What About Hardware?

As featured in: Performing Songwriter Issue #70, June 2003.  Visit performingsongwriter.com to order back issues or subscribe.

Within a computer, the weakest link is the converters that convert the analog signals into digital; the signal remains digital throughout the recording, mixing, mastering and CD-burning process, so no significant signal degradation creeps in until it’s converted back to analog at a listener’s CD player.

With hardware-based mastering, if all your tools have digital I/O, you’re operating within the same basic constraints. However, some engineers prefer to master using analog hardware tools, such as tube compressors and vintage equalizers, which places more demands on your signal path. You need another set of really high-quality converters (there are plenty, such as the Drawmer 2496, Universal Audio 2192 and Apogee PSX100) to convert the digital data from your computer into analog, then another set of converters at the end of the analog chain to create a digital data stream suitable for recording on CD. In between these two points, the analog electronics have to be engineered for minimum noise and distortion.

Many hardware mastering tools have digital and analog I/O. Some of the most popular include the Finalizer 96K (and Finalizer Express “junior” version) from TC Electronic, and the Waves L2 Ultramaximizer. Both are based on multiband compression and can give extreme “punch” to signals. Aphex is also known for several mastering tools, including the Model 204 Aural Exciter/Big Bottom treble and bass enhancer--although some just like to use their tube preamps, like the Model 207, to warm up a digitally recorded track.Waves also offers a hardware version of their MaxxBass plugin; Peavey’s Kosmos II is rapidly acquiring a following for its brand of low- and high-end enhancement. The Quantum II from dbx is a one-stop mastering processor with several modules; so is Drawmer’s DC2476 Masterflow Digital Processor (a 24-bit/96 kHz dynamics processor with tube saturation and EQ) and Focusrite’s relatively affordable MixMaster, a multiband compressor with EQ, stereo expander and limiter.

Analog processors tend to be high-end, and their virtues are hotly debated among engineers. Some still swear by vintage devices like the Pultec equalizers; a hot current EQ, SPL’s PQ Model 2050, is a parametric, dual-channel 5-band equalizer with huge dynamic range. If you have $12,000 sitting around, check out Avalon’s amazing AD2077 mastering equalizer. Millennia Media offers an interesting approach to both EQ and limiting with their TCL-2 Twincom stereo compressor/limiter and NSEQ-2 Stereo Parametric EQ, both of which let you choose between a tube or discrete solid-state signal path.

One of my favorites, the Dolby Spectral Processor 740, is almost unknown but is a very clever multiband compressor. Other companies that make high-end audio processors include Manley Labs (high quality EQ, preamps, mastering consoles and their Mastering Slam limiter), Universal Audio and many others. These tend to be pricey, but they all bring unique qualities to the mastering party.

An interesting hardware/software combination, the Alesis MasterLink ML9600, is basically a CD duplicating/ copying device. However, it also includes mastering-oriented processors (including EQ, compression, limiting, etc.) so you can play your mixes digitally to the MasterLink’s hard drive, process them, create a playlist that puts them in the desired order, then burn a CD. Purists may say the mastering effects are not up to those costing far more (no surprises there), but the end results can be remarkably good, and the convenience is exceptional.

Another approach is to expand Yamaha’s AW series digital audio workstations with the Waves Y56K signal processing card, which adds compression, EQ, reverb, level maximization, delay and de-essing to the AW’s existing bag of recording tricks.