I've been searching on the internet for a tutorial on Mastering in Ableton Live but alas cannot find anything....A little surprising considering it's one of the major D.A.Ws out there and the full program comes with an array of Mastering Plugins. Any ideas anybody????

Honestly, Bear, Live isn't exactly known for its ability to provide an optimized environment in which to master audio, so it doesn't surprise me that there are few, if any, tutorials on Live as a tool to "finish" songs. Personally, I use Logic for that. It's just much easier and the tools for mastering are much better in terms of quality and ease of use. But, considering you might not have two DAWs on your computer to use as specialized programs, what might I be able to help you with as far as using Live to the best of its ability? Is it the plugs or the process? Jamie

Thanks for your reply Jamie. I need help with understanding the use of the mastering plugins and the process of adjusting these for different styles of music. The manual is just not comprehensive enough. The manual gives the technical basics of the mastering plugins ie. multiband dynamics, compression and limiting etc..but leaves the rest up to to the user to figure out and experiment with. Are these plugins designed for engineer use only? If not, then I would love to see a tutorial or two on how to use them.....

Hi Bear, I'd go with what Jamie says... not many people I know use Ableton to master their tracks. Do you have a subscription account here? If you do I'd highly recommend checking out the Logic mastering toolbox by Steve H: [url]http://www.macprovideo.com/tutorial/Logic401[/url] As the name suggests it deals with using the Logic Pro stock plugins to master a track... however, the concepts and rationale behind this are timeless and can be applied to other DAWs like Live, Cubase, PT etc... But this is a good idea, a Mastering in Ableton Live tutorial... :) Rounik

Hey bear, In addition to what Rounik said, I think the best way to use any mastering tools in any DAW is to learn the concepts behind how and why it is done in the first place. After that, then the specific tools from program to program will be essentially the same. Honestly, I would just watch the videos here that Rounik mentioned, and then any supplemental reading or videos that you can get your hands/eyes on to get a feel for the process. I took the mastering audio class online through Berklee and let me say there is a lot to learn. Even after taking the class, I still simply use what I learned to master my songs to get a general idea as to what the real professional might sound like. I certainly wouldn't trust myself to release anything that wasn't done by someone who really knew what they were doing. But then, all that knowledge would have one definite advantage...you'd be able to communicate with and understand your engineer much better if you had a good general idea about why certain things are done they way they are done. Hope this helps! Jamie

That's some good tips. Thank You. I'll spend some time looking at these vids....I can't use logic as I am a windows user. This situation is a little frustrating because I purchased Ableton based on it's marketing that it supports every step of the musical process but it seems that's not entirely true....to give Ableton some credit it is a very good mixing tool. It's amazingly fast at putting tracks together. I assume then it is worthwhile having two D.A.Ws on my system so I have everything covered...Any thoughts on Cubase??

Well Ableton is very capable and I'd explore it's mastering plugins before necessarily diving into another DAW... but it was originally designed to be almost complimentary to studio DAWs and was seen as a live solution rather than a studio solution. However, the lines between live use and studio use have blurred somewhat over the past few years. Ableton Live is used by many as their primary studio application and with good results and many others do what you mention: compose, arrange etc in Live and then export to Logic/PT/Cubase where they mix and master. Just that out of the box it's effect plugins are not as highly regarded as Logic's... Cubase is a very good DAW to use... I might be biased towards Logic (nothing to do with me being an Apple Logic Certified Trainer ;). I haven't as much experience with Cubase as Logic, but the recent experience I've had with Cubase has all been extremely positive. Check out these tuts: (yup, there's a Mastering in Cubase tut you may be interested in too!) [url]http://www.macprovideo.com/tutorials/cubase-application[/url] Hope that helps Rounik