like square waves, at least for the types of music I'm typically making. Beyond just sound and perceived loudness considerations, I'm typically targeting a certain amount of dynamic range (nominally about 14 dB, but, more realistically in terms of my results, more like 11 dB and ranging anywhere from 9 dB to 14 dB, depending on the song). The biggest reason I don't use the Lurssen plugin more is because it often seems to result in less dynamic range than I prefer, whereas I can more easily get that more to my liking with other plugins. (Interestingly enough, in the work mix I did last night, Lurssen got it exactly in the ballpark, so I may end up using it on my current remix if that still holds true after I deal with other parts of the mix.)

With respect to iZotope and learning curve, there can definitely be a steep learning curve there (and they provide lots of educational videos to help on that front). However, they also have "assistants" in a number of their key plugins (Ozone, Neutron, and Nectar) that can, at least in theory, get you in the ballpark quickly, after which you can tweak from there. I've never had any real luck with Ozone's mastering assistant -- I've done better with some of Ozone's presets (they provide quite a few, but there were one or two of those that I ended up using on quite a few of the tracks on one album I did about 4 years ago, and maybe a few of the tracks from my most recent album, though I mostly use the Waves AR TG Mastering on that one). I've only had mixed results with Neutron's assistants. There was one track I did a bunch of years back where I decided to start out by running all the tracks through the assistant to see what that got me as a starting point, not expecting much, and especially expecting I'd end up replacing the vocal processing. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it really did a good job with that track, and I don't think I even changed the lead vocal processing on what it covered, but that was definitely an isolated case for me -- I've never managed to get similarly acceptable results in further experiments with that -- and a fairly unique track among my recordings (e.g. no keyboard sounds at all).

I've also got NI KOMPLETE, also, though not Ultimate. I think there's more in that than anyone could possibly ever learn in any depth. There are definitely some of the components I haven't even tried, as well as others I've poked around a bit with but just don't use in practice. But there are also lots of pieces I do use, some quite a bit, especially KONTAKT (e.g. I use that for pianos a fair portion of the time, and I also use Session Guitarist products quite a bit, though not all of those were in KOMPLETE, and also some third party KONTAKT libraries), some of the synths (e.g. MassiveX, Absynth, FM7), and Guitar Rig. It's probably fair to say that at least one NI product appears on the vast majority of my recordings. Then again, that would also be true of Toontrack (Superior Drummer 3), Spectrasonics (Trilian), and, to a slightly lesser degree, Arturia (V Collection) on the virtual instruments front, and Waves and PSP Audioware on the audio plugins front.

It's probably lucky I'm not a guitar player, so I have no temptation to build a guitar collection, other than virtual (and I've got a whole bunch of those).

Rick

[Ted]

Rick, thanks for that response. You pretty much answered everything I was asking in my previous post. I'll give those links a good read-- thanks for posting those for me!

I know what you mean about not wanting completely square master wave forms--especially for some types of music. I personally like a lot of dynamics as a listener-- but I've always found it to be a challenging exercise to try to get everything to the point where its a straight wall. I would be envious when looking at the waveforms of other people's tracks and see how straight they managed to get it. Now that I can do it more less at will, I can ease back on it and focus on what sounds best to my ears.

One thing that bugs the hell out of me is one of my tracks last year that got forwarded on a popular listing-- there were over 75 tracks forwarded ( I wonder how many submissions there were)-- and only about 11 made the cut to be on the album-- mine made it but I didn't properly master the track. I didn't even know what mastering was when I submitted. It was a strong composition and I was so happy to sign that track. it was a personal milestone for me-- it gives me confidence when I doubt my abilities. But I listen to the album with the other tracks on there and mine has to be turned up to be heard against the others, and I'm afraid I won't ever get a placement because the level is so low compared to the others. I guess that's a lesson.

One of the first things I did when I downloaded the Lurssen demo was to pull up that track and give it a quick mastering job. It's so much louder and better sounding that the official "master" that now belongs to the library. I wonder if it would be worth my time to send my remastered file to the library owner-- or if it would be considered an annoying thing to do at this point.

Cheers,

Ted

[RPaul]

There are probably lots of people better qualified than me to answer your question about offering your remastered track to the library owner. Personally, I'd think offering couldn't hurt, and he/she could decide whether it would be useful.

It strikes me that, if they weren't okay with the original level, they wouldn't have signed the track in the first place. I'm surprised, though, that, if they were putting it on an album, they wouldn't do something to have a reasonable balance between tracks. Anyone actually putting your piece in some sort of sync placement would probably just turn it up or down as needed. The only disadvantage might when auditioning music prior to the making choices due to the whole "louder is better" perception.

Rick

[Ted]

There are probably lots of people better qualified than me to answer your question about offering your remastered track to the library owner. Personally, I'd think offering couldn't hurt, and he/she could decide whether it would be useful.

It strikes me that, if they weren't okay with the original level, they wouldn't have signed the track in the first place. I'm surprised, though, that, if they were putting it on an album, they wouldn't do something to have a reasonable balance between tracks. Anyone actually putting your piece in some sort of sync placement would probably just turn it up or down as needed. The only disadvantage might when auditioning music prior to the making choices due to the whole "louder is better" perception.

Rick

Rick, yeah that had crossed my mind that maybe the library owner was fine with the master level being what it was. I figure he probably owns a pretty sweet studio and could slap that track into his rig and make it plenty loud if he wanted to.

Man, I am gonna have to buy this stupid Lurssen plugin in 6 days when my trial period is over. It makes such a huge no-brainer difference on my tracks. I got some plugins from Waves this week and I got to pick a couple of freebees-- and one of them was the Abbey Road J37 Studer tape plugin. Man.... it's got a really nice saturation effect. I've been using that on my master bus with the Lurssen and they sound great together.