Which plugins are on your stereo bus? Why?

[scpstu]

Just a limiter and the maximizer in ozone to get a feel of what it would sound like mastered. Don't get ahead of yourself unless you're practicing for a career as a mastering engineer. The most important steps are BEFORE your MIX hits the stereo bus

[c1c2]

During mix a limiter with +/-0 gain, just for ear protection.

[Passing Bye]

Don't get ahead of yourself unless you're practicing for a career as a mastering engineer. The most important steps are BEFORE your MIX hits the stereo bus

Stereo bus is just another channel in your mixer which you should use to your advantage for mixing, same as drum, vox or any other bus channel you have, goal is to make the mix sound just the way you want it using everything you have on disposal, little goes long way on bus-es, the more you do on bus-es, less you need to do on individual channels, it's common sense really and the way probably most of the people work for ages.

If you know what works and how to get it, working ahead actually can make your life so much easier and lead you to make better decisions faster, especially if you are mixing as you go, as plenty of artists who are their own mixers actually do.

Still it's not mastering, it's mixing, getting your mix to sound "mastered" is the goal, not just leave it on luck to next guy, it's pretty hit and miss experience, do everything you can to reach the sound you want, than remove the limiter and send it to mastering (of course ensure he have some headroom left to work with), let the engineer enhance what is there, not create something that isn't.

[XxEDxX]

Usually a Pro-Q as first and a limiter like Pro-L as last plugin. Whatever is needed in between is determined by the project The less the better.

[Ou_Tis]

Surprised no one in this thread's been using Gullfoss on the master buss... do you use it on a mix buss instead?

[scpstu]

Don't get ahead of yourself unless you're practicing for a career as a mastering engineer. The most important steps are BEFORE your MIX hits the stereo bus

Stereo bus is just another channel in your mixer which you should use to your advantage for mixing, same as drum, vox or any other bus channel you have

I dissagree. Yes, drum bus, vox bus ect ARE part of the MIX. And especially at first, I think its important people who are new to mixing know that mixing and mastering are TWO different things.

[Passing Bye]

Don't get ahead of yourself unless you're practicing for a career as a mastering engineer. The most important steps are BEFORE your MIX hits the stereo bus

Stereo bus is just another channel in your mixer which you should use to your advantage for mixing, same as drum, vox or any other bus channel you have

I dissagree. Yes, drum bus, vox bus ect ARE part of the MIX. And especially at first, I think its important people who are new to mixing know that mixing and mastering are TWO different things.

Disagreeing with what really, did I said that or it was this thread about that, putting effects on stereo bus isn't immediately mastering, engineers for decades use stereo bus and other bus-es for mixing, I think you are the one here that needs to separate that actually.

Also it's highly debatable should someone who is mixing and mastering same project separate two processes, of course if system resources aren't the issue, we are relying too much on some practices as ultimate rules, which they aren't and they vary from situation to situation.

You are obviously only targeting people who are new to mixing and in that case you kinda have a point, but even than it's debatable, because they are exclusively comparing their outcome to mixed&mastered music and it's not like outcome isn't influenced by stuff on stereo bus that was there during the mixing and mastering, so why should they work without them, even you use limiter to get sense of your mix and than advising others to don't do it, paradox.

I'm not advocating to have chains of effects with loaded presets when you are starting out on your stereo bus because you heard and see it somewhere, but I'm not advising against getting ahead either if you know that you will reach there, whatever works, you can't obviously run before you learn how to walk, failing is unavoidable, but try everything, there are many ways to skin the cat.

[scpstu]

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Also it's highly debatable should someone who is mixing and mastering same project separate two processes,
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I don't even agree that its highly debatable that mixing and mastering the same project could be seperated or not. I think most enginereers would agrue they are TWO seperate things, and blurring the lines of mixing and mastering will only get you in trouble unless you are highly skilled. Cause for me mastering is for specific mediums, and the engineers who can master specifically for streaming OR vinyl OR cassette OR digital download OR ect. are highly sought out by the mixer (myself). SO, if you're mastering without your specific medium as the end game in mind you're not really a mastering engineer. Also most seasoned mixers have a BUS before the stereo bus that receives signals from the drum BUS, music BUS, fx BUS ect (this would be the MAIN BUS, not to be confused with the stereo channel). And this post was specifically about the stereo channel. So your agrugment that putting plugins on BUS's doesn't really apply to what the original post was about. And I agree that you SHOULD have plugins on your BUS's of course.

[Passing Bye]

Also most seasoned mixers have a BUS before the stereo bus that receives signals from the drum BUS, music BUS, fx BUS ect (this would be the MAIN BUS, not to be confused with the stereo channel).

Since console days stereo bus was used as such, these days you can route bus into bus into oblivion, but that doesn't change the role of stereo channel, stereo bus, master channel, 2 bus or whatever you wanna call it.

And this post was specifically about the stereo channel. So your agrugment that putting plugins on BUS's doesn't really apply to what the original post was about.

Stereo channel is stereo bus, 2 bus or whatever you wanna call it, so it applies, your original post was kind of vague, because you went little off topic there and I reminded you that stereo channel or stereo bus is there for mixing as well, it's not just for the mastering.

And I agree that you SHOULD have plugins on your BUS's of course.

That's all I'm actually saying, so stereo bus shouldn't be exception.

[fedesilva]

bx_opto with less than 3db compression and slow speed, for glue.

ADPTR Metric AB for references and spectrum analysis.
Sonarworks Reference for Headphone correction.

[sjm]

SPAN: 'nuff said
FL Limiter: shouldn't actually be doing anything, just there to protect my ears in case something goes horribly wrong
FL Parametric EQ + Control Surface: I have the control surface with a button set to toggle the EQ on and off and one big knob used to sweep the single band pass I've configured on the EQ. Great for zooming in on problem areas in the frequency spectrum.

None of the above should be doing anything to the sound when rendering the project. Other stuff may get added if the project demands it.