I just read through this and I can't agree more on the BAX. Bax filters are special. If you are listening to your mix, studying how the converters and the capture reacts as you shift those filters in, something solid and smooth happens. If you can't hear this, then your aren't listening for it or aren't aware of such a wonderful Mastering feature.
I use the BAX right before the capture, at the end of my analog chain.

http://dangerousmusic.com/news-and-press/128-jonathan-wyner-adds-new-dangerous-compressor-to-his-very-dangerous-mastering-studio

Turning to another fairly new and unique piece of Dangerous Music gear in his setup, Wyner offers, "The Dangerous BAX EQ is a device that allows you to mimic the kind of tone controls that consumers find on old-school stand-alone amplifiers, and the shape of the filter - the 'Baxandall filter' - is different from what most audio engineers have on their mixing desks. It has a different sound. I'm not sure how many people have ever had the experience of being able to compare what happens when you turn up the treble on your home receiver verses turning up a shelving EQ on a mixing desk, but they sound different, they've got a different shape. So having that in the toolkit, something that's very broad, that has a more gradual slope to the filter, so it's not sharp - it's airier - it's a lovely tool to have."

"The thing that really sold me on the BAX EQ is the high pass filter. An analog high-pass filter sounds different to me than one that is designed and implemented in DSP. I haven't found a plug-in high-pass filter that sounds nearly as smooth. I think that the BAX has a high-pass that sounds very transparent for an analog filter. There's less phase shift and the audio usually survives the path through the filter," reveals Wyner. "The high-pass filter just sounds great."

"There's also a low-pass filter on BAX that has a setting all the way out at 70khz - which is way up above anything that we can necessarily hear - but, as it drops down and touches just the top part of the audible signal, it's got a nice way of taking out a little bit of harshness, or edginess, that will creep into mixes when somebody is using a lot of signal processing. I've never found a Low-Pass filter to be of use in mastering until the BAX EQ. I really like the BAX filters a lot!"

I don't think it can really be limited to just two choices, Chris.

My guess would be a combination of the following (not in any particular order):

1. Gain Reduction... as to which, I'd say that likely the UA and Urei line of limiters/ compressors, perhaps other possible pieces from Avalon, Manley, dbx. If incredibly fortunate, perhaps a Fairchild 600 Series. ;).

2. EQ... Pultechs, Neve and/or API strips, Millenia, Urei, GML... there are so many great EQ's to choose from

3. Summing... I think more and more mix engineers are going to turn to sending stems along with a 2- mix, to give the ME more control, and perhaps alternatives?

5. Environment... a room that is as acoustically precise as possible.

6. Monitoring... and I would think, several different types and sizes. Various nearfields, to be sure, but I would think it very probable that bigger speakers would be found as well, along with sub woofers.

Those are my guesses, as uneducated in experience as they may be.

Beyond these primary areas, there are most certainly devices that handle things like phase correlation, along with various encode/decode processors for different playback media use - like Surround, 5.1, 7.1, etc.

IMHO of course.

d/

I'm far from a mastering engineer but I guess you'd at least need a tuned room and good monitoring. With that, you can decide to discard any gear that doesn't do what you want from the signal path. Of course, you'd need some dynamic processing and EQ to align the results with industry standards (or expectations). But how could you do anything without listening to it ?? ;)

Again, back to the hearing. Ears aren't gear. They are like feet to a runner. If a runner asked another runner what are the best shoes he/she has tried this year and was answered back, your feet, I would think he/she was an idiot and pretty damn ignorant.

Just saying again... this post is showing signs that there are a lot of people here ignorant about running shoes and performance enhancing strategies lol.

RO mastering responses = A race car driver asks another race car driver what tires he uses for this track and is answered, i use rubber tires and gas. I rest my case. (n)

Painful

Guys, we must already assume that it's a given - that if you are a professional ME, you've already got a pair of good ears - and in some rare cases, maybe even great.

George Martin once wrote a book called "All You Need Is Ears". But, Sir George also always had the best gear available to him at the time he was working.

He regularly used the best pre's, EQ's, and GR's that were available at the time. It's very easy to say "all you need is ears" when you're sitting at a Neve Console, and also happen to be within arm's reach of a rack loaded with models like various Fairchild's, API's, UA's and Urei's at your disposal.

This topic is about the gear - the equipment; conversion, monitoring, acoustics, gain reduction, EQ, summing, phase, and all of the other parameters that make up any solid mix.

Now, I've heard some ME's claim that they rely only on vintage equipment - models like LA2's, 1176's, dbx 160's, etc. At that, I agree that those models are certainly very nice to have, but at the same time, I must charge that there are most certainly plenty of new models that offer no less fidelity, and are just as valuable as their older vintage " parents ". It's important to have a good GR stage, whether it's with tracking, mixing or mastering. And while I personally do love the sounds of those various older UA and Urei LA series models, I don't think that it's an absolute must to have them, and that there are current/newer models that perform just as well, in their own right. UA and Urei ain't the only players in the game: Manley, Crane Song, Avalon and many other manufacturers also make fantastic audio gear.

I'm not gonna not go to, nor would I immediately walk out of, a mastering facility just because they don't have LA2A's or 1176's, etc. If I like what I'm hearing, if I like what the mastering engineer does, if they have good gear that presents high fidelity, ( which also shows their level of seriousness at the same time) and if he/she can respect the dynamic range, then I'm fine with that, as long as they're not opening the door to their room to show a computer loaded with PT and a slew of Waves EQ and GR plugs, and tell me that it's their "mastering lab".

IMHO of course.

d/

Good points Donny,

Back then there wasn't DAW's and all this electronic music like today, though.

I think its save to say, depending on what type of material we are getting/ producing, and how much time we want to put into a song, a limiter and a few tweaks is pretty much all mastering require. This is what so many ME are saying here. I don't believe this is the best we can do for our industry though, so I say BS. I think this is the cheap seat you are all riding while at the same time, pushing gear manufacturers down to useless and obsolete. I find it disrespectful and also misleading service.

I'm not trying to be a prick here but for the sake of nipping this sad state, "computers do everything better", in the bud... when are we going to call a spade a spade.
I would challenge most itb ME today who believe you only require a limiter, ears and brains and some plug-ins. Those who believe this are not as smart as you think you are. You are doing a disservice to clients and manufacturers. Gear does matter and there is a reason why music sounds like ass today.

I'm here to reclaim Pro Audio and to put affordable recording at the back of the class. I'm not trying to discourage or belittle those who are struggling, or rain on the home studio, but hey... enough is enough. I trusted this kind of BS on forums up until I actually got into a position where I could compare for myself. Then, started reading between the lines of where all this nonsense was stemming from.

I'm certain I would master something sounding better (or definitely add something special to the mix) using old school analog mastering processes with even standard monitors in a good but not super stellar room .
If anyone ever wants to take this sonic challenge, lets have fun and pay our respects to gear manufacturers deserving more than this.
I'm 57 years old this year, surely my hearing is less than perfect and I'm not an ME.
I have all the things ME claim to be the most important, against me! I'm just a guy with some gear.

I would love to be proven wrong and I think this would be a very fun challenge that would at the very least, give some analog manufacturers a few more years of hope too ;) .
In the late 90's I sold all my analog gear. I was so stupid, arrogant thinking Pro Tools was all I needed, that I had the ears and brains to be world class. Man, was I wrong.

audiokid, post: 415174, member: 1 wrote: Again, back to the hearing. Ears aren't gear. They are like feet to a runner. If a runner asked another runner what are the best shoes he/she has tried this year and was answered back, your feet, I would think he/she was an idiot and pretty damn ignorant.

Just saying again... this post is showing signs that there are a lot of people here ignorant about running shoes and performance enhancing strategies lol.

audiokid, did you write that comment for me ? I might not always be precise on my posts because my first language is french.
I didn't want to say that ears is a gear but rather that you need to serve them accurate informations. So monitoring and the room threatment is the most important thing to me. I know room is not a gear but a car without a road will only give bumpy rides right ? ;)
If you wanted specific unit Mark and models people consider the best, you should have ask 'what the best mastering EQ or compressor... and so on. (y)

Well, I can't speak for him of course, but I got the impression that he was polling ME's to determine which two pieces of gear they felt were most important to the process.

Personally, and no disrespect intended, I don't think you can limit this to just two choices.

Obviously, Gain Reduction and EQ are vital, but, so are converters, phasing analysis and correction, accurate monitors, clean power, and a well tuned room. IMHO, all of these things are essential to the process. Having one without the other makes no sense, at least that's the way I feel.

You could have the finest EQ processing rack in the world, but if you are importing the tracks you receive through a cheap converter or weak and brittle preamp, then that EQ won't be able to work at its optimum.
A pair of really nice accurate monitors, say the caliber of Dynaudio's or, even the second mortgage-priced JBL M2 System (20 grand a pair... YIKES!) won't do you much good if your room is an acoustic mess.

So then, IMHO and in no particular order...

EQ
Gain Reduction
Phase Analysis and Correction
Converters
Monitors
Room Acoustics

d/

:)

Yeah, I'm really not a ME, yet!:)
I've read so many answer on this thead that was missing the point that I thought that if I had to pick 1 thing first (I meen, the first thing to buy), it would be monitoring. If only to correctly hear the results of many gear trials to come.

My peeve with this thread is the same. If you ask me what the "two most important pieces of gear to a mastering engineer" are, I wouldn't say it was brains and ears. Thats simply pisses me off. Which, btw, must have done so for the OP because he never returned. I mean, I wouldn't come back to a forum with an answer like that. Ya might as well kicked him in the nuts and laughed at him while he shuttered away.

Its pretty clear, there are choice pieces. I'm more than happy to talk about my stuff and answer why I find them most important. I know I'm not alone either. I just had this discussion with a group of ME and the Pultec MEQ 5 and IA3 were engaging.

audiokid, man, you know i love this site, so please take this as my opinion on this topic, not anything personal.

Unless the OP, which was from 2010, was talking about favorite, not important, this is an impossible question to answer. Isnt the whole idea of mastering gear that each piece is thought of as essential, hence only a few very expensive pieces.

if you look at some mastering places, like oasis, sterling, gateway, peerless, almost all of them, the first thing they advertise on their sites, is the accuracy of the room. next is either the OB, or experience, usually experience.

so if we're taking experience and extremely accurate, purpose built (expensive) custom listening environments/monitoring for granted, as well as converters. then that leaves the fun stuff.

the Weiss eqs and massive passives, seem to be the most common stuff. pultecs are right there too. then theres the gml stuff and cranesong. (going off pictures/gear lists)

ive been lurking this thread since it got revived recently, and my opinion has naturally changed as i have grown since i commented on this in 2011.

so i dunno what that guy was really asking. he may have never even come back to read anything, but i would answer it this way. Two most important pieces of gear for an ME?

the equalizer, and the compressor. its kind of a cop out, but really, what would a mastering engineer be able to do (musically) w/ out them? edit heads and tails, maybe simply maximize volume?

the reasons for having the wonderful flavor of a pultec, or the transparency of a GML, or the precision of a Weiss, obviously depends on what you typically master, and what the track needs.(<----Cliche, but true) but you'd be hard pressed to call yourself an ME w/out at least one EQ, and one Comp, and really at least one of each style- flavorful and surgical.

this, as opposed to a tracking guys (2 most important) who really just needs pres and mics, or a mix guy who could get away w/ some reverb and delay (obviously on well recorded tracks, but i guess an argument for eq and comp could be made there too)

as far as 'ears' go, i never thought people literally meant good hearing. i aways thought it was more the cognitive/instinctual ability to identify good or bad subjectively. Obviously, and i know from listening to some guys mixes that they have hearing damage, they talk loud, mix overly bright...But really if your not a volume nut bag like these guys i dont think the natural degradation of human hearing should be a big problem for the engineer long term. i mean, look at whose on top of the mastering game. it aint kids my age. (gees, as i was typing, i just had a thought, maybe that is one of the contributing factors of overly bright masters, beside the other commercial factors.)

-----

i sense your aggravation about the cookie cutter, cliche crap. like when a newbie asks, what condenser mics are good in the (insert price range here)? and the first thing anyone will say is, get a dynamic. True as that is in reality, what happens is people w/ start talking about there own damn stuff thats way outa range, and irrelevant. or they bombard the poster to get a 58. while that's good advice, the discussion never revolves around the $200 condenser options,, and why they are better. personally i made a conscious decision a few months ago to stop this, cuz its annoying to me, the poster, and frankly everyone.

its totally possible that a lot of the regulars dont have enough experience w/ that level of gear to really say, well mxl is a little this, rode a little that ect.

The reality is that 80% of sound engineers, are gonna say what they have is the best. ugh. hen yo talk to people in person same shit. most of the time. My boss is not one of them, but the senior engineer is. i swear he d say his studio had the best toilet paper. and iin fact, can tell u the brand bob clearmountain used originally on his ns-10s, because he asked him during a bryan adams session back in the classic era or bryan adams.

As if Mr. Clearmountain gave it anymore thought than, hey runner, go get some TP, i wanna cover these tweeters. lol single ply lets the transients thru more.....

just my thoughts, as younger, less experienced, up and coming rec/mix dude. (my comments are pure speculation/opinion). im sensing and end to this thread.

Good points and an extra funny ending on the toilet paper.
I didn't realize this post started back in 2010 lol. Man, that is to funny. I guess I should read the dates once in a while.
Anyway, between the line of this thread are good points, mainy on how ME don't engage people. I too sense the end of this thread and the actual ME forum. If ME can't talk about gear anymore, like we used to when Blackwood, Grossingger etc were here, then is time to shut this baby down. There really isn't anything to discuss, right? I am frustrated with it and I do apologize for being such a stick in the mud.

Thanks for the post.