Waves Online Mastering

[Guy Rowland]

Another AI mastering option, this time from Waves. This is a demo from Production Expert:



The most important part in the above is in the volume matching, to which we only get a brief preview at 2.32 and - quelle surprise - the difference between original and master suddenly becomes extremely minor. That's not to say it will always be thus of course, but I'd like to hear it on other material. There's also various tonal skews you can give it.

I recently revived the old Mastering Thread - viewtopic.php?t=130 . I know it's heresy, but for those who work as one-man/woman bands and work entirely in the box, honestly I can see that these mastering services will become better than anything you can do yourself, simply because it is another pair of (artificial) ears - as long as you're doing regular material and not after esoteric results. The reason I'm so ambivalent about mastering as a separate process is simply that any solo operator would have more control to "master" at mix stage, except perhaps for final level control. Mastering has always been about another pair of trusted and skillful ears more than tools, it seems to me. A skilled and experienced human of course is best, but I think there's a case that this sort of service might well be better than DIY.

Payment isn't subscription, but rather credits for what you need which seems a good idea.

Credits can be purchased where 1 Credit = 1 mastered track.

1 Credit - $5.99

5 Credits – $24.99 ($4.99 for a track)

15 Credits – $59.99 ($3.99 for a track)

60 Credits - $179.99 ($2.99 for a track)

[wst3]

personally I prefer human ears, but I will concede that there are mastering tasks that a computer can do better than a human, even without AI, and level matching is certainly one of them.

I may toss a project their way, I'm willing to gamble $6 to see what they can do, but my expectations are ridiculously low!

And yeah, the credits approach is far superior to the subscription plan - guess they learned something from the last debacle, I think they deserve credit for that.

[Lawrence]

The price point makes it work. $6 as opposed to $100-$150 for human mastering is a sort of no-brainer gamble. I might try it as well.

[wst3]

Larry - my thoughts exactly, although "you get what you pay for' keeps ringing in my ears. In this case that may not apply, since there is probably no human intervention, thus no salaries to pay, its all about recouping the investment.