902 Beats

🎚️ FabFilter Pro-Q 4. this is the first thing on my master chain, and it shows up again further down. here's what's actually on it. the big display is where you work. double-click to drop a band, drag the dot to move it. you get up to 24 bands. every band has freq, gain and q. frequency runs from 10 Hz to 30 kHz, gain goes 30 dB either way, and q is how wide or narrow the band is. shape picks the curve: bell, low and high shelf, low and high cut, notch, band pass, tilt shelf, flat tilt and all pass. slope goes anywhere from 0 to 96 dB per octave, and the cuts can go all the way to brickwall. the ring around the gain knob makes any bell or shelf dynamic, so it only moves when that part of the song gets loud. spectral is the new one in 4. straight from the manual: instead of turning the whole band down, it only grabs the exact frequencies inside the band that cross the threshold and leaves everything else alone. there's a 3 dB per octave tilt on by default so the highs trigger a little more, which fabfilter says sounds more natural on a full mix. character, bottom right, switches between clean, subtle and warm. clean is the transparent pro-q sound, subtle adds a little vintage saturation, and warm is more tube-like. eq sketch is new too. you just draw the curve you want in one move and it builds the bands for you.

🎚️ Harrison Tape Saturator. this sits third on my master chain, right after masterdesk. it's modeled on the old 2-track reel-to-reel machines, so here's what's actually on it. input is how much you feed it. harrison says get the meter into the yellow and keep it out of the red. fidelity picks the grade of tape. there's five: best, high, good, average and low. best is the cleanest with the least distortion, and it gets more colored and lo-fi the further down you go. speed runs from 60 ips, like a studio reel machine, all the way down to 1 7/8, which is cassette speed. the slower it runs, the lower the fidelity. drive is the big knob in the middle. push it and you're hitting the tape harder, so more saturation. the meter above it shows how hard you're hitting it. flutter, dropouts and hiss are the tape flaws. flutter wobbles the speed so the pitch moves, dropouts are those little volume dips from worn tape, and hiss is hiss. straight from the manual: each one has its own enable switch, so you can shut them off completely and keep just the saturation. harrison even says to kill the dropouts on a clean master. output sets the level going into whatever's next in the chain. one more: click and hold the bypass and it only bypasses while you're holding it, so you can flip back and forth quick.

🎚️ FabFilter Pro-L 2. this is the limiter at the end of my master chain, the last thing that touches the song before it leaves. here's what's actually on it. gain is the big fader on the left. push it up and the song gets louder while the limiter holds the peaks, so you're moving one thing instead of juggling threshold and makeup gain. style picks the algorithm. there's eight: transparent, punchy, dynamic, allround, aggressive, modern, bus and safe. modern is the default. bus isn't trying to be clean at all, it's built for drum buses and single tracks. lookahead is how far ahead it reads before it grabs. shorter keeps more of the hit and sounds louder but can distort. longer is safer but the hits can sink back a little. attack and release run the slower stage that follows the overall level, not the quick peaks. straight from the manual: long attack with short release brings out loudness and presence, short attack with long release is safer and cleaner but can pump. channel linking has two knobs, transients and release. fabfilter says start release at 100%, and transients can sit under 100% so a peak on one side only gets pulled down on that side. unity gain lets you hear what the limiting is doing at the same volume. i'd rather a song be a little too quiet than too loud, so i want to hear the limiting for what it is, not just louder.