Thanks for your efforts!
I think I will give it a try as soon as I’ve got the feeling that a song needs to be compared to a reference song.
@Neuro_No_Neuro
Good to know, I knew there’s something I forgot. Using Ozone as a plugin at the end of the mastering chain is the only way I can imagine using it. I never had any CPU problems at all, no matter what I was doing. I also do everything you’re doing in Ozone, but I do it by using Renoise “natives”. Boost volume (Maximizer) and suibtle EQ (Mixer EQ), but I wouldn’t use an Exciter in the master track. I’m already a customer of iZotope and as soon as there’s the next special offer I would like to get it, but I’m not willing to pay more than 50-60 € for this product. I know that there are several guys who grabbed it for that amount of money. But I don’t mind if I wouldn’t get it for that price, I don’t necessarily need it.
I’m pretty sure it’s the opposite in my case. If the mix sucks you can’t fix it with the mastering, and mixing and mastering is a merging process, so I prefer to keep it together. This way I can keep control over the process more easily and will get a faster (and probably better) result.
I shoulda clarified - I A/B back and forth between Renoise and Reaper about 5 million times… (exaggerating slightly) I just don’t have that powerful of a computer to run the mastering plugins in Renoise at any level of personal comfort. Yeah, it can handle it, but nope, don’t want to hear the Mac Mini fan running. I mix back and forth a ton. I listen in Reaper, make adjustments bit by bit, go back to Renoise and change volume/timbre as necessary, then bounce it out, go back to Reaper, and repeat this over and over again. Boooooooooring
Same combo here. I’ve found that I hugely prefer programming drums in a tracker, but also hugely prefer writing/recording other stuff in a piano roll (and Reaper’s is fantastic for multi-track MIDI editing if you set it up right).
I’m a piano player, so the fastest way for me to get melodic/harmonic ideas from brain to DAW is to play them at the keyboard. A lot of the time I want to lay down unquantised or lightly quantised parts in MIDI and clean them up a bit, which makes a hell of a mess in Renoise. And automation is much easier to deal with on a global scale in a traditional DAW.
But then a lot of the time I want to mangle some breaks and drum samples and synth drums and sequence them… which makes a hell of a mess in a tape-machine style DAW. Either you’re cutting up little audio clips (which gives you a ton of control over sound design but is ridiculously clunky and tedious as far as sequencing goes), or you’re pencilling in MIDI/automation, which is finicky compared to the per-step control you have in a tracker.
So my process is usually something like
A. Write a bunch of drum parts or loops in Renoise, export stems as audio into Reaper, build a track/arrangement around them. I can do traditional drum replacement stuff in Reaper, too, if I feel like it.
or
B. Write a whole thing in REAPER with no or few drums (maybe some placeholder kick/snare stuff and a reversed crash here or there), export stems into Renoise (autoseek!), write drums to the whole thing, back into Reaper.
or
C. Some combination of the two. Sometimes I’ll chuck stuff into Redux and fool around with phrase offsets, sometimes I’ll start slicing up rendered stuff from Reaper in Renoise and having fun with it. Different processes lead you in different directions, so it’s all useful. Eventually everything winds up back in Reaper as stems.
You can master or stem master in Renoise just like any other program. Just be sure to treat it like a separate process. Make your song, mix your tracks, render whole or stems, THEN take those .wav files where ever you like to do your mastering.
I’ve too often made the mistake of trying to incorporate a final mix or master in to my creation workflow on Renoise. That poor CPU never stood a chance.
I do see how mixing and mastering would be a lot easier in regular DAWs because of the easy way to automate parameters in curves that are not restricted by the patterns, but I also come across many problems bouncing down individual tracks when I use a lot of send devices/send channels and group effects. I also use custom key tracked envelopes a lot and I completely lose control over these as well.
I would love to be able to put one point of an automation curve at pattern 01 and put the next point of the curve in pattern 12 and then be able to adjust its curvature.
They, or taktik I assume, made a lot of improvements on the automation curves already, I really hope he/they consider developing it further.
I just “rediscovered” the Renoise compressors. I tried a lot of VST compressors the last years (all the common suspects), but then in the end I always come back to Renoise and am amazed about these two dsp devices. I can’t even tell exactly why that is. It just works like I imagine, and others don’t. I guess since I do not use the others correctly I think Renoise ones use quite uncommon release curve shapes, also the attack detection seems to use secret “hold” value or so. The bus compressor is awesome as, yes, “bus” compressor and also master compressor, but also for slowly shaping track sound. I even love the distortion of “compressor”, if you gone too far. Don’t know if this is hipster analog like distortion or simple digital distortion, but I really like it.
The only thing I miss here is a upward compression mode (not to be mixed up with parallel compression, it sounds different) plus a range then (required for upwards mode). Just like tb_compressor_v3 provides:
I guess since the algorithms of these devices came from 3rd party, there is not much hope for any changes. I requested now a mix knob for both compressors. This would already expand the use cases of the compressors by a lot! Please vote the request up.
I used to think OTT, even though not the most conventional compressor, was very good, but i have later realised that it is completely useless for mastering. It can be good for sound design though, but just don’t use this in the master chain.
On the other hand i used to think the native compressors were not all that great, but i have later realised they’re actually pretty good. Especially for subtle compression, but for limiting i prefer Limiter64 though, because i think the native ones seem too slow and fails absorbing the worst peaks without harsh clipping.
I use less and less compressors overall these days, realised that compressors are made to degrade music by design. Of course, these days you can’t make music without any compression, it is an essential tool, but has to be used with care.
For mastering there are basically two plugins i use, Waves Abbey Road TG Mastering Chain and Limiter64, in that order. The mastering plugin is imo the absolute best plugin i have purchased, it works like magic. Limiter64 also does magic and is able to absorb the shortest peaks almost completely transparent if used subtly and not for increasing the volume.
Also even the Maximizer which supposedly is hard-clipping, they add quite big peaks more than you would think. The Maximizer need a true-peak limiting functionality but from reading the manual about the Maximizer
The Maximizer is a hard limiter which boosts and limits audio signals. It will hard-clip a signal that exceeds the Threshold, but then soften the Release when it falls back under that Threshold (contrary to plain hard-clipping). The Maximizer is often used for final mastering to block any stray, unnecessary peaks without harsh sounding full hard-clipping.
But why is SPAN reporting True Peak clipping? I must be doing something wrong
I think my best advice would be to keep volumes low.
I haven’t used the maximiser much, i think it sounds a bit harsh, not sure if i used it as intended though, i think of it as a limiter/clipper. It can’t even half way compare to Limiter64, but no one would expect it to either.
If the maximizer would sound harsh, all my tracks must sound harsh, because I use it all the time. It’s a limiter, similar to a clipper, yes. But it’s not a clipper. Btw, you can also use the Renoise compressor as a limiter.
The Renoise maximizer comes from TDR and is not bad at all. If you make classical music, you should care for distortion, but the Renoise maximizer will always add only good distortion, since it’s Renoise. Distortion is good in most electronic music contexts. Even the Renoise distortion device can add wonders. Analogue distorts all the time. Maybe if you have glassy, sinoid sounds, those are hard to limit. Then you might need that limiter/maximizer which the snakeoil guy tested recently Actually that one looks really good to me, too, never liked fapfilter too much in v2 generation, adds ton of latency which improving the sound obviously (Wow, that’s a nice song the snakeoil guy uses. Such nice pads. No, it’s not darute sandstorm).
Ok seriously, the maximizer is pretty good for cutting off a bit a peaks a bit. Ozone will sound a lot cleaner on heavier settings, but the Renoise only really can flatten the sound, which can be desired. Not sure if it is really usable with increased attack settings though. Did you ever use it like that?
Are you sure ?
I thought Fabrice ( tokyo down ) only did the renoise compressors
The compressor time value readout is imho not acurate , the attack and release stage both have a minimum valuef 1 microsecond , I can hardly believe that is correct
FOr compression duties I use
Klangheldm dc8c , mjuc and jon v auio fircomp 2
All great and cheap as chips
yes, I built a few effect modules, the maximizer, the bus compressor, and I think also a saturator. But this stuff is super old and I haven’t found the time to contribute to renoise since then.
You wrote “but for limiting i prefer Limiter64 though, because i think the native ones seem too slow and fails absorbing the worst peaks without harsh clipping” and “I haven’t used the maximiser much, i think it sounds a bit harsh”. And I wrote “If the maximizer would sound harsh, all my tracks must sound harsh, because I use it all the time”. So how can you say that I didn’t read your previous comments?
No, I don’t know SPAN. Did it help you for what you want to achieve? If you’re looking for a true peak limiter, this one seems to be the best. But it costs not less than 299 dollars. Decide for yourself if it’s worth the price. The alternative is FabFilter Pro-L 2.
I just don’t have that powerful of a computer to run the mastering plugins in Renoise at any level of personal comfort. Yeah, it can handle it, but nope, don’t want to hear the Mac Mini fan running. I mix back and forth a ton. I listen in Reaper, make adjustments bit by bit, go back to Renoise and change volume/timbre as necessary, then bounce it out, go back to Reaper, and repeat this over and over again. Boooooooooring 
I think Renoise ones use quite uncommon release curve shapes, also the attack detection seems to use secret “hold” value or so. The bus compressor is awesome as, yes, “bus” compressor and also master compressor, but also for slowly shaping track sound. I even love the distortion of “compressor”, if you gone too far. Don’t know if this is hipster analog like distortion or simple digital distortion, but I really like it.
I must be doing something wrong
