Hey guys
I produce edm (different genres) and I'm learning mixing and mastering (ITB only)

Knowing that I produce music too, should I buy a control surface or some mixing mastering plugins first?

For now I've been using only Ableton std plugins and ozone 6 (so I don't clearly have anything specific for mix/mastering)
But keeping in mind that I also produce and that I just finished mixing a song…I don't know

What should I get first?


P.S. I love learning new plugins and equipment so I don't think buying a pre made bundles could be overkill and in this days only, one of these bundles (the Waves Gold bundle) is $199 only!

What are you finding most limiting?

Actually…u made me think more then I thought and the answer actually is…I don't know

The motivation is pretty simple… I CAN produce and mix without a control surface and I CAN mix and master with the plugins I have

The second is probably because…even if I've been making music since I was 7… I'm now leaning to understand the small difference between similar plugins
I'm still learning to "get close to the ear" or a real mixing mastering engineer

And probably that's why I asked this post… because the results I get with my mixing mastering are good (actually really good for my thoughts on what I could get ), but not amazing and I don't understand if getting something better (waves or whatever) could help me

P.S. close to same for the control surface. I could get it but…do I need it?

The areas that stock plugins generally fall down in are reverbs and ambience FX, creative tools, and things like saturation or other "simulations".

I like and use a lot of the Gold bundle, but I could happily substitute most of its plugins for stock stuff and get the same result. It doesn't have amazing verbs or mind blowing creative FX.

On the other hand, there's plugins from sound toys, izotope, any number of 3rd party reverbs, the slate subscription is an absolute no brainer (something like $10/month for everything, continuously) and so on. I'd start there - I think diving into presets on echoboy/filterfreak/crystalliser (soundtoys) will prove more creative to you than the waves bundles, and having all the slate stuff gives you great reverbs and delays as well as diving into the different forms of eq and compression.

Control surface? I have a few of the artist mix setups (for pro tools - went on a bit of a 2nd hand spree) and they're great. But a learning experience and I still do a lot of mouse work. You have to commit to get the best out of it really.

(PS I know you asked about "mastering plugins"; but you have Ozone, that's about as specific a mastering plugin as you can get! There's plenty of other limiters and EQs about (i quite like the fabfilter pro-L) but again, is ozone holding you back, or is it more general
Mixing skills?).

That's before we get into room and monitoring...which is almost always the place that can be most improved!

Ozone has everything you need, I wouldn't get anything else to be honest. You're going to buy a bunch of plugins to do the exact same thing ozone does brilliantly in one module

Also, why bother with a control surface? It's not really useful for what you're doing it will probably just collect dust

Yeah that's exactly what I was saying but I wasn't sure this was right
Probably there are many other plugins that helps more with getting a better sound but I don't know if I would be able to really feel the difference. Like between ozone eq and Q10 from waves, how could I?

The thought on the control surface came up since I was mixing my last song and really found the need of switching between session and arrangement view to be a pain in the ass
I really don't like switching every 10 seconds to check volumes and try another panning and change ect
An I thought that maybe even with music production I could get a little bit faster since I could have buttons for play, stop, rec, and volumes, panning, solo, mute, rec for every channel. Plus the sends (even if changeable during mixing)

Why would you need to change between session and arrangement view? I don't think i've been in session view in years..

Btw there are plenty of really good free VSTs, e.g. Tokyo Dawn Records stuff.

Cause when mixing I really hate changing volume, sends and panning us in arrangement view. Do u really change volume, sends and panning there? I don't think I would have that patience lol xD

I don't think I would have the patience to hop between arrangement view and session view just to change volume..

I don't personally see any benefits for mixing in session view. Meters are a bit larger by default but you can make them bigger in arrangement view as well..

Well that's surely true, maybe that'she just me, but I really don't like it
Btw I'm gonna check out those vsts u talked about ☺

For everybody else who's reading this
I think the way I should have set this question is: if you had to choose, for a little to medium experience mixing/mastering engineer, what do you think would be more helpful to get better and faster mixing and mastering? A control surface or more and better plugins?
What in your experience is the thing that made you say "Oh man, thank God I bought this! "

Experience, time, and seasoning, but you can't buy that. Every DAW I have used has all the stock plugins you need to make a great record. I use a mouse to write most of my automation, I find it more accurate and faster to draw it in by hand, and I have 24 channels of Mackie HUI. After many years of doing this I am now 100% in the box at mix time, find a set of plugs you like and learn them well and practice, practice, practice. Have fun and put in the hours !!

Ok, thank you for your idea
Please keep in mind that every tips like "Practice more" is already something I'm doing every day of every week
For at least one, but generally for 2 or even 3 hours every day I produce, mix or master something… or maybe only turn on my daw and play with some synths, sounds or sing, or play the piano
This is the only thing I do a part from my university studies so…no problem with that

If it's only the choice between those 2 things, I'd say a few choice plugins. Not "more" but maybe "better". For mixing - if you can't do it with the slate bundle and sound toys, you can't do it full stop. Seriously - the Slate subscription is really a no brainer, even a student won't notice $10/month will they? I don't want to sound like I'm in anyone's pocket since I own and use all the slate stuff (and paid for it the same way everyone else does!) but it's a complete suite and for mixing, is 90% of what you need.

The creative stuff is filled in by sound toys, or other similar companies.

The only thing you might want on top is a surgical eq - like fabfilter or something similar.

Get tdr Nova too for dynamic eq duties. Free.

I'd look at all that before considering a control surface (which won't help you for mastering at all).

But before anything else, I'd make sure you have the best listening environment you can. If you can't afford decent speakers, or you're in a dorm room you can't do anything with, get a great set of headphones - I've got sennheiser hd600s but there's a load in that price bracket. If you're monitoring on cheap speakers in a bad environment, or with hyped consumer headphones like Beats, all the gear in the world won't fix your issues.

Thank you another time for your answers (:

I do have some monitors that I decided to buy after something like months of different listening and checking at local stores: a pair of EVE SC207 that sound AMAZING. I don't know if you eared of it, but EVE was founded by an engineer from ADAM Audio which stopped working there and decided to build a new series of monitors himself. I think they really sound better than the adam ones…clear highs (even if u have to get used to it since with the ribbon tweeters), thight and quality bottom end and amazing mids too, which I found that (at least for me) are really really important and a clear difference from the adams.

I might still need to work on my studio too but I'll do that this summer asap

@ psycho_monkey is there a coupon to get the slate bundle for $10/mo? I see it for $15... which is still doable, but if there's a way to get it cheaper then why not?

Good to hear. I've heard of them, not heard them but if you're liking them we assume that part is covered!

Don't forget that the monitors are only part of the equation - the room is significant too. Again, if that's always going to be fairly compromised, it's worth having a good set of headphones for another point of reference.

Nah, I'm probably wrong there - I think it was $12.99 at one point, I was just approximating...it's still ridiculously good value.

Plus you also get access to their courses, which is almost worth it on their own (which reminds me - I should do some more viewing myself, I always pick up tips from these things!)