Just moved into a new studio and starting a mixing session soon. I just moved in last week, so I haven't had much time to get used to the sound of the room. I'm looking to pickup one of the mix reference plugins and narrowed it down to Magic A/B and MCompare by Melda

I was originally sold on Magic A/B as it looks very simple to use but it doesn't have automatic level matching. MCompare has auto level matching, but doesn't seem as easy to use. Does anyone here have experience with either? Looking to have the referencing process as simple and painless as possible.

Cheers!

Bump

It would be great if these allowed for the reference track to be sent out of a separate interface output, for those who use hardware compression/EQ on the DAW master bus. As Far as I understand, neither allow for this.

I'm not sure any plug in can directly access physical outs. The best alternative would be something like a multi-out virtual instrument... You could then buss the corresponding DAW aux track to another physical out.

As far as the OP - I can't speak for magic AB, but MCompare is very nice. The metering and built-in filters are very useful.

i don't know about your daw or if you are recording to tape but i think you can create a new bus as a master channel that goes to the hardware and comes back for recording on another bus, for which you monitor it's input, and that monitored post-hardware bus has the magic ab instance. Also that would allow you to hear your mix after the a/d conversion.

hey thanks, after i posted, i was thinking that your method is the way to do it. i guess i'm still hoping that the other way would be offered as well. for me it would be a bit handier.

Hey, thanks for the tip. yes, the only plugins I know that can access different physical outputs are software instruments such as Kontakt. It would be interesting to know if this would be possible with an audio plugin.

If you haven't tried ozone's eq matching function, it's really great. You can capture the frequency response of a bunch of reference tracks and see how they compare to your own. You can even use a slider to gently nudge you mix's frequency balance to be closer to the reference tracks.

If your room or speakers are clouding your judgement, you will be able to see what you're doing wrong. Using your ears is more important, of course. But this is a really great tool too.

Bump

First bump post for what?
Both plugins has trial versions.. so it's easy to try it out for your use and taste.
As already mentioned in first post.. one is simpler, second is more comprehensive with added features and bit "specific" Melda's UI, which you probably either love or hate

I've personally never need such plugins, because I've placed ref. song to another track in project where I can adjust volume to my taste. I generally don't use DAW master bus for processing (only meter or safety limiter is there), because I always have another bus with effects before that. So there isn't problem with undesired effect processing of reference song.
Other option is to simply use media player along DAW, all my soundcards are multi-client so its not problem with that. Often you can enable leveling in those media players.. like SoundCheck in iTunes or ReplayGain at others. So all songs played from there has roughly similar volume, which is absolutely fine for comparisons and mix referencing to me.

Michal